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Contributions:
Hugo Radice, School of Business & Economic Studies, University of
Leeds
Chris Bailey, LabourNet
Michael Lavalette, joint author of Solidarity on the Waterfront,
on the Liverpool dockers' dispute.
Bill Hunter, author of They knew why they fought: unofficial struggle
and leadership on the docks, 1945-1989
Greg Dropkin, LabourNet
Mike Carden, sacked dockworker and shop steward
Hugh Rodwell, Sweden
Sam Lanfranco, York University, Toronto, Canada. Moderator of Labor-L
Peter Waterman, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands.
The Question of Globalization
From:
Hugo Radice
School of Business & Economic Studies,
University of Leeds
Dear Labor-Lers,
I'm glad to see that my comments on the "No to Maastricht" appeal elicited support from some members of this list. I believe that the development of a committed internationalism is crucial if the left is to mount a serious longterm challenge to the present political dominance of neoliberalism. Last year an important book was published in Britain, "Globalization in Question" by Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, which has had a considerable impact on the centre-left (their arguments have been taken up with enthusiasm by both Will Hutton and Neil Ascherson, two of the most influential journalists of the centre-left - The Observer and The Independent on Sunday respectively. The book seeks to establish that (a) globalization is an ideology of capital , (b) it has no significant basis in social reality, and (c) in any case it has not really undermined the sovereignty of the nation-state.
Naturally this argument is very comforting to progressives, because the natural political conclusion is that reforms are still possible within the framework of postwar nation-state politics - especially reforms aimed at greater equality of opportunity and condition. However, I believe that developments in world capitalism since the 1970s show that reformism has been rolled back not merely because of an unthinking acceptance of a false ideology by political elites, but because of *objective* changes in the nature of capitalism, in its structures of reproduction and accumulation - including new forms of cross-border integration. The rhetoric of 'globalization' of course is used by capitalist classes and their political leaders the world over to discipline workers and cut back the state sector; but like all effective ideologies, it is grounded in changes in social practices. To simply deny these changes, and try to defend reforms on a national basis, is a recipe for continued failure.
It is clear that many of those taking the 'nation-statist' position either never had any class analysis of capitalism, or have abandoned it (and by class analysis, I do not mean Marxism only: rather, the whole tradition of heterodox 'historical political economy' which would include people like Weber,Veblen, Schumpeter, Polanyi). However, others who still openly espouse a class politics of the left are easily attracted to a nation-statist position because it seems so much more 'realistic' to seek to overturn (or even reform) capitalism at the national level, where everyone shares a common language (sorry, Belgians, Canadians, etc) and there is direct access to a given political terrain of electoral politics.
Yet what do we see around us, if only we look? First, a very widespread disillusion with the given national electoral politics (falls in electoral participation, rise of 'protest' parties, etc). Second, two decades of dismal failure for national reformism (are examples necessary still?). Third, a huge increase in global awareness and activity among the so-called 'social movements' and in NGOs generally. And fourth, despite all the setbacks for national labour movements in many countries, signs of enormous vitality not only in national labour struggles (e.g. France, Germany, S Korea), and also in transnational labour organization (add to the Liverpool dockers' fight the new initiative to form a global workers' council in the parcels/distribution TNC, UPS - see today's Financial Times).
I hope fellow list members don't mind my sending such a long post, to a list that for the most part functions as an extremely valuable clearing-house for news of struggles around the world. Still, regard it as a taste of the "positive cosmopolitan rhetoric" that Doug Henwood called for...........
By the way, I want to emphasise that the book by Hirst and Thompson is well worth reading (although it is quite 'Eurocentric', so of greatest interest to European residents). When or if anyone has read it, I would be glad to send them my review of it, which is some 4500 words long (and therefore hard to send by 'attaching' it to this!).
Hugo RadiceFrom:
Chris Bailey, LabourNet
I thought Hugo Radice's comments were spot on and I would like a copy of his review of Hirst & Thompsons book. This question has played a considerable role around the Liverpool docks strike. Those of us who have sought to build international support for the dockers (based on concepts close to those that Hugo advances) have been under constant attack from the British SWP (amongst others) for supposedly leading a diversion. The SWP, whilst disagreeing with some of Hirst and Thompson's conclusions nonetheless believes "the core of the evidence marshalled against the 'globalisation' consensus cannot be challenged" (Chris Harman, Globalisation: A Critique, International Socialism 73). The real problems posed by globalisation are dismissed and we are told that the way to win the dockers' dispute is simply to step up militant action in Britain.
