SWP expulsions and squabbles

[Lo Siento.]

I agree with them up there, very interesting. And I wish you all the best with your viva, whatever that is.

Thanks, it's the examination for my doctoral thesis (which is what I did all this research for).

a couple of things I'd reflect on, though it's your specialist subject and I'm loathe to do more than try and learn.

First the context: British Leyland- 150,000+ workers, 40% of the British car market- went bust and was nationalised in 1975. 10 years later it had collapsed into ruin and many tens of thousands had lost their jobs. Is that a fair summary?

Give or take. BL didn't collapse into ruin, it stumbled on as a nationalised company, first as Austin-Rover (1982) then as Rover Group (1986), with bits and pieces being sold off along the way (the government disposed of the last of it to BAE in 1988). Parts of it still exist (Swindon and Cowley as part of BMW Mini, Solihull as part of Jaguar Land Rover).

I don't know what period your detailed reading covers, but any brief googling about the later 70s will throw up histories pinning the blame on appalling management, on inept political leadership (ie Callaghan, who came from a TU background and led the attack on In Place of Strife), on particularly badly designed cars, on the energy crisis, worldwide inflation, etc etc. But they all seem to agree that industrial relations were a contributory factor, with iro a million or so days per year production affected by strike action.

This contemporary account says "For manual workers in the Cars division alone there are currently 58 bargaining units and 324 pay rates". How much of what happened really related to closed shop demarcation and differentials I don't know, but whilst the figures you gave are important, it's worth remembering that it all ended in tears.

Well, first I'd say that this is a very different question to the original one posed around differentials. It's also a question I don't really address in my work, which is mainly about workplace cultures and shop-floor union organisation. If I were to address it though, I'd point out that although BL does have a lot of strikes (more than 1.6m striker days a year 1970-78 in fact), it is by no means alone in that regard, either within Britain or globally. If tranquil industrial relations was a pre-requisite for factories surviving the 1970s then there'd be no European/US car firms left other than the German and Swedish ones by now.

We all know what happened in 1979, the almost entirely negative effects of which are still reverberating. It would be a bit hard to pretend that the events that kept the car industry in the news week after week, month after month for years didn't have some effect in prompting some w/c voters to swing to the Tories (eg both Oxford, including Cowley, and Brum Northfield, inc Longbridge, went from Lab to Tory between '74 and '79, the latter with a 13% swing).

You don't have to be an arch-capitalist to wonder whether, in retrospect, it was all such a great idea.

Difficult to unpick that one really. It's a Labour government that starts rationalising BL (under Michael Edwardes from 1977) and Callaghan's administration is consistently critical of motor industry strikes (in fact Labour is in general throughout the post-war period). Also, the Tory election campaign in 1979 is less anti-union than is often imagined after the fact, so I'd say the "car workers voted Tory to end union militancy" is a difficult one to prove.

 

[redcogs]

I agree with them up there, very interesting. And I wish you all the best with your viva, whatever that is.

a couple of things I'd reflect on, though it's your specialist subject and I'm loathe to do more than try and learn.

First the context: British Leyland- 150,000+ workers, 40% of the British car market- went bust and was nationalised in 1975. 10 years later it had collapsed into ruin and many tens of thousands had lost their jobs. Is that a fair summary?

I don't know what period your detailed reading covers, but any brief googling about the later 70s will throw up histories pinning the blame on appalling management, on inept political leadership (ie Callaghan, who came from a TU background and led the attack on In Place of Strife), on particularly badly designed cars, on the energy crisis, worldwide inflation, etc etc. But they all seem to agree that industrial relations were a contributory factor, with iro a million or so days per year production affected by strike action.

This contemporary account says "For manual workers in the Cars division alone there are currently 58 bargaining units and 324 pay rates". How much of what happened really related to closed shop demarcation and differentials I don't know, but whilst the figures you gave are important, it's worth remembering that it all ended in tears.

