WHY is it that the British trade unions are the first to join hands with the Russian trade unions in the struggle for international trade union unity?
The answer is: The decline of British capitalism, and the growing knowledge of the British workers that the economic crisis which has gripped Britain since the war is insoluble within the limits of capitalism—without breaking the capitalist grip on the industries and organizing production on a socialist basis. In the basic industries the decline of British capitalism is clearly shown. In 1913 Britain exported 98,000,000 tons of coal while in 1924 she exported only 61,650,000 tons, and this figure includes the exports to Ireland not included in the 1913 figures. Compared with 1923, the 1924 exports show a decrease of 17,000,000 tons. For the first four months of 1925, 7,000,000 less coal was exported than for the corresponding period of 1924.
The British output of steel fell from 8,500,000 tons in 1923, to 8,200,000 in 1924, which figure is only slightly higher than the steel production fifty years ago. The annual report of Vickers Co., great steel corporation of Britain, has the following to say on this subject:
I quote the figures for the production of steel because steel is the best index of the state of our engineering and shipbuilding industries, and because these figures show that our country is the only industrial country which is passing thru a period of depression in this respect. We have long lost that foremost place we occupied fifty years ago. . . . We have no chance of recovering our predominant position.
We know the important part shipbuilding plays in the economic life of Great Britain. Shipbuilding is also on the decline. The tonnage of vessels under construction fell from 1,297,000 tons at the end of 1924 to 1,165,000 at the present time. This decline becomes striking when it is remembered that in 1913 vessels were being constructed in British yards to a total of 1,898,000 tons per annum representing 59 per cent of the world ship construction. At the present time the amount of vessels being built in Britain is less than 50 per cent of the world tonnage.
The textile industry is also declining. In April of this year Sir Charles Macara stated that the loss incurred by the cotton industry since the beginning of the crisis amounted to about £200,000,000.
The decline in industry means an increase in unemployment. Since the beginning of the crisis the number of unemployed has hovered around a million, and at the present time is 1,500,000. The number unemployed in May, 1925, was 1,178,800, as compared with 1,040,600 the previous year. According to the Ministry of Labor Gazette out of the eleven and a half million insured workers at the end of March, 1925, the number of unemployed amounted to 11.47 per cent.
The standard of living of the British workers has declined altho the money wage has increased. Altho wages as compared with 1914 have nominally increased by about 45 per cent for metal workers generally, and from 70 to 75 per cent for other workers, they have actually fallen because during that period the index of prices has risen by 80 per cent to the end of 1924.
In the mining industry 400 mines have been closed down and there is no prospect of them ever opening again. About 160,000 miners are unemployed with no prospect of employment in the industry.
Sir Josiah Stamp calculated the national wealth in Britain in 1919 as £15,023,000,000. Prof. Henry Clay, of Manchester University, declares that two-thirds of the national wealth is in the hands of less than two per cent of the population.
Regarding the physical fitness of the British working class, Premier Baldwin stated in a recent speech that of eight volunteers to the army, five are rejected on grounds of physical unfitness.
Regarding remedies for unemployment the minister of labor, Steel Maitland, in a recent speech, during the debate on unemployment in the House of Commons, stated: “Therefore, when people like General Thompson with impatient insistence asked what schemes have been prepared, we reply that none have been prepared, that there are no schemes to prepare.”
This amounts to an official admission by a spokesman of the British capitalists that they cannot solve the problem of unemployment.
The decline of British industry is caused by (1) The effects of the world war and the peace-burden of debts, increased French competition by use of reparation coal and Alsace-Lorraine iron ore. (2) The growth of capitalist industry in the colonies such as India and the dominions such as Canada and Australia, competing with British industry because these countries now export commodities themselves. (3) The increased competition of the United States and Japan.
The exploitation of cheap labor in the textile mills of Bombay throws thousands of textile workers into the streets in Lancashire. The growth of great capitalist enterprises thruout the empire causes the starvation and misery of the British workers.
In the past the imperialist psychology of great numbers of the British workers had an economic basis in the fact that the super-profits derived from the exploitation of under-paid colonial slaves was used to supply them with a comparatively high standard of living. The skilled workers—the aristocracy of labor—were imperialists to the backbone. But today the British capitalists, burdened by taxation growing out of the effects of the war and the curtailment of industry, can no longer afford to bribe these workers with better wages and conditions as in the period of capitalist expansion prior to the world war. The significance of the recent wage conflicts in Britain lies in the fact that it was the wages of skilled workers—the railroad workers, engineers and building workers that the bosses attacked. Recently Mr. Stanley Machin, prominent member of the British Chamber of Commerce, stated that the wages of the 9,000,000 workers in the “sheltered” trades must be reduced. By “sheltered” trades he means the highly skilled workers organized in unions who occupied a privileged position so far as wages and hours are concerned. These hard economic facts are the basis of the radicalization of the British labor movement. Besides this the British workers have gone thru great political experiences which are enlightening millions of them to their class position in society.
