[Marxism] Heathrow Wildcat

[mike pearn <neprimerimye@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following are a few notes I bashed out last night
on the Heathrow Wildcat. I'll flesh this out a bit
more for print/web site publication but I'd be
interested in cmrades comments. What i do not wish to
engage in are polemics concerning electoralism in
general or Respect in particular. Thanks.

The Gourmet Gateway workers are from all over West
London. There are large numbers of Sikhs and Hindus
working at Heathrow many of whom will have familial
connections with GG. Asians are also strongly
concentrated in British Rail and in the motorway
service stations running west of London too. In short
the communications networks are very vulnerable to
workers drawn from these groups.

That said it should not be forgotten that the majority
of workers at Heathrow are not Asian. Which makes the
solidarity action of the baggage handlers and check in
staff even more impressive. Unlike the USA all races,
or ethnic groups if you will, live in the same mixed
residential areas as well as working together and
attending the same state schools which makes attempts
by the bosses to divide on those lines doomed to
failure in almost every case. There has been rank and
file action at BAs Heathrow operation in both of the
last two years I note. Clearly solidarity with GG
feeds into the concerns of BA workers that they are
under threat from the non-union cut rate airlines such
as Ryan Air and Easy Jet.

Contrary to many of the comments I've seen from
various leftists thus far the Transport and General
Workers Union bureaucracy has played a typically
slippery role. The dispute at GG beginning when the
workers rejected a deal which the T&G bureauicracy had
already consented to for example. T%G apparatchiks
have also commented that they do not condone the
wildcat action taken by the BA workers. To his credit
the Bob Crow of the RMT made the point on Newsnight
that the unions were build by illegal action and
George Galloway of the populist Respect party to his
credit has called for the abolition of Britains highly
restrictive anti-Union laws.

It is my contention that this dispute shows the way
forward to reconstructing the workers movement and
halting the generation long retreat that has reduced
union membership by half. Potentially it was far more
significant than the 2 million weak peace crawl
through central London or the electoral misadventures
of the declining and aging far left. That it will not
now act as a first step to rebuilding the movement now
seems certain and I anticipate either a long drawn out
dispute at GG which will benefit neither side given
that the company is on the slide or a shoddy
compromise brokered by ACAS with the full cooperation
of the T%G bureaucracy.

It is however well worth looking at what briefly took
place at GG and Heathrow. And equally as important
what did not take place but was neccesary for a ral
victory. Some of my comments must be somewhat vague as
i am as lacking in concrete information as American
comrades.

First the enterprises concerned were already unionised
and the leading activists are also union activists.
There is no question here of acting outside the union
as is fantasised by council communists and others. The
workers in this sector and the communities from which
they are drawn have higher than average union density
rates and are in general more class conscious. This is
about class and nothing anything else.

However that the dispute arises from workers who are
already possesed of a trade union consciousness this
has also had its downside. Thus the crucial mass
meetings have been dominated by the union bureaucracy
with the support, as far as i can ascertain, of the GG
union shop stewards. That crucial cadre has not
realised the importance of basing the dispute on
continued mass meetings and electing a governing
strike committee from that body. This is a crucial
weakness as it throws leadership onto the offical
union structures and the bureactacy who as I have
pointed out were already willing to sign a deal with
GG.

Exactly how the solidarity action at BA Heathrow
developed I do not know and if I did, presuming that
every list has its snoop, it would be wiser if I did
not say so. But it is possible to presume that the
close links between GG and BA Heathrow workers was
absolutely crucial. In which case the illegal wildcat
nature of ther strike is tremendously important in
showing workers throughout Britain that the anti-union
laws are toothless if broken by large numbers of
workers. Had the dispute been generalised and spread
this potentially challenges the ideological basis of
the post-1979 reconstruction of British capitalism and
therefore of Nu Labour.

That the dispute was not generalised, that it was not
spread by flying pickets was the achilles heel that
allowed the union bureaucracy to reduce the scope of
the dispute to GG alone. Flying pickets and mass
pickets have not been seen in Britain for nearly
twenty years but the former had the potential to bring
out the less well organised regional airports.
Similarly an appeal for mass picketing at Heathrow had
the potential to bring thousands of new workers into
the union from the so called no frills airlines by a
massive show of strength from Lodons working class and
from further afield too. Strikes are always the best
method of recruiting to the union movement as our
history has shown so many times.

Why none of this happened can be attributed to a
number of factors. First of all the strength of the
union buraucracy, specifically within the West london
Asian proletariat where it has a history of fighting
racism, in relation to the relatively inexperienced
rank and file leaders at both GG and BA Heathrow. But
inexperienced as they are the BA militants are now
amongst the most experienced class struggle unionists
in Britain. This should indicate just how far the
movement needs to regenerate fighting traditions lost
over the last generation. Central to rebuilding such
traditons should be an effort on the part of
socialists to build a genuine rank and file movement
within the T%G to put decision making power back where
it belongs in the enterprises and union branches. It
should not need saying that it is the
task of revolutionaries to take the lead in this
essential work.

To close these remarks on a rather doomey note it is
my opinion that the opportunities that have been
starkly revealed by this flash of lighting will be
wasted by the far left. Rather than reorientate on the
workplaces the continued march to the right will
continue marked only by fruitless electoralism and
George Galloways demagogy. Meanwhile the fusion of
worker militancy and socialist ideas will be
indefintely delayed in pursuit of the chimera of
another MP or two.

Fraternally

Mike Pearn


                
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