We all know what happened in 1979, the almost entirely negative effects of which are still reverberating. It would be a bit hard to pretend that the events that kept the car industry in the news week after week, month after month for years didn't have some effect in prompting some w/c voters to swing to the Tories (eg both Oxford, including Cowley, and Brum Northfield, inc Longbridge, went from Lab to Tory between '74 and '79, the latter with a 13% swing).

You don't have to be an arch-capitalist to wonder whether, in retrospect, it was all such a great idea.

it is a bit difficult trying to imagine a (or re-remember in my case) 1960s and 70s world in which trade union influence and militantancy had not arisen isn't it?

Your potted history refers to the economic backdrop of crisis in energy and inflation, but you don't really seem to recognise the link between these factors and how they might have produced a working class response. What i'm meaning is that when your wages are failing to pay your bills there are only a limited number of reactions that can be taken. One, of course is not to respond at all and watch your family being driven into deeper poverty and despair by the ever increasing prices of basics.. Another is to chase other forms of employment, if you can, to try to keep your hourly rate for the job to a level that can support expected living standards, which is far easier to achieve as an academic paper exercise than in the reality (for many) of industry related communities (mines, shipbuilding, car working etc). The favoured option of the period as i recall it was to use your collective bargaining strength of numbers and protect your general interests through trade unionism. Voting Labour, particularly in the 1970s, wasn't really an immediate or viable means of addressing the rapidly mounting economic problems. Voting to withdraw your labour until your wages were increased was.

The millions who did so were acting both reasonably and rationally under the social political and economic circumstances of the period.

We could do with a similar reaction from the working class trade union side today.

 

[Lo Siento.]

The millions who did so were acting both reasonably and rationally under the social political and economic circumstances of the period.

Worth bearing in mind too that it's a bit ahistorical to read backwards from Thatcherism and tell people how they should've behaved in the 1970s. Firstly, because they were reacting to what was happening to them at the time, not thinking about a hypothetical future in which government priorities shifted from maintaining employment to using unemployment to control inflation. Secondly, because not going on strike was by no means a guarantee that your job would eventually survive Thatcherism. Finally, are we really going to hold the people with the least formal authority and deriving the least benefit accountable for the success or failure of the enterprises they worked for?

 

[Lo Siento.]

You do have to wonder, don't you.

Was BL any more strike prone than Ford or GM? Actually, I don't know the comparative figures*, but a comrade in Dagenham told me that in the 70s he put aside enough money each year to see him through at least a week's strike. So maybe not that different.

Another possibility is that BL were rumoured to have lost £30 on each Mini sold. Whose fault was that?

* Don't have time to check**

** Can't be arsed to either

The government didn't collate statistics by firm, and the firms' own statistic gathering is too inconsistent to compare but I can tell you that between 1971-79 disproportionately few of the largest dispute take place at BL factories (the largest two are the national Ford strikes in 1971 and 1979, followed by the Vauxhall national strike in 1977, then the BL toolmakers in 1977 - which is a very one-off event, wholly untypical of BL -, followed by a big Ellesmere Port Vauxhall strike and a national Chrysler strike in 1979).

BL did lose money on the Mini's sold (according to Ford anyway), because they basically didn't have a functioning cost control department. Which really does bring home how unlikely it is that BL would've survived even if its workers had been perfectly obedient little angels...

 

[redcogs]

i was proud to own an austin maxi until the bastards set Derek Robinson (remember Red Robbo BL convenor) up and sacked him.

Moved to a Lada riva after that!

 

[Lo Siento.]

i was proud to own an austin maxi until the bastards set Derek Robinson (remember Red Robbo BL convenor) up and sacked him.

Moved to a Lada riva after that!

Irony being that Derek Robinson stopped far more strikes than he ever started. BL just fired him to make a statement really.

 

[redcogs]

i'm sure that is true, on both counts. But the capitalist press of the time did a serious hatchet job on Robbo, preparing the ground for many similar initiatives across various industries.