In 1920 the Polish war on Soviet Russia was supported by the Lloyd George government, and Churchill was planning to declare war on the workers’ republic and crush it. All over the country the workers organized Councils of Action to prevent war on Soviet Russia. Lloyd George was forced to abandon the offensive and declared sickly that “the councils of action were swinging at an empty door with a sledgehammer,” attempting to pretend that it was never intended to declare war on Soviet Russia. But the workers saw what could be accomplished by united action.
In 1921 the attack of the mine owners on the wages of the miners made the question of the Triple Alliance of miners, railroadmen and transport workers going into action together one of practical importance. The workers were defeated by the “Black Friday” betrayal of Thomas, Hodges & Co. in calling off the strike of the Triple Alliance. But the workers added to their experience by seeing Lloyd George put the country on a war footing to crush them. Troops were quartered in the public parks, navy crews were used to man mine pumps, an automobile transport service was organized—all the forces at the disposal of the bosses were mobilized to defeat the workers. The capitalist state was openly revealed to the workers as the organized instrument of oppression of the bosses against them.
In 1924 the British Labor Party elected the strongest single group in the House of Commons. The split between the Liberals and the Conservatives was so great that they could not unite to form a coalition government with the result that MacDonald formed a minority government.
Since the beginning of this century the British workers had been educated to rely upon the formation of a labor government as the means of conquering capitalism. The theory of the peaceful development of capitalism into socialism by means of constitutional action as opposed to harsh Bolshevik methods had been thoroughly hammered into their heads. The advent of the MacDonald government contributed to their political education by somewhat destroying their faith in the “inevitability of gradualism” to use the phrase of Sidney Webb, the “theoretician” of the Labor Party.
The MacDonald government continued the imperialist policy of its capitalist predecessors. Plans were laid for building more cruisers, Macedonian villages were bombed, the Indian masses threatened with terrible reprisals if they dared to challenge British rule in India, and the Egyptian nationalist movement suppressed.
In internal policy MacDonald pursued capitalist strikebreaking methods when he threatened to use the Emergency Powers’ Act to smash the longshoremen’s strike with force. Philip Snowden’s budget was praised by the capitalist press.
No more subservient creatures had ever kissed the king’s hand than these “labor men,” and the workers began to doubt. The energy and devotion of hundreds of thousands of workers had gone to make this MacDonald government possible—and they were rewarded by seeing “their” government pursue the old capitalist policy of keeping the workers and colonial peoples in subjection to the capitalists.
As Zinoviev has put it: While the MacDonald labor government in no way served the interests of the British working class, the very establishment of such a government gave the British workers a “taste of power” and this has been signalized by the quite definite sweep toward the left on the part of the masses of the British trade unions.
Owing to the terrible economic conditions of the British workers they have broken away from their conservative moorings and are rapidly moving to the left. The question of how to combat the capitalist offensive and at least maintain the standard of living of the British workers forced the leaders of the movement to take up the question of abandoning the policy of class collaboration and to move toward a policy of class struggle.
At the meeting of the Executive Bureau of the Amsterdam International in June, 1924, the British representatives, led by Fred Bramley and A. A. Purcell, president of the international, stood for the opening up of negotiations with the Russian unions on the question of unifying the trade union movement. This was bitterly opposed by the right wing of the Amsterdam International. However, this proposal of the British representatives opened the road toward making the question of unity one of international significance. At that time these British leaders looked upon the Amsterdam International as being the logical unifying center, but today they stand along with the Russian trade unions for a world congress to establish a single united trade union international.
In June, 1924, the Russian unions sent a delegation to the Hull meeting of the British Trades Union Congress, headed by Tomsky, secretary of the All-Russian Central Council of Unions. This delegation raised the question of the creation of a united working class movement to meet the offensive of the capitalists and the dangers of new wars and fascism before the British trade unions.
In return the British Trades Union Congress sent a delegation to the sixth congress of the Russian trade unions in December, 1924. There the question of working for trade union unity in a practical manner was taken up with the result that the Russian unions invited the British unions to join them in establishing an Anglo-Russian Trade Union Unity Committee to work for unity on an international scale. The representatives of the British unions agreed that this was necessary and that they would recommend that their General Council endorse the plan. This has been done and the Anglo-Russian Unity Committee co-ordinates the efforts of the two strongest trade union movements in the world for trade union unity.
On its return from Russia the British delegation published its report on conditions in Russia under the title of “Russia Today.” This report has become famous thruout the world since that time. The reactionary leaders of Amsterdam and the capitalist press attacked it viciously. The delegation was slandered and vilified and every effort was made to prejudice the workers aganist the report because it was favorable to Soviet Russia.
The following is the gist of the conclusion regarding Soviet Russia, arrived at by the British delegation. It explains why the capitalist press attacks the report:
A report on labor conditions in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics must begin by pointing out that in Russia the workers are the ruling class. For unless the reader bears this in mind throughout he will be misled by much in the Russian labor conditions that at first sight seems very much the same as with us. Really everything is quite different; because in Russia we have a regulation of the workers’ rights that they have put upon themselves for their own well-being. Elsewhere we have a restriction of the workers’ rights put upon them by the wealthy. . . No one who grasps this will ever be misled by the lies he can read almost daily that the worker in Russia lives a life as limited as, and even less limited than, with us. They enjoy the rights of a ruling class. They are beginning to exercise its responsibilities. They still have much to learn, but they have made a start. In a village school visited by one of the delegates the children were learning to write in copybooks in which over “God save the czar,” had been pasted, “Once we were slaves, now we are free.”
