I welcome his response for three reasons. The first is because an officer of an International Trade Secretariat is prepared to respond (in personal capacity) to criticisms of such. The second is because of the tone of the response - one of disagreement rather than accusation or condemnation. The third is because of the arguments themselves. Richard himself points out that there are general issues arising out of the debate and - since I have not been myself researching the current strike - it is on these general issues that I will respond. (I will not, however, return to points I have already made and that Richard refutes but rather leave these for others to judge).
What I do want to deal with is his opposition between 'real trade union work' internationally (e.g. the T&G and ITF) and 'trade union tourists' (e.g. shopfloor or waterfront internationalists). Such an opposition is as harmful to the development of labour solidarity as is that of the rank-and-file romantics he castigates. My own judgement of the achievements of waterfront internationalism is based on a study of the dockworker network of the 1970s-80s, largely inspired by the nationally and internationally unaffiliated Coordinadora of Spanish dockers. I reproduce it below. It will be seen that I have a number of criticisms of this project - and not only of the ITF (as revealed in my last contribution to this debate).
Whatever criticism I might have of such initiatives, however, I do see them as surpassing the 'internationalism of trade union officers' that has largely marked the last 40-50 years (east and west, north and south). And as therefore opening the way to a new kind of worker internationalism that 1) connects up with the 19th century traditions of - in this case - dockworker internationalism and 2) suggests a way forward under conditions of a globalised and informatised capitalism. As the quoted text below again suggests, I do not think that we can reproduce the politics of C19th labour internationalism under these conditions, although we could do much worse than be inspired by its spirit. I think any new labour internationalism is going to have to be not only shopfloor based/addressed but also be intimately, positively and cooperatively articulated with urban, human-rights, women's, ecological and other such new alternative social movements/internationalisms.
Finally, a point from my previous message to which Richard does not respond - on the future role of the ITSs. I know that some leaders of some of these ITSs consider that the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (child of the Cold War and agent of state-funded development cooperation) is out of date and that the ITSs are the wave of the future. They are seen as more representative, closer to the ground, more effective. But I suggested that their future role should be be seen more in terms of communication than representation (although an effective communication role would certainly increase their representative legitimacy). This notion of a new role or activity for the ITSs relates to the transition from a nationally- and industrially-based capitalism to a globalised and informatised/communicative one. I am sure I don't have to spell out for the ITF the increasingly strategic role the transport industries play in the reproductive circuits of transnational capitalism, nor to its Communication Officer the ever-more strategic role played by information and communication in combatting it. But I would just like to quote the opinion on the future of the ITSs by the former Communications Officer of the International Metalworkers Federation, Denis MacShane, a former journalist, now a British Labour MP. Also writing in his personal capacity, he said the following:
[T]he traditional pyramid organisation of unions with international contacts carefully controlled and monitored at the very peak runs counter to the most useful forms of international contacts, which are horizontal, between workers employed by the same company (or industry) in different countries. Fax, E- mail and cheap travel are also enabling horizontal network-building between workers in different countries, which contrast with traditionally hierarchically-organised trade-union activity. These new developments facilitating international labour contacts will pose a challenge to existing trade-union structures and internal communication links. At the same time, they open immense possibilities for labour to regain power and influence. Unions could ride the globalisation process by becoming repositories of information about international developments as they emerge from, or impact on, the workplace. (MacShane 1992).
The point here is that such an ITS (or ICFTU) role would empower workers for a do-it-yourself internationalism which would, indeed, reconnect them with the socially-transformatory and mass-based dockworker and dock union internationalism of the late-C19.