Do you have stats for political victimisations Lo Siento? Are there any?

 

[The39thStep]

is Newbie wrong?

 

[Lo Siento.]

i'm sure that is true, on both counts. But the capitalist press of the time did a serious hatchet job on Robbo, preparing the ground for many similar initiatives across various industries.

Do you have stats for political victimisations Lo Siento? Are there any?

No stats (stats like that are pretty much impossible to collect, because neither employers nor ministries ever list dismissals in that way), but plenty of cases. In the immediate post-war period (say 1945-51) it's pretty much routine. Union organisation is weak and car firms engage in a lot of casual hiring and firing (there remains a tendency to let people go after the annual motor show, for instance). So Ford get rid of a lot of CPers in 1946, as do Morris Motors (including the convenor of Cowley in 1947). At Standard the company wants to use stewards as gang leaders to raise productivity, so they accept a closed shop. They later change their mind and sack the factory convenor (CP) at Canley in 1956. Rootes tries to fire the senior stewards at Ryton in 1948 but backs down after a strike. At Longbridge, they sack the leader of the factory CP branch in 1951, then the NUVB convenor in 1952.

There is ostensibly a large gap after that. The unions get stronger and management more accepting of them, so senior union figures don't generally get victimised in the 1960s and 1970s. There are some exceptions to this, as firms try to restore some older managerial prerogatives. Ford dismiss 16 CPers, including the convenors and deputy convenor of the Dagenham assembly plant in 1962, essentially because they want more control over line speed. Morris sack the TGWU convenor in 1959 because they want control over overtime rotas. But between them and Robinson there's few cases where senior stewards get sacked. What does happen though is that figures who are more marginal politically and who the established factory leadership aren't prepared to support continue to get fired. For instance, I've got a case from the mid-1960s where Longbridge fire a steward for the labourers called B.A.Lynam. He's a bit of a one-man band who writes a paper called the United Car Worker, and who's part of a tiny group called the Anti-capitalist Tendency. He's evidently quite irritating to both the factory union leadership and management, so they quietly get rid. Chrysler do the same to John Worth, an IS member at their Stoke Aldermoor engine factory, in 1973. There's a brief discussion on the stewards committee about "the merits of Brother Worth" but they never end up in doing anything about it. Ford also sack a load of stewards for leading a mini-riot (where they tour the factory smashing up cars) in the mid-70s.

Then, post-Robbo, it's open season really and the cases of victimisation become more common.

 

[Lo Siento.]

is Newbie wrong?

About which bit?
On the closed shop maintaining differentials, they might have tried to and succeeded in some cases, but generally I don't think the stats bear it out more generally.
On the workers killing BL, I think it was doomed either way for a variety of reasons.

 

[Trotsky007]

The discussion about closed shops etc has been really interesting. Thanks to all concerned.

 

[charlie mowbray]

B.A. Lynam mentioned by Lo Siento is Brian Lynam. (see the interview by Ian Birchall with the late Alan Woodward. Here's an excerpt

"When did you first meet Cliff?

I first got involved in politics – I was on a train and I bumped into a man called Brian Lynam, who is still I understand living in West London, having come back from being a Posadist in Brazil or Argentina or somewhere, and from him I got involved in all sorts of activities in the South Paddington Labour Party, the CND and there was a Socialist Review readers meeting – it had people like John [Alan forgets name, maybe John Palmer or John Phillips] and Brian Lynam and various other people and Cliff naturally came over to speak to this at some point in time. I had long conversations with in particular a man called Jim Plant who now runs a thing called Red Lion out at Stanton Abbots – he’s the British representative of the SWP or one of the old Trotskyist organisations. In my recorded notes I have long accounts of the discussions I had with Jimmy Plant primarily and also Brian Lynam, etc. And that more or less set me into the philosophy that later became the International Socialists.

When exactly was this?

