Workers" Control took place Sheffield University on March 29th/30th. With 1,032 delegates from a wide range of industries and including about 150 students it was the largest yet. As the list of seminars showed, most major moustes were represented: conference agriculture, aireraft, building, cars, chemicals, communications, docks, distribution, education, electronics, engineering, printing, public services, mines, steel, textiles, transport, and social security. Some of the larger seminars - eg Cars and Aircraft were attended by nearly 40 people.
Barbara Castle's White Paper - In Place of Strife- hung over the conference like a black cloud, and hardly a speaker failed to make some reference to it. It helped to make the tone of the conference dominantly defensive. Tony Topham, for the Institute, said that the proposed legislation had as its aim 'nothing less than a subservient working class, subject to the will of the employer and of the state'. Hugh Scanlon - whose important and carefully argued speech during the Sunday session was not even reported in the unfree press - referred to the 'hysteria which seems to be deliberately whipped up against any, or all, industrial problems, and which is helping to create the kind of atmosphere in which legislation and other things can be rushed through.
Tony Topham further warned that many unionists were not aware that the war on workers rights had already gone a long way: he quoted from a productivity agreement made between the NÚR and the docks board (an greement made without any consultation at al lower levels.) Tony Topham called this extraordinary agroCmen *a charter for working class servility" but added that it was 'not unique". Furthermore, the infamous penalty clauses which caused the Fords strike had already been imposed in a number of other industries. The Prices and Incomes Board has called these agreements 'nothing less than a revolution in managerial control of working hours and practises.
three crucial areas, Topham argued. productivity ba ains can be seen as an assault on the organised working class. In almost every case, these bargains included proposals to decrease the size of the working force - at ICI for example, the stewards have been fighting an agreement for two years which threatens up to 20% redundancies. Contrary to popular belief, wages also suffer in the long term. Tony Topham quoted the example of the Fawley agreement. There, though there had been a large increase initially, the workers had been left with no bargaining counters,; as a result Fawley wages are now at the bottom of the Southampton area league table. Similarly in the case of the Steel Company Wales, productivity bargain introduced there laid down that future wage bargaining, comparability was not to be introduced as an argument by the unions. The third aspect, which was obvious to all, was that of controlconditions.
What was the solution? Tony Topham urged the unions to go back on to the offensive again. First, unionists must win control over their own unions: "the message from the Fords' strike is this: there MUSL be no more backstairs negotiation, with union officials signing away workers rights without any reference back to the shop floor. The principle of workers' control applies as much to the trades unions as it does to industry.' The next move must be to counter attack on ground chosen by the unions. *The workers must choose not only their own demands, but their own arena, their own constituency which be defined according to the workers maximum strategy. These demands can vary from area to area and from industry to industry. In some cases the call be for fúll control in some cases for joint control, or for opening the books. The whole purpose of this is that we get off the defensive we turn away from the retrat we create situations instead of responding to their situations. They are in a 1 belligerent mood. Let's match it and reverse it?
Hugh Scanlon and Ernie Roberts also called for a more agressive strategy to meet the threat of international corporations. Ernie Roberts called for "action to see that these mergers and take-overs which are taking place do not disrupt the lives of the people to the extent of throwing them onto the scrap heap, driving them from their homes.' He gave frightening list of the mergers and takeovers which had taken place recently and the redundancies which had resulted from them.
Hugh Scanlon's appeal was factual, well researched, and cautiously optimistic. He made it clear that we were entering a period of international struggle and said that to see the movement for workers control in national terms was dangerous. 'In the capitalist world, less than three per cent of the corporations account for more than 75% of the world corporate assets; a tremendous concentration of economic resources is taking place, putting real ower ihto fewer and fewer hands and passing ar beyond the frail barriers of national frontiers.
This concentration of industry, he said, could 'strengthen our case immeasurably if the implications are fully grasped, but only if we have the unity and strength at all levels to back up rational arguments. The international labour movement had a moral responsibility to curtail great and dangerous power decide on matters effecting many people's lives by a small group of people responsible only to themselves. National governments powerless. During the Fords dispute, Scanlon said, the management in England was under orders from Detroit. Fords' show of patriotism at this time was, in Dr. Johnson's phrase the last resort of a scoundrel.' He emphasized that *industrial strategy on both sides can only movement had a duty both to protect the gains already made and to plan for fresh gains.
Scanlon also pointed to the wider politica implications. Political democracy is no longer viable within structure possessing an undemocratic industrial system. We do not have to delve very far into recent history to realise that the main brunt of the attack on political democracy itself always falls first on the democratic organs of the working class.' The need sWas for a vigorous, independent, democratic movement, based on the shop floor, and taking initiaties rather than responding to management s initiatives. Union's central authority must be built firmly on a large scale grass roots organisation.
Delegates from Italy and Germany both spoke of the need for international solidarity between workers in the industry, and showed that workers' movements were on the defensive all over Europe: at the Fiat factory in Turin, for example, the company was making an all out attempt to destroy the shop floor organisation. George Slessor from Vauxhall, also called for more unity to resist the blackmail of the big companies: What they're asking you to do is to compete with other European workers for the lowest wages. No positive initiatives emerged from this seminar. Only in the aircraft seminar and in a few others was there talk of agressive action, and of long term aims.
The crisis of the labour movement was best shown at the packed "Legislation and the Trade Unions' seminar. There, Bert Ramelson made a plea for all present to support the May 1 strike, against the White Paper, being called by the Communist Party. Almost all present were willing to do this, though some wished to try and use more traditional methods of putting pressure on the government. Some delegates did talk of the need to threaten Withdrawal of political funds from the Labour Party: a threat which even Harold Wilson sees the force of. But no new lines of political action emerged from seminar. will take some yeats concerted attack from the employers, and their agents in the Labour Party, for a new form of political organisation to emerge.
The conference closed by considering the reports of selected seminars that of the Education Seminar geting careful attention from the delegates and with the voting of various resolutions. Dwarf readers should bear in mind the crucial resolution on the May 1 strike, and see what they can do to help in their locality: This conference gives its full support for the proposed strike of May 1 against Barbara Castle's White Paper In place of strife. It calls upon the Instituteof Workers' Control to give its maximum active support for this strike This conference urges all supporters of the campaign for Workers' Control to set up action committees to help in widespread working class opposition to the attack on its interests from the government and the employing class Philip Gedes. DWARF
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speaker summed up the new strategy which the movement must adopt in these words: The