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Campaigning vs. ‘getting something done’ in socialist strategy
A comment on Duncan’s piece on goings-on in the BNP got me thinking. It’s all very well, ran this comment, people gearing up to protest the latest march of the EDL or the BNP, but what about actually getting something done? This is much less ‘sexy’ (so runs a certain strand of opinion) and therefore attracts less attention than marching all over the place.
Such opinions are regularly levied at various lefties occupying students union councils up and down the country. They’re too concerned with Palestine, say the centrists and right-wingers, and not concerned enough with what’s going on in our own university, with our own students etc. The truth is a little different, I think. This comes out when lefties propose solidarity demonstrations with unionised university staff, and even the ‘soft’ Left tend to shy away.
Yet the situation is a little more muddled than a hard left/everyone else are cowards dichotomy. It’s true, being out marching against the BNP and the EDL is unlikely to lead to new council housing and services of itself (which, most of the left now agrees – a little belatedly, are what we need). On the other hand, it can lead to networked community groups powerfully in tune with local opinion and able to stand up and fight for the needs of their area.
National and international issues are somewhat different to the able local campaigns that have grown up around fighting the BNP and the EDL, evidence for which comes from several of the last major engagements.
While the Stop the War movement developed strong local contingents, these seemed to fade out when it became apparent that marching wasn’t really doing much and that there wasn’t a plan B.
The movement against the war in Lebanon didn’t develop such roots, nor have more nationally orientated campaigns such as Youth Fight for Jobs.
It is this last, which is backed by several of the more militant unions, that really got me thinking about whether or when we can draw distinctions between ‘campaigning’ and ‘getting something done’. My new union is likely to be PCS, which is a strong supporter of YFJ (as am I, for the record) and which carried the following statement on its website:
“[YFJ] was unanimously backed by PCS delegates at this year’s Annual Conference. Activists from our Young Members Network have already played a significant role in the campaign by marching through London at the time of the G20 Conference, having motions passed at the YFFJ launch meeting and being elected to the steering committee.”
The claim to a significant role in the campaign amounts to being part of a march, passing motions at YFJ conference (though I didn’t attend, let it be said that the majority of things which tend to go through are worthy-can’t-we-all-yawn-and-let-it-pass-without-speaking type motions) and getting a few people elected to the steering committee.
Which is great. Marches are confidence-building, awareness raising endeavours, if costly. Representative institutions are great. Yet…if I’m honest, I suspect that the sort of people who get elected to steering committees here have a bunch of other committees and national committees and executive committees to their name. The same faces, different venues.
On the ground, in PCS, despite the representative institutions of the union acknowledging YFJ and perhaps – perhaps! – a few people in different locations being interested in it, the vast majority of union members don’t know it exists. It hasn’t contributed anything to them, nor (though a laudable goal) to the young unemployed. From the point of view of the union, YFJ hasn’t done much to be proud of.
Which is sad, but not unexpected nor necessarily bad socialist strategy. It’s sad because it’s hard to stress enough to young people the supreme importance of seizing control of unions immediately and making them relevant by using them as forums through which to change the nature of their working environment.
It’s not unexpected because the last period has seen key upheavals across universities in the UK. Labour’s cuts were beginning to take effect over the last year, leading to movement by UCU against the plans laid out for workers. Con-Lib cuts are likely to bite harder, and with nuclei of students and staff willing to resist to the utmost – including occupation – it’s no surprise that an organisation based more on students than young workers will turn in that direction.
It’s not bad strategy because pulling people together in campaigns such as this fosters the engaged attitude on which solidly unionised workplaces rest, and it’s a lesson that the people involved will carry with them.
A jaundiced view of left politics might suggest that interest in the issue of top-up fees and the like is really sustained by the desire of so many campus Lenins to occupy their university and rise to fame, or by the ease with which national demonstrations can be swapped for actually finding a tactic that will stop the introduction of higher top-up fees. It’s one of the ‘sexy’ issues allowing for maximum posing and minimal cerebral engagement.
I disagree. Quite the opposite; a renewed focus on top-up fees springs from the development (in coordination with and by various socialist groups including Socialist Students / YFJ) of a new layer of socialists who have been on the front lines of cuts and pickets, and who see ever more urgently the need to oppose this government in the arena that they have experience building up campaigns and support.
This is an important prelude to getting anything done. If we don’t pursue tactics that can reach people at their current level of political awareness and engage it in battles relevant to them, we’ll never get them to take on the additional fights we think will help. So a lot of people dislike the BNP intensely, based on the political consciousness they do have – but they don’t see how they can fight the root causes of fascist sympathising – so we take the one and build it into the other by succeeding at the campaigns we do fight.
If we can’t do this, then we’ll end up no better than the professional politicos in London, building their email campaigns on well-meaning supporters but ultimately speaking into a vacuum where real mass action is concerned.
That’s why I’m happy to be part of a Left that can appeal to the local – residents against the BNP – and the internationals – young people concerned at global injustices – and which has the wherewithal to bind them together.
PCS Budget Day strike report
David Miliband passes London pickets...
Yesterday a planned strike by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) was carried out, with 200,000 staff mostly staying at home rather than come into work. I was down on the picket line here in Canterbury to offer support for the local Job Centre staff who came out, in protest at cuts across the board – to regular staff, temps, pensions etc.