That would be from 1960, possibly 1959, onwards. I finished National Service halfway through 1959 and then I did a teacher training course - one of these crash two-year courses at the college up there and while I was there I was in constant contact with Brian Lynam. I used to live with him in the vacations in a flat in Notting Hill. I became great friends with Brian Lynam. He was the best man at my wedding in 1962. And we went on holiday in Scotland, where we slept in barns and railway trains and various things like that. I became very very close to him personally.
In terms of Cliff I invited him down to the college I was at - a teacher training college, St Mark and St John – and I was trying to get him to speak to a small socialist society that I had set up – there hadn’t been one before and I had set it up. But in the end he came down and I met him at the gate in the King’s Road and we went in and there was a very small meeting – about four etc. – However he spoke. I saw him to the gate – I’m not sure if we gave him any money. That was when I lived over in West London. "
So United Car Worker was the car bulletin of the Posadists (the "flying saucer Trots") A Marie Lynam ( wife, daughter, sister?) is still active in them. They also used the moniker "The Class Tendency" as a front name in addition to "The Anti-Capitalist Tendency". Active in Austin and Vauxhall factories.

 

[Das Uberdog]

Lo Siento. - did you say this was part of a Doctorate? are you going to publish this work at some point?

 

[Lo Siento.]

B.A. Lynam mentioned by Lo Siento is Brian Lynam. (see the interview by Ian Birchall with the late Alan Woodward. Here's an excerpt

"When did you first meet Cliff?

I first got involved in politics – I was on a train and I bumped into a man called Brian Lynam, who is still I understand living in West London, having come back from being a Posadist in Brazil or Argentina or somewhere, and from him I got involved in all sorts of activities in the South Paddington Labour Party, the CND and there was a Socialist Review readers meeting – it had people like John [Alan forgets name, maybe John Palmer or John Phillips] and Brian Lynam and various other people and Cliff naturally came over to speak to this at some point in time. I had long conversations with in particular a mahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers_Revolutionary_Party_%28UK%29n called Jim Plant who now runs a thing called Red Lion out at Stanton Abbots – he’s the British representative of the SWP or one of the old Trotskyist organisations. In my recorded notes I have long accounts of the discussions I had with Jimmy Plant primarily and also Brian Lynam, etc. And that more or less set me into the philosophy that later became the International Socialists.

When exactly was this?

That would be from 1960, possibly 1959, onwards. I finished National Service halfway through 1959 and then I did a teacher training course - one of these crash two-year courses at the college up there and while I was there I was in constant contact with Brian Lynam. I used to live with him in the vacations in a flat in Notting Hill. I became great friends with Brian Lynam. He was the best man at my wedding in 1962. And we went on holiday in Scotland, where we slept in barns and railway trains and various things like that. I became very very close to him personally.
In terms of Cliff I invited him down to the college I was at - a teacher training college, St Mark and St John – and I was trying to get him to speak to a small socialist society that I had set up – there hadn’t been one before and I had set it up. But in the end he came down and I met him at the gate in the King’s Road and we went in and there was a very small meeting – about four etc. – However he spoke. I saw him to the gate – I’m not sure if we gave him any money. That was when I lived over in West London. "
So United Car Worker was the car bulletin of the Posadists (the "flying saucer Trots") A Marie Lynam ( wife, daughter, sister?) is still active in them. They also used the moniker "The Class Tendency" as a front name in addition to "The Anti-Capitalist Tendency". Active in Austin and Vauxhall factories.

That's brilliant CM, thanks!

I've actually found some of his handywork in the Longbridge JSSC correspondence file:



See if you can work out why he got sacked... (it's related to the conversation above)

 

[redcogs]

No stats (stats like that are pretty much impossible to collect, because neither employers nor ministries ever list dismissals in that way), but plenty of cases. In the immediate post-war period (say 1945-51) it's pretty much routine. Union organisation is weak and car firms engage in a lot of casual hiring and firing (there remains a tendency to let people go after the annual motor show, for instance). So Ford get rid of a lot of CPers in 1946, as do Morris Motors (including the convenor of Cowley in 1947). At Standard the company wants to use stewards as gang leaders to raise productivity, so they accept a closed shop. They later change their mind and sack the factory convenor (CP) at Canley in 1956. Rootes tries to fire the senior stewards at Ryton in 1948 but backs down after a strike. At Longbridge, they sack the leader of the factory CP branch in 1951, then the NUVB convenor in 1952.

