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Title: The Social General Strike Author: Tom Brown Date: 1940s Language: en Topics: 1920s, general strike, United Kingdom, history Source: Retrieved on 4th October 2021 from http://libcom.org/library/social-general-strike-1926-failed-brown
The repeal of The 1927 Trades Disputes Act by the Labour Parliament
makes little difference to the prospect of a General Strike. The Labour
leaders believe that, for the present at least, they can better suppress
strikes by their control of the trade unions than by Parliament. On the
other hand, when the workers are willing to engage the class enemy in a
General Strike they will not consult Acts of Parliament to do so. During
the 1926 General Strike the strikers did not care two hoots whether the
strike was legal or illegal.
Why did the British General Strike of 1926 fail? Not because the workers
failed to strike. The number of blacklegs was insignificant. The attempt
of the middle-class to scab on the strikers was a poor effort and was
rapidly breaking down the machines used. About one per cent, of normal
train services were running, but only nine days of that caused chaos on
the railways for months afterwards. The breakdown was greater than that
caused by the air raids on London in 1940–41 and took much longer to
repair. The University students and other middle class scabs could not
replace the transport workers and certainly did not intend to replace
the miners.
Nor did the strike fail because of a fall in the morale of the workers.
The Aggregate of strikers was much greater on the last day of the strike
than on the first and the fighting spirit was much tougher.
The strike failed only because it was called off by the trade union
leaders and the workers had not learned to distrust those leaders
sufficiently. Worse still, the most important divisions of strikers were
organised in trade unions and they were used to obeying instructions
from the officials of those unions. The strike was betrayed by the
leadership.
But do not let us fall into the error of believing that the leaders
called off the strike because of their own cowardice. The Labour leaders
economic interests are those of capitalism and in betraying the strike
they were defending the economic interest. The trade union leaders never
believed in the strike and only led it in order to prevent it being
controlled by the workers; they led it in order to ensure its failure.
Scores of quotations from the leaders of the Trades Union Congress could
be produced to prove this. We have room for but one.
“No General Strike was ever planned or seriously planned as an act of
Trade Union policy. I told my own union in April, that such a strike
would be a national disaster.”
“We were against the stoppage, not in favour of it.” J.R. CLYNES;
Memoirs.
True, the workers were rapidly developing an alternative to the leader
principle. The Councils of Action were improvised bodies born of local
initiative. Even more significant was the spontaneous and widespread
creation of mass picket lines and their unqualified success. But in
spite of such a hopeful development the strikers still had the habit of
obedience to leaders. It was not, of course, the leaders alone who were
defending their capitalist interest inside the Labour movement. The
trade unions were not only, through their vast invested funds,
shareholders in capitalism-they were part of the social order; as much
capitalist institutions as the workhouse or the Houses of Parliament.
To wage a successful General Strike the workers must reject, not only
certain leaders, but the leader principle, using to the full their own
initiative. They must organise, not in trade unions, but in syndicalist
or revolutionary industrial unions (in Britain the two terms mean the
same), and they must change their strategy from that of the General Walk
Out Strike to that of the General Stay In Strike.
Consider what happens in an orthodox strike, general or particular. The
strikers, who had the means of production in their hands one day, on the
next hand them over to their class-enemies in a nice tidy working
condition and go home. The railmen and bus and lorry drivers hand over
the vital means of transport, without which modern capitalism and the
State cannot exist. The electrical engineers hand over the power
stations; the gas workers the gas producers; Dockers, ware-housemen and
food factory workers surrender millions of tons of precious flour,
bacon, meat, butter, rice and fruit. Engineers vacate arsenals which
might be used to arm Fascists. Then they go home to sit by grates which
gradually become fireless or at tables with a lessening loaf or go out
on to the streets to be battened upon their defenceless heads.
How much better to stay at work and do your striking there. Naturally,
to many workers this will seem a strange idea, they are used to striking
by leaving the job, not by staying on it, least of all to continuing at
work and striking at the same time. But stay awhile, all fruitful ideas
must have sounded startling at first hearing, as startling as the first
steam-locomotive to a stage coachman.
Look at it this way. We all depend for our very living upon the machines
and those who tend them, the employer even more than we. Not only does
he depend upon servants to clean his home and cook his meals, to wash
him and dress him and to do everything but chew his food for him, he
also far more than we ever shall upon complicated mechanisms,
telephones, electric fires, automobiles and so on. There he is
vulnerable. Even more vulnerable is his industrial and commercial system
and his political institutions.