PW
(Below are more extracts from my forthcoming book, 'From Labour Internationalism to Global Solidarity', hopefully to be published next year by Cassell.)[...] We also need to consider the multiple isolations of this internationalism. That the Coordinadora and its international network functioned without a support group of intellectuals has been mentioned as a strength. But was it not also a weakness, denying the network a technical infrastructure that has enabled the TNC networks to survive despite their shortcomings? That the Coordinadora was isolated from the TNC and other internationalist networks meant it was unable to learn from their achievements and mistakes. Was it not, further, a mistake for the Coordinadora to isolate itself from the Social-Democratic and Communist organisations for - if not of - dockworkers? This isolation is, once again, something that has been mentioned in a more positive way. There can be no doubt that if the network had succumbed to the blandishments of either of the traditional trade-union internationalisms it would have been tied up in endless meaningless conferences and committees. But by turning its back the Coordinadora and its friends remained in a sometimes crippling ignorance of them. The role of the old unions and the new networks in building an effective internationalism has been a matter of increasing political debate (South African Labour Bulletin 1991a,b, 1993). Other international labour networks, such as the Transnationals Information Exchange have developed their independent shopfloor activities whilst remaining open to the traditional unions, which have been themselves making awkward movements in an internationalist direction (compare TIE 1989b and 1989c, see Niemeijer 1996).
One last reflection, addressed to the defensive, 'national' and 'eurocentric' nature of the Coordinadora's internationalism. Do we not need to surpass this with an assertive, internationally-addressed and globally-inspired internationalism? Some projects hinting at such a broader and deeper strategy have been suggested in writings on or from North America, Latin America, South Africa and even Australia (Burbach and Nunez 1988, Sulmont 1988a, South African Labour Bulletin passim, Lambert 1992).
What I am thinking of is more modest in the constituency addressed but just as original in the challenge suggested. This is for what might be called a worker, community and democratic plan for the world cargo-handling industry. Given the destructive nature of the capitalist/statist project (as demonstrated most dramatically in the Exxon oil spill in Alaska, early 1989), such an alternative project would seem overdue. It would be utopian in the positive sense of that word: a humane, ecologically sound, collectively-planned alternative that nowhere yet exists.
The seeds of such an alternative were present in the Alternative Ports and Coasts Conference in Hamburg, 1985, but this remained without a follow-up. The project might be utopian in the negative sense, of not being practically realisable in the foreseeable future. But, in so far as such a proposal would address worker, local and democratic communities, and in so far as it linked them internationally, it might have the same kind of consciousness-raising and inspiring effect in this area as socialist, ecological and feminist utopias have had or are having internationally. It would, moreover, put before dockworkers, port communities, their democratic friends and intellectual supporters, an attractive and positive task, rather than the defensive and essentially negative one of simply reacting against the capitalist/statist project for cargo-handling internationally. Finally, it would wrongfoot an enemy whose essentially profit-oriented and destructive ideals, 'more, faster, bigger' are today unchallenged even on a local basis.
[...] Whilst the international activities of the Coordinadora and its friends might seem feeble in comparison with the late-19th century, or underdeveloped in comparison with some of its contemporary opposite numbers, the most relevant points of reference should be other national organisations of dockworkers (of which we have been able to present no evidence) and the international organisations (of which we have presented a little). Bearing in mind the extent to which these major traditional forces have been hamstrung by nationalism, bureaucracy, cold-war diplomacy or other earlier-mentioned ills, then the international dockworker network should be seen as a pioneering effort to revive a long-buried ethic and practice of labour internationalism. If this is not a force to be reckoned with, then it is certainly one to be taken into account by socialist and democratic elements within the labour movement internationally, both for what it achieved in concrete terms and for what it symbolises.
[...] New experiences of labour internationalism are under- discussed and even under-reported. Waves of internationalism rise and fall (Western Europe in the 1970s-80s?; the Americas in the 1980s-90s?). The NLI [New Labour Internationalism] is, in many ways, as much an ethic and culture as a set of institutions, making it difficult to recognise and evaluate. The NLI can reveal itself outside, against and even within the traditional international labour organisations. New national trade-union organisations, and even 'alternative' international labour groups, can make simultaneous gestures in the direction of the new and the old (Waterman 1992a)...
Institute of Social Studies, Jacob v.d. Doestr. 28 POB 29776 The Hague, POB 2518XN The Hague Netherlands. Netherlands Tel: +31-70-4260-579, Tel: +31-70-363-1539 Fax: +4260-799. [answering machine] Emb: waterman@iss.nl.