There is ostensibly a large gap after that. The unions get stronger and management more accepting of them, so senior union figures don't generally get victimised in the 1960s and 1970s. There are some exceptions to this, as firms try to restore some older managerial prerogatives. Ford dismiss 16 CPers, including the convenors and deputy convenor of the Dagenham assembly plant in 1962, essentially because they want more control over line speed. Morris sack the TGWU convenor in 1959 because they want control over overtime rotas. But between them and Robinson there's few cases where senior stewards get sacked. What does happen though is that figures who are more marginal politically and who the established factory leadership aren't prepared to support continue to get fired. For instance, I've got a case from the mid-1960s where Longbridge fire a steward for the labourers called B.A.Lynam. He's a bit of a one-man band who writes a paper called the United Car Worker, and who's part of a tiny group called the Anti-capitalist Tendency. He's evidently quite irritating to both the factory union leadership and management, so they quietly get rid. Chrysler do the same to John Worth, an IS member at their Stoke Aldermoor engine factory, in 1973. There's a brief discussion on the stewards committee about "the merits of Brother Worth" but they never end up in doing anything about it. Ford also sack a load of stewards for leading a mini-riot (where they tour the factory smashing up cars) in the mid-70s.

Then, post-Robbo, it's open season really and the cases of victimisation become more common.

Quality stuff Lo Siento. Most of us have probably already got a realistic understanding of the ruthlessness of the boss class in their dealings with those whose ideas that they find inconvenient and challenging, but its good to have some actual examples that illustrate how far they are prepared to go to protect their business interests.

Your phd thesis will make for fascinating reading. Maybe, as already suggested, you will publish?

 

[Lo Siento.]

Lo Siento. - did you say this was part of a Doctorate? are you going to publish this work at some point?

Hopefully yes, but it'll likely take forever... Part of the research is already published in a journal article (if people want to PM I'll happily send details)

 

[Lo Siento.]

Quality stuff Lo Siento. Most of us have probably already got a realistic understanding of the ruthlessness of the boss class in their dealings with those whose ideas that they find inconvenient and challenging, but its good to have some actual examples that illustrate how far they are prepared to go to protect their business interests.

Your phd thesis will make for fascinating reading. Maybe, as already suggested, you will publish?

I think there's been a general forgetting (not amongst most of the people here but still...) that the post-war settlement didn't really extend any new rights to workers, and that people took a lot of risks trying to influence it in positive ways in the decades after.

Planning to publish eventually, but it's a long way off.

 

[charlie mowbray]

More on the Posadists here (including info on the United Car Worker -fucking sick of that Judean People's Front joke though, qouted by every smartarse thinking they are hilarious!)
http://thoughts-of-chairperson-mikey.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/trotskyists-in-space.html

 

[Trappist]

I think there's been a general forgetting (not amongst most of the people here but still...) that the post-war settlement didn't really extend any new rights to workers, and that people took a lot of risks trying to influence it in positive ways in the decades after.

Planning to publish eventually, but it's a long way off.

It's spooky when you first realise the times you lived through are being taught as history. This really does sound like a worthwhile thesis, hope it gets the attention it deserves.

I won't hold my breath for the publication, I know you'll likely have to rewrite it for a different audience, but I think some of your comments above suggest it might be pertinent to current debates about the precariat.

 

[newbie]

is Newbie wrong?

within the context of U75 that doesn't bother me, I'm more interested in the conversation, in what other people think, than in being part of the crowd that is right or right-on. It's sometimes a little frustrating when people sidestep posting their own views, possibly from concern about being thought wrong.