And behind the machine is a man; he has not yet achieved his dream of
Kossum’s Universal Robots. That man is the striker-all things are in his
hands. Industry is in the workers” hands. They control the trains, the
ships and the buses. They run the telephone exchanges and the power
stations. They warehouse and prepare the food, clothing, shoes and
myriad commodities which make life possible. In the Social General
Strike the workers decide to cut off these supplies from the employing
class and to supply them in full-for the first time in history-to the
working class.
Instead of starving, we eat as we have never feasted before, instead of
being clubbed, shot and imprisoned we retain the means of defending our
lives.
The employing class will be without petrol, heat, electricity,
communication or servant. Such a General Strike has been often called
The General Lock Out of the Capitalist Class. Perhaps that is a more
appropriate term.
To accomplish such an end, however, the workers must shed the old,
outworn methods of trade unionism and adopt those of the Syndicalists
and Revolutionary Industrial Unionists. Instead of organising in the
branch room of the local Labour Club or the tap room of the “ Bed Lion “
we must organise on the job; the miners in the pits, the engineers in
the factories, the seamen on the ships. Only by organising on the job
are we preparing to take over industry. By organising in the trade union
local branch we are fitting ourselves for nothing greater than taking
over the local dart team.
Let us now consider in greater detail the mode of organisation advocated
by Syndicalists for the defence of our class and the taking and holding
of industry.
The basis of trade union organisation, as well as its growth and
practice, make it unsuited, even dangerous to the taking and running of
industry. Trade unions are of three types, trade unions proper, that is
craft unions, bastard forms of “industrial unions” and general mass
unions.
Craft unions may have been justified in the days of handicraft
production when a craftsman produced, almost entirely alone, the
commodity of his trade. Today, however, by the development of technics
and the subdivision of labour many crafts and occupations are necessary
to the production of even a simple commodity. If we walk into an
engineering factory, for instance, we find the workers already organised
by the capitalist. The patternmakers work in harmony with the moulders
who pass their work to the machinists. The machinists’ work is
dovetailed into that of the fitters. Maybe blacksmiths, plumbers,
coppersmiths, joiners, sheetmetal workers, boilermakers and painters
join in the production of this one commodity. Clerks, time-keepers,
inspectors and draughtsmen too, are necessary to industrial process.
Yet, while all may be under one roof, producing one-type of commodity,
say locomotives, these workers may be “organised” into forty unions.
Disorganised would he a more apt word. To ask a Syndicalist, “ do you
believe in trade unionism “ is like asking a man if he believes in the
penny-farthing bicycle.
However, not all of our engineering workers will be members of craft
unions, some will be members of an alleged industrial union, the
Amalgamated Engineering Union. The A.E.U. is not a true industrial union
for it is organised on the basis of craft not industry, though the craft
is given a wider meaning than that of the accepted craft unions. Thus
the A.E.U. claims members among marine workers aboard ship, in the
chemical industry and scores of other industries and for twenty years
has had uneasy relations with the Miners’ Federation over its attempts
to organise coalmining workers. In any case, the A.E.U. is not organised
on the basis of industry, but upon the basis of residence. That is, if
you work in East London and lives in West London you will, generally be
organised, not where you work, but where your bed is.
Besides the craft and pseudo-industrial unions some of the workers will
be organised in at least two “ general workers unions “, such as the
Transport and General or the Municipal and General. These are general
unions which “organise” anybody and everybody, engineers, miners,
dockers, busmen, shop assistants, clerks or farm labourers. Anybody and
everybody in a vast, amorphous disorderly mass.
None of these three types of unionism meets the needs of labour in the
modern age. “What is needed is a union which will organise the workers
of one factory in a single industrial union-craftsmen, labourers,
clerks, storekeepers and draughtsmen-male and female-young and old. An
industrial union not split into residential areas, but organised on the
job, built up inside of the factory.
The organisational plan of revolutionary industrial unionism allows, of
course, for complete organisational relations with other factories in
the industry. Industrial unions are organised in each industry and
service, mining, textiles, rail, education, building, health and so on.
All industrial unions are federated into One Big Union. It is intended
that the One Big Union shall be a world-wide union of all workers with
autonomous administrations in each country.
We have here a plan of union organisation which is capable of running
successfully a Social General Strike, of taking and holding industry and
locking out the employing class. Not for the General Strike alone must
we organise scientifically-the everyday needs of the workers cry aloud
for an efficient union movement to protect their wage packets. During
these wage struggles and the smaller disputes and tussles which take
place daily on the job, the revolutionary unionists are all the time
studying their jobs, the technics and organisation of industry. When the
occasion to strike occurs they are thus fitted to take and hold the
undertaking.
How would the Social General Strike method be applied? On the morning of
the strike the revolutionary unionists no longer obey the foremen and
managers, each person or gang take over their own job. Where liaison,
delegates or committees, are needed such have already been organised.