The following few extracts from the capitalist and socialist press will indicate how bitter they were against this report:
The London Daily Chronicle (Feb. 28, 1925) under the headline, “Trade Unionists Who Were Hoodwinked,” said of the report:
It is a naive document, and where it is not naive it is misleading.
The following headlines appeared in the London capitalist press regarding the report: Daily Mail: “Eyewash: For Blind Leaders of the Blind.” Westminster Gazette: “Labor’s Soviet Whitewash.” Daily Express: “Red Whitewash.”
The socialist press was no less bitter in its efforts to discredit the report. Le Populaire, organ of the French Socialist Party, had a leading article under the headline: “The Naive Delegates of the Trade Unions Will Deceive No One.” Every paper supporting the right wing of Amsterdam against international trade union unity denounced the report. In America the conservative labor press attacked the report, led by the reactionary Jewish Daily Forward of New York.
During the last year the movement toward the left of the British workers has shown itself in no uncertain manner. A. J. Cook, on the basis of the R. I. L. U. program, was elected to the position of secretary of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain over the reactionary Amsterdam leader, Hodges, who was civil lord of the admiralty in the MacDonald cabinet.
The revolutionary wing of the trade union movement organized in the National Minority Movement, led by such staunch revolutionary fighters as Harry Pollitt of the Boilermakers’ Union, and Tom Mann of the Engineers’ Union, has grown to great proportions. In February, 1925, the conference of the National Minority Movement held in London, had present over six hundred delegates representing over six hundred thousand trade unionists. This is no fake membership because the membership of the Minority Movement is based upon dues payment, both individual and collective. This movement adheres to the program of the R. I. L. U., and is making rapid headway in winning over great masses of British trade unionists to this revolutionary program.
The capitalist attack on the wages of the British miners last summer produced a wonderful exhibition of solidarity in the formation of the Workers’ Alliance composed of the miners, railwaymen and transport workers, backed by the Trades Union Congress. The Trades Union Congress also secured the support of the transport workers of continental Europe in refusing to ship coal to Britain in the event of a miners’ strike. This alliance pledged itself to strike along with the miners and actually issued strike orders. This display of solidarity and militancy forced the capitalists to halt their offensive on the miners. The government subsidized the mine owners to the extent of £50,000,000 on the understanding that there would be no reductions in wages and that the existing contract be extended until May, 1926.
That the British ruling class understands that this swing to the left on the part of the workers means a challenge to the capitalist system is shown in the preparations being made to administer a crushing blow to the trade unions. The fascist movement is openly organizing. Strikebreakers are being organized on approval of the government in an organization named the Maintenance of Supplies. Cabinet ministers openly threaten the use of force against the working class. The Communist Party, the Young Communist League and the National Minority Movement leaders are arrested charged with seditious propaganda, especially among the armed forces.
The right wing trade union leadership was repudiated at the Scarborough Trades Union Congress, and the left wing leaders assured of the support of the overwhelming mass of trade unionists. In the labor Daily Herald a discussion raged for some weeks on the question: Shall the workers arm? The parliamentary labor party is still dominated by MacDonald & Co. But the masses of the trade unionists are following the left wing—the battles being fought between the left and right wings inside the movement today are preparatory steps towards an effective challenge of British capitalism.
The new outlook of the British trade union movement was given concrete expression at the Scarborough Trades Union Congress held in October, 1925. The following constitutes the program of the British trade unions according to the decisions of that congress:
1. That capitalism can no longer function in the interests of the working class and must be replaced by a system of society based upon the socialization of the means of wealth production.
2. In the struggle against capitalism new forms of struggle are necessary; therefore it is necessary to organize shop, committees to mobilize the workers for the fight against capitalism.
3. The actions of the General Council regarding international trade union unity were endorsed, and the council instructed to continue to work with the Anglo-Russian Unity Committee for this aim.
4. Definitely broke with British imperialism and declared that the British empire was based upon the exploitation of millions of colonial slaves, that it was the duty of the unions to aid in the destruction of this slave empire, and that the Trades Union Congress must help the colonial workers to organize themselves in trade unions and political parties for the fight against British capitalist exploitation.
This program, in conjunction with the growing class consciousness of the trade unionists as shown by the growth of the Minority Movement, has laid the basis for the renovation of the British trade union movement.
The movement for world trade union unity having for its basis the 11,000,000 trade unionists of Britain and Russia represents a powerful force in the working class movement today. The opposition of the reactionary Amsterdam leaders, encouraged by the American Federation of Labor officialdom, to this movement will be swept aside, by the sheer necessity of the workers to defend themselves against the coolie standard of living forced upon them by capitalism.
Next: Chapter IV. The Red International of Labor Unions and World Trade Union Unity