Frankly, the SWP should go and teach their granny to suck eggs. The Liverpool dockers and their leadership have a long history of militancy, building rank and file movements, etc in Britain. From the late 80's onwards they were forced to the realisation of the limitations of this in answering a series of major problems and correctly turned towards building international organisation. The recent historic international dockers' day of action surely shows not only the necessity, but the new possibilities of building international workers' organisation.
To end with a plug, you don't have to access the Financial Times to read about the important decision to set up a UPS World Trade Union Council which Hugo mentions. We have a report of the decisions at the international UPS unions' meeting including an interview with Andy Banks from the US teamsters' union on the LabourNet web site (http://www.labournet.org.uk).
Chris BaileyFrom:
Michael Lavalette, joint author of Solidarity on the Waterfront, on the Liverpool dockers' dispute.
I have just recently joined the labor-l and received a letter sent three weeks ago by Chris Bailey, on globalisation and the Liverpool docks dispute, which included an attack on the Socialist Workers Party in Britain.
Bailey argues that the SWP have been critical of those arguing for the dockers international strategy and that we are being unrealistic in arguing for a 'local' strategy. These are issues which Jane Kennedy and I have addressed in our recent book on the dock dispute (Lavalette, M & Kennedy, J (1996) Solidarity on the Waterfront (£5.95 plus 15% p&p - all profits to dockers hardship). There is some considerable debate within the docks dispute over strategy and tactics, and it is not the case, as Bailey seems to suggest, that it is merely the SWP on the 'outside' who disagree with the dominant international focus of the campaign.
Within the dispute there are a number of tactics being advocated: some stress the need for unity with community leaders; others stress the possibilities of local trade union solidarity, while the dominant strategy of the stewards is to look to the international dock labour force to deliver the victory for the dockers.
The international strategy reflects the politics dominant within the dispute - at heart it is a position which argues that British workers cannot and will not fight, that Industrial Relations law in Britain has made the possibility of independent working class activity and solidarity impossible and, thus, we must find another agent of social change (eco-warriors and/or the international dock labour force). Of course the solidarity the dockers received on the 20 January from the international dock workforce was impressive but on its own this strategy has not brought enough pressure on MDHC. At the same time the 'local' unionised workforce in Britain has consistently raised money and support for the dockers (which the dockers of course realise) but the dock stewards have been unwilling to try and move beyond this - to argue and win more active support. In January, shop stewards from across the North-west region (of England) met at Transport House and passed a motion calling for containers intended to be put through Liverpool to be blacked. Present, and supporting the motion, were stewards from Ford's and Heinz - both factories ship through Liverpool. But instead of going out and trying to win and activate this campaign in Liverpool the dockers have returned top the international arena - why? Because of their collective political outlook (and this includes the fact that the international campaign doesn't force direct confrontation with the TGWU leadership). Thus, the international campaign has not been launched from a position of strength - it reflects the stewards pessimism at what it is possible to achieve at home. The recent move towards accepting a Labour Supply Company as a solution to the dispute again reflects this pessimism and the continuing 'hold' or link (and its costs) with the TGWU leadership. The dockers have tremendous support within the organised labour movement in Britain and with blacking and mass pickets they can win. But to obtain blacking and mass pickets the dock stewards will need to go out into the movement to argue that now is the time to break the law and win the dockers their jobs. We shouldn't forget that the Tory laws were designed to prevent 'traditional' forms of working class activity and action. The irony is that they are providing a cover behind which Bill Morris and the Trade Union leadership are hiding (and the forthcoming 'New' Labour Government will not repeal)
Michael LavaletteFrom:
Bill Hunter, author of They knew why they fought: unofficial struggle and leadership on the docks, 1945-1989, Index Books 1994.
Answer to Lavalette:
Michael Lavalette's letter of 13 March puts the same criticism of the Liverpool dockers shop stewards committee as in the book of himself and Jane Kennedy -' Solidarity On The Waterfront'. The comments and conclusions in the book which criticise the running of the struggle were, in effect grafted on to the research and interviews they did.. I think we have the same method of ignoring concrete reality in Michael Lavalette's letter. The real importance of this strike, the real lessons of its evolution and its place in the history of trade union struggle and dockers' struggle are missed. Instead of discussing a living movement there are dead assertions. The reality is not like this.
