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From Socialist Worker, No. 102, 21 December 1968, p. 2 & 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
IN MARTIN BARKER’s article on Merseyside militancy (November 16) he made a number of false statements which should be corrected, because if Socialist Worker wants to do a job, its analysis should be based on facts, not on assumptions.
He says that ‘Although Merseyside workers are militant, their strikes settle little. The dockers won big increases,but, they have to continually fight off management attempts at rationalisation.’
Does Martin mean to imply that if the strike was run better or longer, that the Liverpool dock employers would have given up the ghost completely and should have handed over to the dockers completely after the last dock strike?
He then goes on to the dispute at the Shell Star Site, Ellesmere Port. He says that the men refused to work a productivity deal, because a third of the labour force would be made redundant.’
This is not true. No one on that site would have been made redundant, but the stewards and the men understood that if the interchangeability agreement was accepted at Shell Star, it would have been a pattern for all future sites, and this would have caused their labour force requirements to be cut by at least a third.
There is a political difference here. The men were not fighting for their immediate jobs, but for the future jobs in the industry.
Then he says that little was solved because ‘Shortly after they had won a complete return to work on the old agreement, the Shellstar stewards accepted a similar productivity agreement.’
This statement shows a complete lack of understanding of the practical and political facts of the situation. Perhaps I should explain that, last May, site stewards negotiated a £4 per week increase for all the men employed.
Barbara Castle then stepped in to stop any more payments of this increase. Arising from this, her department got together with the union executives and the firm.
They then presented the men with a productivity, interchangeability and procedure agreement. Up to this point the increase was still being paid.
The men refused to work to this agreement and were subsequently sacked. After a magnificent struggle for five weeks, the men returned to work on the old agreement, but less the £4 per week increase.
If things had been left in this setting, the Prices and Incomes Board would have in fact succeeded in what they set out to do – keep wages down.
At a future meeting already arranged to take place after the return to work, the stewards were able to delete,take out or change words to make the agreement useless where the firm or the PIB are concerned. This was precisely because of the struggle that had taken place, and the fear by the firm of more action by the men if they did not get what they were entitled to.
So much so that Barbara Castle, in accepting the revised agreement, sent a letter to the union executives saying that on no account must this new agreement be introduced on any other site.
On the question of the agreement being accepted ‘in the teeth of bitter opposition from many of the men’, at least two days before the mass meeting, every man had a copy of both the original and the revised agreements. Yet there was very little discussion on the agreement from the floor at the meetings.
The main bitterness came from some people opposed to the site decision not to allow anyone back on the site who had found work elsewhere during the stoppage until all unemployed in each trade group were working.
Finally I think it is wrong for any socialist paper to denigrate the efforts of workers and stewards who are actually engaged in struggle, without at least trying to ascertain the true facts from source.
While it is correct to examine the positive and the negative aspects of any situation, it is wrong to give a completely defeatist attitude, as you do, when you say that in spite of all the militancy, very little was won in terms of money and conditions.
How can you say this as far as Shell Star is concerned, when an increase of 2s 6d per hour or 25 per cent was achieved along with better conditions? So much for the government’s Incomes Policy.
When you put this type of slant on a fight you are discouraging workers in other parts of the country from taking part in a struggle.
Workers take part in struggle basically to improve their lot. If you keep telling them that the workers are not winning anything, it makes it much harder for the people on the job to get them to move.
In your paper you quite rightly say that the Incomes Policy should be fought. But surely you must know that any section of workers who have a crack at it will not defeat it completely by themselves.
Only when more and more take up the fight in unity with other workers will this be done.
This is a lesson that Merseyside and other workers have to learn. They will not team it if you keep telling them that every fight carried out has won them very little or nothing.
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Last updated on 30 October 2020