The simplest lesson that any trade union militant knows about industrial relations is that it is only strength that matters. Any contract or agreement is decided not by what it says but by what power you have to back it up. If a good agreement is reached that only shows that the balance of power is in your favour.
Exactly the same is the case with the law and with the courts. If a group of workers is weak, a law can always be dug up to be used against them. An Act passed in 1345 was used only last week to arrest men for organising against British troops in Ireland. Exactly the same law was used in the 1920s against the leaders of the Communist Party. Yet when the dockers threatened to go out on strike in support of their leaders facing imprisonment an absurd figure, the Official Solicitor, was discovered by the government to get them out of a dock strike.
This is not the first time the dockers and the working class have found themselves in this situation, In 1951 when the Labour government arrested dockers leaders they got the same response. The mass of dockers walked out of the gate. At that time too a legal loophole was found to release the dockers. It is always strength not law that decides. This is a vital lesson to learn for the entire working class. After the dockers case any Labour leader who. declares that the law must be obeyed should be laughed out of court.
CONFUSION IN THE RULING CLASS The Red Mole has pointed out in the past that the ruling class could not afford to re-boost the economy before dealing with the working class and the trade unions. They have not been able to do so. They have now suffered a defeat from the miners and another one from the dockers. Their economic strategy is in chaos. Every newspaper talks of further devaluations and economic crisis. The Heath government is now in a really deep mess. The working class is faced with an enemy large parts of which are at this moment completely confused about what strategy is needed to sort out the situation in the short term.
At the same time as this is occurring great dangers for the working class are opening up. On the one hand one section of the ruling class is moving sharply to the right. Journals like The Economist call for harsher and harsher measures. On the other hand Wilson and the leadership of the Labour Party are talking of new forms of 'arbitration', 'conciliation' and 'consultation' which are aimed at doing by different means exactly what the Industrial Relations Act was aimed to do.
A SIGNIFICANT BUT LIMITED VICTORY There is no doubt that the fact that the government had to stop the arrest of the dockers' leaders was a big victory for the working class. In one act the dock workers showed the emptiness of Jones' and Feather's talk that it was impossible to resist the law. But that victory is limited. As long as the employers still control the economy, aud the police and law are those of a capitalist state, then all the government need do is wait for another and more favourable opportunity. They will try to find other weaker victims to use their power on so that they can intimidate everyone else. As long as the courts, the police, and all the weapons of force and repression remain part of an employers' state and not in the hands of the working class, the ultimate balance of forces will always be against the trade unions and other working class organisations.
Even in the case of the dockers the state can begin to undermine their position. After all it was the Devlin scheme which got the dockers into this particular mess in the first place and despite four years of resistance the employers eventually got Devlin through. Now over something which they regard as far more important even than Devlin the employers will use every stratagem, trick and show of force to get the Industrial Relations Act implemented.
Already they are pointing out that it was other trade unionists who brought the dockers to the NIRC. They hope already to undermine the solidarity of the working class through this. It is not going to be possible simply to erect a 'fence' round the unions against the law. On the contrary it is only when the working class possesses the power to suppress the employers and not simply defend workers organisations against them that the position of the workers' organisations will be secured. The dockers" struggle in that sense is only going to be one act in a very long drawn out drama. THE RESPONSE OF THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE CP In a situation in which leaders of the working class were threatened with jail any real leadership of the working class would have launched all its efforts into preventing the arrests. M.P.s should have refused to participate in Parliament while workers' leaders were threatened. Trade union leaders could have broken off all negotiations. Leaders of the Labour Party should have toured the country speaking to mass rallies for defence of the threatened dockers. That is how any real working class party would have acted.
Instead of this nothing was done except provide reasons why the working class could not fight. Callaghan said the law must be obeyed. Feather called on the government to retreat. No concrete simple measures of defence were taken. The Labour leaders in this situation did nothing to lead the working class. Everything that was done -the strikes, the mass pickets, the organisation of solidaritywas done without any lead from the Labour Party. What is the use of putting up a sham fight in Parliament against the Act and then refusing to fight it when it is actually used? All that type of behaviour does is make the enemy realise all your loud talk is bluff and encourages him in his attack. A real workers' leadership does not talk big and then back out in the crunch. On the contrary it soberly assesses the state of forces, works out what can be done, and then proceeds steadily to organise it. In any real struggle people have to be judged not by their words in periods of calm but on their actions in periods of crisis. On that basis the Labour leadership, and left' wing, did nothing for the working class. What they did early demonstrate their total comdo was mitment to the framework of the capitalist system which needed the Act in the first place.