The authors are of the opinion that the international campaign of the dockers undermined the campaign to mobilise action nationally in Britain, and undermined action against the trade union leaders. They declare that real alliances for struggle can only be made with rank and file workers and not with leaders either nationally or regionally. They declare, as Michael Lavalette repeats, that the dockers' strategy in the international campaign was based on a failure to move British workers and an avoidance of a clash with the TGWU leadership. This only shows how you can exist in the middle of a living conflict and not know what is going on.
The great and historic series of actions in January in ports throughout the world came out of a conflict with the T&G and ITF leadership! It found its way into LabourNet and in the resignation of one ITF inspector on the west coast of the USA- Jack Heyman. It had an expression in correspondence over the role of the ITF on LabourNet.
Truth even forces its way through the book by Michael Lavalette and Jane Kennedy, who have to say that it was not possible for International Transport Federation leaders and Bill Morris to "sweep the (dockers') dispute under the carpet". That was due to the fact that the dockers and the Women of the Waterfront succeeded in building links internationally in the context of a world where dockers, and workers generally, are facing the same fundamental attacks and there is more and more prospect of a joint fight beyond frontiers.
We are told that the dockers did not seek to move the rank and file abroad. However, the policy of the dockers emissaries going abroad to ports, of which, sometimes, they had no knowledge at all, was the one that produced the connections with the rank and file and the actions that took place. That policy was simply to argue for support for the strike wherever they could. They searched for militant supporters and, of course, in the real world, they had to go through the unions to get at the rank and file. What have these dockers and the Women of the Waterfront done? They entered into a principles struggle out of solidarity with one another in the best traditions of the docks and trade unionism - an injury to one is an injury to all! They summed up the essence of their struggle with a Charter whose demands struck a cord in every corner of the globe.
Week after week they reiterated that they had to be treated as a body - they would not hand over hostages, neither the Torside workers nor militant trade unionists, in a bargain with the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company.That was contrary to the policy of union leaders.
Every week, the platform has reported the ups and downs of struggle. These men and women have gone through their disappointments and their hopes; and every week, they have carried the same resolution demanding reinstatement for everybody. At the last meeting after eighteen months locked out they continued to reiterate their resolution for full reinstatement and - in opposition to the T&G leadership - that this reinstatement of the 500 and the removal of Drakes International and the scabs, was the only basis for negotiation.
They could not be bribed; they would not sell their principles and go away. They would not desert the younger workers! They were sustained by their own self respect and dignity. Five hundred men and women took on a powerful company and its arrogant economic-liberal economic advisors like the Thatcherite, Minford, Any mistakes, they may have made, fade into insignificance in that context. In itself, it is the greatest blow that could be struck against philistine leaders of the trade unions and Labour Party.
You only have to look at the film which Ken Loach made, to see how they handled themselves. The dockers and the women tackled the leaders of the TUC in a way that the SWP could learn from - persistently asking questions at fringe meetings, forcing a meeting with Bill Morris, and tackling New Labour MP Peter Hain and his "chocolate box sincerity" (as The Guardian TV reviewer called it) in a way that earned applause from millions of TV viewers.
These men and women, in battle for eighteen months, have earned the right to ask for all assistance, including action, from trade unionists in Britain - solidarity demonstrations and protest actions. By repeating slogans alone we are not going to arrive at a Saltley 1972 - when Birmingham factories stopped work to blockade the Saltley coal depot. That is a hard road of agitation, persistent education and thinking about tactics. And it is assisted by linking with the upsurge in Europe and the rest of the world and persistently bringing the international struggle into British trade unionism.
In Britain, because of the abysmal retreats of their trade union and Labour leaders, the employers' offensive under Thatcherism blazed a trail for the rest of the capitalist world. 1985, the defeat of the miners 1989, the defeat of the dockers was the bottom level for British trade unionism. From 1995 the evolution of Liverpool dockers and their partners has been a mark of the beginning of the rise.