Compared with last time, the picket was poorly attended – but still people were being signed up to the PCS by militant workers. I heard that this has been replicated elsewhere in Kent, with nearly a dozen signed up in areas around the east of the county during and in the lead up to yesterday’s strike alone. Clearly these issues resonate amongst DWP staff.
News from Leeds yesterday was that some 1700 people have joined the union since the industrial dispute began.
Active pickets tend to do very well at this, pulling out more workers who may ordinarily have just ducked their heads and gone inside and persuading members of other unions not to deliver services to the workplaces in question.
Given the number of workplaces without pickets, PCS’ national executive needs to take in hand a programme that will deliver elected representatives in every workplace who are schooled and willing to organise such pickets when the members vote to strike. Such representatives are useful points of contact around which can be built support networks that reassure striking workers that they do have a great deal of general support.
It would certainly help the DWP and HMRC staff who often seem to be the backbone of any dispute. It would also solidify strikes right along the line. Evidently, for all the ‘union modernisation’ money that our right-wing counterparts are complaining about, little of the state’s money has been used to strengthen the basic sinews of unions.
Today, the PCS national executive is meeting to discuss what further action to take. ‘Targeted action’ seems to be the expectation of PCS members, that the union will ask the Contact Centres to come out on strike rather than generalising the action. It’s hard to see what effect this can have other than to fatigue workers.
The strikes have held up well, to the point where management from regional centres were sent to outlying offices to cover for staff who were on strike. The Guardian reports that crown and county courts have been massively affected, as well as certain museums throughout London, and several job centres that I’ve seen have been clearly affected.
Against this, however, we have to measure the willingness of the government to simply wait out the strike.
We can’t take seriously Tessa Jowell’s Comical Ali routine, of the sort wheeled out every time there is a strike: “Across the country services to the public are largely unaffected – all job centres and benefits offices are open, border entry points are working normally and court services are being maintained.”
Yet it would be a mistake to underestimate the government. Now, with the first planned national rail strike since the mid-1990s and several other unions involved or considering serious industrial action, it could be time to consider an organised series of national days of actions, bringing out all services on their separate grievances.
Should this be done before or after May 6th? I have no real opinion; either way, the unions and their workers are going to get a hammering from the government – red or blue. If steps aren’t taken to hook up different union grievances, the government – 0f whatever party – faces being able to ride them all out, one by one, as fatigue sets in.
PCS strikes, picketing and next steps
(There’s still more to come from International Women’s Day celebrations, but as this is topical, I thought I would get it out now).
Yesterday morning I walked around the local workplaces represented by PCS and joined the picket at one, to show support for the 200,000 workers who have been on strike these past two days.
Where we stayed for longer than five minutes, the atmosphere was light, even when discussion turned to the terrible and increasing workloads and deliberate scaling down of staff numbers. Key issues on the strike included the structure of jobs, and obviously the pensions currently under attack.
I even witnessed a beautiful moment of solidarity action, where a CWU member, having been informed of the strike, refused to deliver the mail and took it back to the local distribution centre.
What I was surprised at was that of the four staff on the picket, one was the organiser and at least two of the other three had been brought on to the picket that morning, with no prior planning. Indeed, from what I understand, one member had only been signed up to the union that morning and one three weeks previously in anticipation.
This is an encouraging development. PCS is regularly to the forefront of fights against the job-shedding, pension-slashing agenda of the government. Previously un-unionised workers being won over is a big step, and proves the truisms first established by the RMT: a union willing to go to the wire will pick up support and members.
It is inaction that atrophies the muscles of the labour movement. Not to say, as I have heard said, that this always and forever means employing the nuclear option of strikes. Without concrete gains this will simply exhaust the sentiment of workers, and it would be simplistic to assert that unions have no alternative means of achieving things for their members.
The next step is spreading this to other PCS-aligned workplaces, and increasing union density in the ones which did establish active pickets. Crossing pickets made a number of workers distinctly uncomfortable yesterday, as it will today, and they can be won over. The strike ends today and it is the next step which is important.
Organizers and branch secretaries will go back to work, and the onus will be on them to convince more people to join the union.If they looked to their left, they’d find socialists who would be happy to help, under the direction of elected union officers.
Between London and Brighton, the two militant centres in the south east, there were pickets but there were no marches or rallies (that were advertised on the PCS site at least) and in an area targeted for the removal of jobs, because the London-weighting of payment is considered too expensive, that’s significant.
Linking workers together is a basic feature of unions, and the sort of planning that goes in to a march or rally is an excellent way to engage with uncommitted PCS workers.
Several teams of roving union stewards should be tasked with hitting every workplace in their area, jacking up union numbers, convincing people to put in the effort to get a rally together and give a strike a better atmosphere than half a dozen people standing around in the freezing cold, carrying the odd placard or too.
Even if the strike doesn’t succeed, or threatens to drag on, at least the basis will have been led for future organisation. This organisation wasn’t absent on the pickets, but it can be better – and next time there can be active pickets at all the PCS workplaces in the city.
There’s also a clear need for a Canterbury District Trades Council, which could have aided in solidifying the strike and maximising the disruption necessary to force the government to retreat. It is in these directions which socialists should direct their efforts, picking up contacts and supporters along the way.
Further reports from pickets across the country can be read here.
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