Re: Liverpool reply (again) 2

Kevin Brandstatter wrote, among other things:

> The international structures of the trade union movement are part of the
> problem not part of the solution. While workers are divided along national
> lines and encouraged to see their problems in purely national terms, only
> turning their attentions to international activity as a last resort, we will
> always be the losers. Workers are divided against one another - "I am a
> British worker" "I am a French worker" and their identities are firstly
> national secondly class. Trade unions are partly to blame with "national "
> unions, and with potentially xenophobic utterances against "American" bosses or
> "Japanese" bosses as if "British" ones were any better.

Yes. The classic example in Britain was Moulinex's closure of its British subsidiary, Swan. i.e. French capitalists were responsible. The union representing the workers at Swan was the AEEU, just about the most right-wing union affiliated to the TUC, and an extremely bureaucratic one. This led to two things:

1. Very obviously, and in the public arena, the AEEU officials, having decided that capitalism was the best thing since sliced bread, couldn't attack the French capitalists for being capitalist, so they attacked them for being French, thereby no doubt wrecking any slight chance there might have been for solidarity with French comrades.

2. When I was an MSF rep, I worked alongside AEEU convenors and shop stewards. The union's bureaucracy meant that, unlike me, they could not directly approach a national officer, and that "unofficial" combines of lay officials were very much frowned upon. I would very much doubt that any effort had been put into making contacts between Swan and Moulinex stewards.

The bosses on the

> other hand have no national allegiance and will invest through transnational
> corporations wherever they get the greatest return on their investment.

I broadly agree with Kevin, but I'd be interested in his observations on the claim made, for example by Garrahan and Stewart in their work on Nissan, Sunderland, that the purpose of an overseas plant is to return surplus to the home country, and to that extent that the "nationality" of ownership does matter.