One of the many refreshing things about this dockers' struggle has been its openness to all socialist tendencies and its welcoming of an industrial and political front of support. But this places a responsibility before all the revolutionary socialist groups. Lavalette in arguing that the international campaign cut across the campaign to move workers in Britain relates that shop stewards from across the north-west region passed "a motion calling for containers intended to be put through Liverpool to be blacked" and that the stewards failed to activate this campaign, Was that the responsibility of the stewards alone? Our comrade dissolves difficult questions into slogans and complaints. Isn't it necessary to look at the policies of the SWP with a critical eye? The SWP attended the first two meetings of the Liverpool dockers' support committee and no more. Where were they in relation to that campaign? Or to the campaign which has gone on weekly in Liverpool at the Argos stores and in the distributive workers' union, demanding they cease shipping goods through Liverpool?
The SWP is the biggest of the revolutionary socialist groups; it is said to have 7,000 members. That could be a force in helping the needed response to the dockers strike, organised to assist the aims of the strike, in full integration in the dockers' support groups, and in full consultation with the dockers committee who are in the firing line.
Bill Hunter.From:
Greg Dropkin, LabourNet.
Reply to Michael Lavalette
While supporting two aspects of Michael Lavalette's argument on the Liverpool dockers, I reject his views on the international campaign and its relation to local industrial action.
Lavalette and the SWP are right to question what happened after the 11 January meeting of North-West shop stewards declared support for solidarity action in their own industries. But Lavalette's claim that Ford ships through Liverpool is denied by two senior stewards at the Halewood plant both of whom attended the 11th January meeting and are known to the SWP.
Nor are the SWP alone in questioning the "Labour Supply Unit"; debate has surfaced in mass meetings and on LabourNet. But it's odd that Lavalette, writing on 13 March, completely omits the points made by the stewards on 7 March, evidence that the Labour Supply Unit is already a subject of struggle over the removal of Drake International, full reinstatement for dockers, the right to tender for work throughout the port, and control of working conditions.
The International campaign
Lavalette mentions in passing "the fact that the international campaign doesn't force direct confrontation with the TGWU leadership". A wide ranging confrontation with TGWU General Secretary Bill Morris has been plain in the dockers' weekly mass meetings, the Ken Loach BBC documentary, the left press, and LabourNet. One aspect of this argument has been the union's attitude to international solidarity action.
Quite simply the TGWU did not appeal for international action, claiming UK law prevented them from doing so. But worse than that, a double act between the union and the International Transportworkers Federation during 1995/6 repeatedly led other ITF affiliates to draw back from responding to direct appeals from the dockers themselves. Those who went ahead and took action last year did so conscious they were bucking the TGWU and ITF. The latest actions in January this year were the first to be endorsed by the ITF.
An extensive debate on this subject broke out last September, culminating in the resignation letter by former ITF inspector Jack Heyman, himself prominent in the recent spectacular actions by ILWU (West Coast US) longshoremen. This debate began with the stewards' detailed account at the mass meeting on 30 August of their 4 hour encounter with the TGWU leadership on 29 August, where they led off with a strong complaint about the ITF. Heyman's letter attacked the TGWU as well as the ITF and was a hot topic amongst the sacked dockers.
If Lavalette missed it at the time - the debate doesn't figure in the book he co-authored with Jane Kennedy - he might like to read it now on LabourNet.
In order to develop a campaign of international industrial action the dockers appealed directly to their counterparts around the world. Lavalette and Kennedy (p.129 - 130) believe the campaign consisted of cosying up to an international bureaucracy: "the dockers have sought to create (international) support through approaches to trade union officials... and it is through these officials that they have contacted dockers or gained agreement to set picket lines. Those who have attended the international conferences are not rank and file dock workers as a rule, nor for the most part shop stewards, but in fact the equivalent of convenors, and local and national officials... Trade union leaders, within Britain and overseas, exist as a conservative social stratum between capital and labour, whose purpose is to negotiate, albeit on behalf of workers, agreements between these two opposing social forces... The stewards in this dispute, however, have not adopted (a rank and file) strategy. This has led them to rely on the international 'left' trade union leaders but to ignore the fact that this layer can, and has, blocked activity... It has also meant that a block has been placed on Liverpool dockers directly approaching other dock workers to support them". Oh?