The Labour leaders whined for the dockers to go back. The implications of the dockers taking on the law in the only way to win was too much for them. "Leave the fight against the Act to us paper tigers; it may only amount to verbal fire-works but at least we won't rock the system." The Labour Party's prime interest is in making sure the system is not Labour Party to Whitelaw is being taken as an indication that the Provisionals are becoming rapidly isolated, and that the calling off of their military campaign as a step to joining the others at the negotiating table is the only way to maintain a united front, and get the best deal possible for the catholic minority. Such a view would lead to a tragic defeat for that minority.
As we have stated, Whitelaw wishes to deescalate the situation, get the barricades in Derry down, and reintegrate a substantial section of the minority through the local elections in the Autumn. At present the main factor disrupting this strategy is the continued resistance of the Provisional IRA. If he can convince the mass of the people who support the Provos that such resistance is useless he will be able to isolate them and clear them out of the way. The acceptance of one element or another of Whitelaw's strategy by all the other forces involved in the leadership of the minority aids him in this task.
It is this which lies behind the massive press campaign of recent weeks; a campaign which is designed to cover up the very real limits of Whitelaw's success, and the reversals which he has suffered. Thus in The Guardian on Saturday, 17 June, Simon Winchester and Simon Hoggart writing about the rapture with which the Secretary of State's television broadcast had been received the previous evening, neglected to mention the most important thing which he said; i.e. that the local elections were to be postponed from October until November or December.
Such a postponement can have only one of two motivations (unless we believe that Whitelaw believes that the people are too thick to understand PR without more time to explain it). Either he knows that he will not get the barricades down as quickly as he had hoped, or he wants to give the Provos time to elect the Free Derry Community Council, with which he can negotiate. Both of these mean that he knows he cannot crack support for the Provos as easily as the Press is claiming.
Two facts bear this out; the reported, but unpublicised fact that a basic demand of the 'Peace Movement" has been for an amnesty for all Republicans, and the unreported fact that the organisers of the mass petition in Belfast and Derry had neglected to tell its signatories that it would be handed to Whitelaw. This shook large numbers of people who had signed it out of confusion, believing that it was parallel to the peace demands of the Provos themselves.
The support expressed for the Provos" demands in a 60 per cent poll of Free Derry is also significant; claims by opponents of the Provos that this meant that 50 per cent of the population had voted against or abstained can be ignored, it is rare for any "democratic" ballot to achieve a 60 per cent poll. The massive 23,000 crowd who attended the Provisional commemoration at the graveside of Wolfe Tone is also a gauge, this compares with the 7,000 pulled out by the Officials.
The motivation of the SDLP is clear enough, they want to be able to negotiate the strongest The Executive Council of the Irish Solidarity Camrepresentatives of the catholic minority. The Official Republicans, who share the SDLP's desire for some form of democratised Six County state have, while not breaking the front and going to the negotiating table, made gestures towards Whitelaw by welcoming his promises of Proportional Representation in the local elections. They hope themselves to» be a significant force in the elections, and will be running candidates from the Republican Clubs.
On the other side of the coin the cementation of an alliance between Faulkner and the Ulster Vanguard poses a new set of problems for Whitelaw, and enormous dangers for the minority. It means that Whitelaw has to mould his policies according to their pressure, he cannot therefore simply release all internees, and make sufficient concessions to disarm the minority, he has to constantly promise to eliminate the barricaded areas, and has to appear to stand against the IRA.
The danger of a civil war is very real. The possibility that the UDA could get out of hand and launch a pogrom, the fact that the pressure on Whitelaw could lead to an escalation of military action against the minority, the death of a hunger striker; all of these sparks could start a fire which would engulf the North. British imperialism would be obliged to try to quench that fire, and is more likely to attempt to smash the military capacity of the Catholics than of the UDA.
A second danger arises from the dismantling of the catholic resistance. Both the pressure of the UVF, and the need to guarantee stability would lead to an attempt to destroy the military capacity of the IRA, so that they could not again pose a threat. Far from Republicans being able to gain electorally from the situation, they would find themselves isolated and the middle class politicians would push ahead of them. Thus although the situation would in the long term stabilise itself, so that catholics would be in a more favourable position within the State, this would only occur after a swing back to repression which would weaken the forces challenging the State, and strengthen the leadership of the middle class over the catholics. The Officials are deluding themselves if they think that they will gain from this course of events.
The best perspective would be if the present situation could lead to a mass mobilisation of solidarity which would spread the struggle to the whole of Ireland, but the failure of the Republicans, both Official and Provisional, to develop such a strategy earlier makes this very difficult. However, continued resistance would disrupt Whitelaw's strategy, and weaken the hand of British imperialism. It could also lead to a situation in which Whitelaw was forced into a confrontation with the Vanguard. This would lead to a defeat for the Vanguard and a weakening of the Orange monolith, thus creating more favourable opportunites for future attacks on the State.
That is why revolutionaries in Britain must solidarise with those who are holding out against Whitelaw, and must not de-escalate their solidarity. very close to that of the ISC, and while believing