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From International Socialism, No. 62, September 1973, p. 4.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Paul Blackledge.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
THE ACTIONS of Scanlon and Jones have necessarily influenced those on the left of the trade union movement who regard the key task as being to maintain ‘unity’ with such leaders. The Morning Star, for instance, began by giving favourable coverage to the electricians’ dispute. On 22 August it implied that unofficial action had forced Chapple to give recognition to the strike. ‘Coupled with the announcement of the Coventry strike being made official was an admission by Mr Chapple that the policy of the union was now being put into question by the Chrysler dispute and other strikes,’ it said.
However, some of the leading Communist Party members in Coventry took the line that ‘unity’ with Scanlon and Jones was more important than the electricians’ case. Jock Gibson, a Communist Party member and transport workers’ union convenor at Ryton, told his men to go through the picket lines. And Eddie McCluskey, a member of the national executive committee and secretary of the Stoke joint shop stewards’ committee, voted at the committee’s meeting against striking over non-union labour in the plant and against instructing the members there to honour the pickets.
The line of unity at any cost seems to have been adopted by the Morning Star since Jones and Scanlon intervened. The paper’s reports on the strike have become brief and factual, without indicating support for or against the pickets, and, as we go to press, they have not even mentioned the instructions given by the two big unions to their members. They have been similarly silent on the debates among the stewards which followed these instructions, even though a resolution protesting at Jones’ and Scanlon’s behaviour got 30 out of 100 votes at the Stoke stewards’ committee.
The International Socialists, whose Chrysler branch was bitterly denounced in the local press and at mass meetings for taking the lead in demanding solidarity with the electricians, has written to the Communist Party’s national executive, suggesting joint action to campaign in the TGWU and the AUEW against the attempts to weaken the effectiveness of picketing.
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Last updated on 1 March 2015