What about the April '96 picket mounted by Liverpool stewards in Los Angeles which non-union Mexican-American lorry drivers decided to support in memory of the Mexican Army assault on Vera Cruz dockers, or the address by other Liverpool stewards to the Gothenburg rank and file in June '96 which provoked 12 hour delays on ACL vessels every week for several months? The February '96 international conference was full of working longshoremen and the sacked Liverpool men. I transcribed the videotapes; I don't know where Lavalette and Kennedy got their mis-information. In any case, how did it happen that this international bureaucracy ended up on strike in January 1997?
Local industrial action
Lavalette points out that "on its own, (the international) strategy has not brought enough pressure on MDHC". His alternative is a strategy of "blacking and mass pickets" by the "organised labour movement in Britain".
Well for a start, Lavalette might agree there is a lot of historical evidence that mass pickets alone don't guarantee victory either. The failure to win the vote for industrial solidarity to halt postal deliveries to Grunwick in 1977 and the failure, in general, to block supplies to power stations in 1984 were decisive obstacles not offset by the determined mass pickets at Grunwick and Nottinghamshire - which the British State knew how to contain. Nor did mass picketting win at Timex.
At Mersey Docks, there are so many entrances it would take tens of thousands of pickets, day in and day out, to make a serious impact above and beyond what the dockers are already achieving with their own daily efforts.
Lavalette notes that "(the) unionised workforce in Britain has consistently raised money and support for the dockers (which the dockers of course realise)". The dockers don't merely realise it, they and Women of the Waterfront have toured the country to get it to happen. "But," Lavalette continues, "the dock stewards have been unwilling to try and move beyond this - to argue and win more active support." False.
In the first weeks of the dispute, the dockers repeatedly appealed from the platform of their public rallies for a 24 hour strike in Liverpool. They sought to convene meetings with local shop stewards in other industries. No action was forthcoming. They then turned to the international arena because it seemed possible that industrial action could be mounted there with a direct impact on trade through Liverpool.
On the first anniversary of the Lockout, in front of a mass audience including plenty of industrial workers and SWP members whose placards asked "Which side is Tony Blair on?", Secretary-Treasurer Jimmy Davies declared the dockers were now demanding the physical support of the entire trade union movement. Both he and Doreen MacNally (Women of the Waterfront) were explicit: we want industrial action.
As an immediate step, the dockers had called a mass picket for the early morning of 30 September, widely advertised in the run-up to the Anniversary demo and highlighted at the rally itself. The organised labour movement did not, by and large, turn up. Neither did the SWP, who are perfectly capable of ordering their 7,000 members to mass pickets anywhere in mainland Britain, e.g. Timex. Yes, a few members attended. But it was mainly dockers and their latest supporters, anarchists and environmentalists, who faced the onslaught by the Operational Support Division of Merseyside Police, with 41 arrests. Tugboatmen struck for 24 hours. Bill Morris denounced the anarchists. The dockers defended them.
Now while that says something about the SWP and about the real difficulty of mounting wider industrial support in Merseyside, it doesn't mean local industrial action is impossible.
For Lavalette, the international campaign has been a poor alternative to local action. He thinks the dockers were wrong to return to the international arena right after the 11 January stewards conference, concentrating on the impending international week of action (which had been called in December) instead of immediately throwing all efforts into local follow-through.
In my view, the international action was not a diversion. The Labour Supply Unit press conference was, but it was as much a diversion from the gains made internationally as from the possibility of local action.
In fact, international progress should strengthen an appeal for action from workers in Britain whose spirit, particularly in Merseyside, has been sapped by over 20 years of industrial defeat.
Even though the dockers' historical record in support of every other dispute going gave them the moral right to demand local action it was simply impossible to unleash when the Lockout began. But now, the dockers have an enormous domestic credibility won through 18 months of struggle. They also have the concrete evidence that maritime workers around the world have risked their own jobs while linking their material interests to the Liverpool fight.
That is a strong card to play in addressing workers here: Gothenburg hit ACL, Montreal hit CAST, Oregon struck for 24 hours... and we're asking you to stop putting containers through the Port of Liverpool.
Greg DropkinFrom:
Mike Carden, sacked dockworker and shop steward
To: Michael Lavalette re Liverpool dock dispute
Sadly Michael Lavalette seeks to re-affirm the ill-informed, poorly researched dogma that masquerades as a book on the Liverpool dispute: Lavalette and Kennedy "Solidarity on the Waterfront" (1996).
