Notes of the Month

Workers’ movement

Our green shoots

From Socialist Review, No. 173, March 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

‘It may seem hard to believe, but the UK recovery has already lasted as long – seven quarters – as the recession which preceded it. The trouble for the government is that the growth rate has been too slow to generate a “feel-good” factor among consumers.’
Financial Times, 19–20 February 1994.

Despite all the talk of recovery, no one really believes that it is under way. The government must feel bitterly frustrated. After all, economic recovery in the mid-1980s left most people feeling better off. The Tories got the credit. Things are very different now.

Growth in the economy is at best uneven and economic indicators are contradictory. So while inflation has remained fairly low (but on a rising trend), manufacturing output fell in December, and bank lending was very weak in January. All the talk of a spending boom in the run up to Xmas was undermined by a drop in the real sales figures when they were released last month.

There is some economic growth, but from a very low base. Output in manufacturing industry is still well below its pre-recession figure: last December it was 5.5 percent below its peak of March 1990, and machine tool sales were just over half the level of 1990.

No wonder unemployment remains at nearly 3 million on the official figures and that it rose slightly in January after falling marginally over several months. And the jobs being created are hardly the sort to foster economic confidence. There has been a net loss of full time jobs. All the increase in employment is in part time work. Although some of these jobs may be relatively well paid and secure, a very large number are low paid, low status jobs.

So despite nearly two years of official ‘recovery’, an opinion poll carried out in Stephen Milligan’s Hampshire constituency of Eastleigh in late February showed that 50 percent of those questioned thought that their financial situation would get worse in the next year.

All this comes before the tax increases due next month. Even the government has admitted that the increases will take an average of more than £12 a week from most households – rising to an incredible £20 a week in 1995.

Economists fear that the rise in tax will hamper any improvement in consumer spending and so slow down the recovery.

Certainly tax increases – the steepest since the war – will mean belt tightening for most working class families, many of whom have received pay rises at or below the rate of inflation. And their political impact is likely to be immense.

This is just beginning to dawn on some political commentators and Tory MPs, who hailed Kenneth Clarke’s November budget as economic wizardry. They praised his (inadequate) compensation for VAT on fuel for those on pensions and benefits without realising that his other measures were creating even more problems.

The tax bombshell will hit just weeks before the local elections in May and the European elections in early June. Both are likely to demonstrate an unprecedented level of government unpopularity. The claim that economic recovery is leading to political recovery is the reverse of the truth.

There are many signs that the political hostility to the government is being channelled into activity: against hospital closures or the Child Support Agency, and in the fight against racism with the big TUC demo this month. There is also an increasing sense of discontent about pay and conditions in many workplaces.

This has not yet usually been expressed in action. But already groups of workers such as the predominantly female workforce at Girobank, who have staged a one day strike over pay and plan further action to win their claim, and college lecturers, who plan a national one day strike for 1 March against new contracts, are taking action. Trade unionists with little previous tradition of organisation are being pushed into action because of the savage and generalised nature of the attacks.

An employers’ offensive is also leading to a fightback among MSF workers at J.S. Chinn in Coventry. Here, in a mini Timex dispute, the employers are attempting to victimise a shop steward in a traditionally militant area and hoping to weaken the union throughout the city. They are finding a high level of resistance.

And Tory minister Virginia Bottomley’s attempts to close down large numbers of London hospitals are meeting a fightback. Workers at the ‘flagship trust’ Guy’s Hospital are talking of balloting for strike action and have called a demonstration to protest at closure.

Time and again over the past months, workers have balloted, threatened action and often gone on strike. The problem is that so far there has not been any breakthrough. A dispute like that at Timex in Dundee had the potential to win, but ended up with the factory closing. The nurses’ strike at UCH, London, kept the hospital open but with much reduced services.

Even when strikes are victorious, they do not have the impact on other workers which could lead to them also taking action. There have been few of the national strikes which could begin to have an impact across the working class. The blame here must lie squarely with the national trade union leaders, who have done everything in their power to avoid confrontation.

The signs are that the union leaders are under greater pressure to deliver, or else face possible unofficial action in the future. There are now large groups of workers in most unions who are absolutely fed up with the lack of fight. The recent rejection of a productivity deal by UCW post office workers despite the agreement of management and union leaders is a case in point.

At the same time, Labour’s parliamentary leadership seems less and less capable of relating to how ordinary working people feel. Such is their detachment that there have even been grumblings from within the shadow cabinet about Labour’s latest plan to attract private investment in public industry.

The plan follows closely on acceptance of many of the NHS ‘reforms’, the refusal of Gordon Brown to pledge any Labour government spending on anything and the vote by two shadow cabinet ministers to keep the age of consent for gays at 18.

It would be a mistake to believe that these policies are representative of the many who look to Labour in hope of winning change and even a better world. But the lack of action, or even of fighting talk, in parliament and at the top of the unions can have a debilitating effect on some socialists. It is often hard to see the whole picture – something which amounts to a slow, patchy and partial growth in working class confidence and organisation.

That means we can set our horizons very low, feeling that nothing much is changing. Rather we should understand that there is a sizeable audience for socialists, particularly if they can link their political view of the world with a strategy for beating back Tory and ruling class attacks. The big student protests, the TUC March Against Racism this month and the Anti Nazi League carnival which follows it and the growing protest and anger over pay and conditions, can all help to fuel a very big movement to fight back

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