Who will pay the wages? No one. Money, the most powerful weapon of the
capitalist is discarded. The banknotes in his wallet are so much fluff.
But we must eat to live. Very well, the canning factories, the docks and
warehouses are already in the hands of the workers. The flour mills and
bakehouses, the dairies and packing houses are controlled by them. The
dockers, railwaymen and lorry drivers deliver the food to the factories
and working class districts, the shop assistants and canteen workers
supply it to the workers and their families.
Distribution will not be according to the amount of money a person has
but according to his need. Large families will receive more than small
families or single persons. Children will have first call on milk and
sweets. Delicacies such as poultry and grapes will go to the hospitals
and invalids instead of to wealthy overfed idlers. Farm labourers and
smallholders send food to the cities.
Miners will continue to send coal to the surface, and the railwaymen’s’
industrial union will deliver it to the factories, gasworks, power
stations and distribution centres. Power station workers organised in
their syndicate will produce electricity and distribute it to the
workers’ houses, factories and transport undertakings.
Necessary communication among related industrial plants will be the
responsibility of the telephone and other post office workers.
Stores of clothing held by textile mills and shops will be distributed
to the most needy by the Textile and Distributive Syndicates. Hospital
and other health service workers will continue their work through their
unions. Water and other municipal services will be carried on by the
Municipal Workers’ Industrial Union.
Newspaper compositors and machinists will refuse any longer to print the
lies and provocations of the employing class, as they refused on the eve
of the 1926 General Strike in Britain. But instead of walking out of the
print shops they remain at work and turn the newspapers into organs of
the General Strike.
At a glance, any worker can see the obvious advantage of such a strike
weapon and its great superiority over the old strike method of starving
for three to six months. Superior because we eat instead of starving,
but the Syndicalist method is effective not only because of the strikers
seizure of the commissariat for the strikers, it also uses the boycott
against the employing class.
All domestic and personal servants who were members of their union would
leave their employment. Employers would be forced to cook, make beds, do
shopping and run their own errands. Postal workers would cease all
communications with bourgeois districts. No buses, trains, trams or
lorries would pass through these areas or touch buildings where
blacklegs were employed, housed or fed.
No food or drink would be delivered to these places. The municipal
workers would strike against sweeping their streets or emptying their
dust-bins. Gas, water and electricity would cease to flow to them. The
weapons of starvation and deprivation which the capitalists have so
often used against the workers will be used against them.
It is obvious that faced with such a situation the employing class will
offer anything, a shorter working day, higher wages, holidays with pay,
as the French capitalist class did when confronted by the stay-in
strikes of the workers of France in 1936. Anything to get back their
control of industry.
The greatest mistake the French workers ever made was to hand back to
their employers the industries and services they held so successfully.
Once having taken control of industry class-conscious industrially
organised workers would continue to hold that industry, establishing the
principles of common ownership and workers’ control of industry,
abolishing capitalism and the wages system and distributing the good
things of life, each according to his needs.
The engineering workers of Italy successfully seized the factories in
1920. During the occupation they were fed by the Peasants’ Syndicates,
co-operatives, distributive workers and railwaymen. After four weeks
occupation they returned the factories to the capitalists in return for
a shorter working day, a wage increase and several minor concessions;
within two-years of the return of the factories the workers of Italy
were defeated by Fascism.
The workers of France in 1936 took possession of factories and many
other undertakings in one of the most successful strikes ever known.
Unfortunately, they returned them to the employing class in return for
holidays with pay, wage increases and a shorter working day. Almost, at
once the Popular Front government put in power just after the strike by
Communist, Socialist and Liberal votes began the piece-meal reconquest
of the gains made by the strikers.
Syndicalists have always taught that it is not sufficient to practice
the stay-in-strike for wage concessions, but that it is necessary to
take and hold the means of production as the Spanish Syndicalist workers
did in 1936. By holding the factories, mines, railways and all means of
production and distribution the workers established the principle of
“Workers’ Control of Industry”. Each factory is run by the workers of
that factory assembled in meeting and by the delegates elected by them,
such delegates to be subject to instant recall by the people who elected
them should they not fulfil their duties. Each factory or group of
workshops is, in the same way represented on the district council of its
industry. Each district is represented on the national council of the
industry. All industries and services are federated to a National
Council of Labour integrating the whole social economy of the country,
distributing work and materials, cutting out waste, preparing statistics
and assessing distribution.
By this means the social economy is integrated without centralisation,
that clumsy red-tape bound machine of the bureaucrat. By having the
affairs of an Industry controlled by the persons working in that
industry, by district affairs being controlled by the district and
factory affairs by the workers in That factory; by control from below
instead of from above and by exercising the principle of election and
recall federalism, instead of centralism, becomes the principle of the
new society.