Are people in favour of the return of the closed shop? More a thought experiment rather than an immediate practical possibility, but possibly worthwhile?

Post-entry or pre-entry are different, but both have their issues. One is the ECHR position on human rights- enforcing a closed shop potentially means punishing dissenters for thought crimes. Another is equal opportunities, can recruitment and retention be seen to be entirely fair if one characteristic- union membership- overrides all other criteria? Can branch structures really be guaranteed to eliminate discrimination of one sort or another?

Yet as demonstrated there could be real positives for w/c living standards as well as for solidarity and self determination- which are somewhere near the heart of what it means to be on the left. So maybe it's a fundamental demand?

But it's wider than that... there's a parallel thread about whether cis women should welcome or be able to exclude self-identified trans women from women only spaces; we've just had a fine barney about whether football fans should exclude a 'known abuser' from their stand; part of the election debate was about the extent to which the host community should limit movement of foreign labour; those in the eye of the gentrification storm seek community power to restrain individual capital...

I'm not looking to bring the detail of any of them (or other, equally pertinent, debates) into this, just noting that this discussion doesn't exist in isolation, that in different contexts we sometimes adopt different positions on whether the collective interests of what might be called 'insiders' trump those of 'outsiders', whether collectively or individually.

There may be no consistent position to take on these disparate issues, but maybe there is. In wondering whether the closed shop is a desirable part of the programme of whatever it means to be on the left, or on the far left, in 2015 the interplay between collective and individual rights, responbsibilties, aspirations etc seems pretty central.

 

[The39thStep]

But it's wider than that... there's a parallel thread about whether cis women should welcome or be able to exclude self-identified trans women from women only spaces; we've just had a fine barney about whether football fans should exclude a 'known abuser' from their stand; part of the election debate was about the extent to which the host community should limit movement of foreign labour; those in the eye of the gentrification storm seek community power to restrain individual capital...

Should there be more legislation to cover this or should we welcome challenges using existing legislation to resolves these issues. Should they play out in a political debate or discussion?

Interesting question by Kenan Malik on one of the court cases that you highlighted in a previous post

If gay baker refused to make cake for Christian with the slogan 'Homosexuality is a sin' - would that be illegal too?

 

[newbie]

I think there's possibly a (bottom up) head of steam coming for legislation to cover mental health discrimination, but that's a guess. Personally I don't have a problem with people using the law to establish whether they're being victimised by bigots. What's your view?

The answer to the baker question was given in court- there's nothing wrong with a baker refusing to put any political slogans at all, but if they're going to accept one order they have to accept all orders. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. The same is true of those running bed and breakfast places, if they're going to take guests they must accept anyone who books.

 

[Blagsta]

Mental health discrimination should already be covered in the 2010 Equality Act

 

[DotCommunist]

weird cakes at the malik house.

It'd be denying goods and services based on someones faith, is that not covered legally already?

 

[newbie]

ok. In that case I'm not aware of other attempts to extend the legislation, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

[The39thStep]

obviously need more legislation

 

[newbie]

obviously need more legislation

what equalities legislation would you advocate introducing, extending or getting rid of?

 

[The39thStep]

what equalities legislation would you advocate introducing, extending or getting rid of?

Bit like asking what would you do if you won the lottery but off the top of my head.Introducing:Mandatory free childcare,mandatory free support for all carers, election of all managers and boards of directors by workforce, maximum salary differential between CEOs and staff to be no more than five times higher,free in house training to degree or equivalent if in company for five years or more, state pensions at 2/3rds of average pay.

 

[newbie]

all good and I'd add abolition of anti-equality stuff like private education, healthcare, pensions and unearned wealth from owning housing.

sadly the sky does not contain any pies.

 

[laptop]

sadly the sky does not contain any pies.

Quantas's catering department: where did we go wrong?