Some say to us. “But, you will still need foremen.” We do not agree. A
workman who knows his job does not need a foreman-a workman who does not
know his job needs the advice and help of his mates. In any case a
foreman is rarely appointed because of his superior knowledge or gift of
leadership. Marriage, membership of certain clubs, drinking, fawning and
bluff, all may open the door to promotion. However if “ foremen “ were
necessary under Workers’ Control, we do not pretend to be able to
forecast every detail of the new society, but this we do know, any “
foreman “ or such person would be appointed by the men and be subject to
their recall.
Here we see a new principle at work-control from below. At present, and
in a State Socialist society, all promotion is from above downwards. We
see what the latter means at out work. If a foreman of mediocre ability
is about to promote some one from the bench to the chargehand’s desk and
he spots a worker of outstanding ability who would make a much better
foreman than he, does he promote that worker? Hardly! To do so would be
to prepare his own downfall, certainly to endanger his own job, so he
usually promotes somebody who will not be a serious rival. So it goes
on, right up to the top- selection by mediocrity! The worker is usually
able to recognise a fellow worker’s outstanding skill and acknowledge
it. The workers would have no social or economic motive in keeping a
good man down, instead, it would be in their interest to nominate him to
more responsible work.
Having said that, under the principle of social ownership, the miners
would control the mines and engineers the metal working factories, we
are often asked, “ But who would run the hospitals and who would look
after municipal services such as water supply? Of course, hospitals
would be run by the hospital workers, all of them, organised in the
Health Workers’ Syndicate. Municipal services, such as water supply and
street cleansing, would be the responsibility of the Municipal Workers’
Syndicate. Similarly, education would be the work of those who had
spent, their lives studying and practising the art of pedagogy. Of
course, the workers of these three syndicates would work in co-operation
with the patients, house-dwellers, scholars and parents respectively.
Here is a system of industrial democracy, the only true democracy, not
the choice of choosing Tweedledum or Tweedledee every five, eight or ten
years and being controlled by him and his partners for the period
between, but the control of one’s own job and environment, the control
of one’s own life. The government of men by men gives way to the
administration of things.
As to distribution, the Syndicalist method of distribution is free; a
system of common ownership and Workers’ Control must have a system of
free and common distribution to supplement, it. That is, all the good
things of life will be produced in plentiful supply and distributed by
the distributive, municipal and transport workers to whoever needs them,
as much as he needs them. Just as now a person may borrow from the
public library as many books as he needs, so he will be allowed as much
food as he can eat without payment. Once one had to pay to cross
bridges, enter parks and even walk along roads, now we may do that
freely. So in a Syndicalist society cinemas and theatres will be us free
as museums or parks: railways, trams and postage will be as free of
charge as roads and bridges are now.
Some will say that the greedy will ear too much if there is enough for
all. Well, water is probably the most precious of commodities, in use
value that is, but any one will give a thirsty stranger a glass of
water-a pailful if he can drink it. No one worries about some one
drinking more than his share of water. Certainly no one hoards pails of
water in miserly style, for water being freely to hand, appeals not to
the miser or glutton. If bread were as plentiful as water, who would eat
more than his share?
“But you would still have criminals and hooligans.” Yes, we would still
be pestered for a few years by these dregs of capitalist society, and
the workers would know how to protect their new-won society from these
miserable misfits and from counter-revolutionists and Fascists. The
workers’ syndicates would establish Workers’ Militias as did the Spanish
workers in 1936, workers patrols and whatever other means of workers’
defence were necessary, if needful, the syndicates would arm their
militias. But that would not be state power-politics, for the state is
the special force of public repression used by the ruling class, old or
new, against its subjects the people. The armed syndicates would be a
general force-a people in arms. After a while it would be unnecessary
for workers to carry arms and these would gradually be laid away, as
people during the late war laid aside their gas masks when they
discovered that no gas attack was likely. Full freedom would be born and
develop naturally and in its own time.
How different when the Revolution gives birth to a new state as in
France in 1789 and Russia in 1917. In Russia for example, power came
into the hands of the Bolshevik Party, who used it to disarm the workers
and build a regular army, police force, secret political police and use
spies, gaolers and judges to maintain their political power. In a
political revolution power is in the hands of a ruling party. In a
social revolution power is in the bands of the workers. If the workers
allow themselves to be disarmed by a new government then
counter-revolution succeeds.
The Syndicalist Social General Strike then aims at the conquest of the
means of production by the workers. We are now poor and enslaved not
because of lack of reforms made by politicians, but because the
employing class own and control the means of production, without access
to which we cannot live. So long as others control the means whereby we
live so long shall we be slaves. Only by taking and holding the means of
distribution can the workers be free.