Unfortunately, the sacked Liverpool dockers and their families do not have the time or will to manufacture reality to depict political obsessions. Many of us consider a response to Lavalette and Kennedy's "book" on the dispute a pointless exercise. However, we feel it is personally important to protect the truth and reality of our experiences, which both writers avoid to uphold their puerile political perspective.
Firstly, our comments are not a critique of the SWP, they are connected solely to the statements of Lavalette on Labor-L.
To assert that the Liverpool dockers have one "dominant strategy" i.e. internationalism, as the "force to deliver the victory" in their struggle is simply not true. Similarly, his view that Liverpool dockers "argue that British workers cannot and will not fight" is insulting both to the dockers and the working class of our country.
Internationalism as a mechanism to avoid "direct confrontation with the TGWU leadership" is really a problem that he has to come to terms with himself. Apart from being insulting to the concept of internationalism many other ways exist to avoid confrontation with the TGWU. Perhaps we need to have the real reasons for confrontation with the TGWU explained to us by Lavalette.
Our collective experience has been that the Liverpool dockers relationship with the TGWU has been nothing other than confrontational especially since 1989. In reality, Michael Lavalette fails to understand, see or hear the events that have confronted the Liverpool dockers for almost 19 months and importantly, since 1989.
We want every worker in this country to strike in support of the Liverpool dockers, Magnet, Hillingdon workers. Obviously, the Liverpool dockers have failed in this objective of achieving mass direct action in this country. Would Michael please tell us his secret formula for instigating a general strike both locally and nationally?
Debate and discussion on the Liverpool dock dispute is vital and so is criticism. The ill-informed and poorly researched views expressed by Michael Lavalette contribute nothing to the struggle of the Liverpool dockers. Perhaps the most informative aspect of Michael Lavalette's personal views is that he has never taken the opportunity to raise them directly with the dockers themselves.
Mike CardenFrom:
Hugh Rodwell, Sweden
I'd like to make a comment on a shared weakness in the apparently opposed views of Hugo Radice and Michael Lavalette.
Hugo Radice makes a case for the complete inadequacy of trying to "overturn capitalism on a national basis". His perspective is indicated in the following quotes:
"To simply deny these changes [ie the globalization of capital], and try to defend reforms on a national basis, is a recipe for continued failure."
and
"However, others who still openly espouse a class politics of the left are easily attracted to a nation-statist position because it seems so much more 'realistic' to seek to overturn (or even reform) capitalism at the national level [...] and there is direct access to a given political terrain of electoral politics."
He's making an unnecessary distinction between national and international policies and action here. The two are inseparably linked. What's missing in his analysis is an account of the huge sectors of capital that are still fundamentally national in their scope (the whole of the anti-EU Tory faction) and their antagonistic relationship with the more powerful international sectors. Workers are constrained to fight within the framework of their immediate employer -- at least initially -- and employers have very different dimensions.
Also missing is the absolute dependence of international capital on actually existing bodies of armed men -- the repressive apparatus of the nation-state -- to enforce its will in its various locations. No overthrow of capital will occur without these bodies being defeated, and this will happen *nationally". And it won't happen at the same time everywhere. Overthrow of capital will be a piecemeal business as it develops, even if it's obvious that the goal won't be reached or consolidated until capitalism is defeated internationally in the world market as a whole.
The actual process of mobilization against the destructive interests of capital with its dual character, both national and international, is also missing, and it's the biggest shortcoming of all -- and one he shares with Michael Lavalette.
Bill Hunter, Greg Dropkin and Mike Carden have demolished the factual basis of many of Michael Lavalette's assertions. An important reason underlying his errors and omissions is his failure to grasp the character of what Bill H calls "a living movement".
Basically, no political force can legislate for or bring *mobilization* by proclamation. Mobilization is what happens when people can't put up with their situation any longer and organize to fight for a change. Policies develop in relation to a given mobilization, great or small, local or worldwide. Also, they can weaken or boost mobilization. But they can't create it. Michael L's perspective leads him to try to *will* mobilization into existence rather than develop what's there already. Bill H pointedly asks why the SWP hasn't thrown the weight of its membership behind the actually existing mobilization of the Liverpool dockers. In the same way Hugo R's perspective leads him to write off national mobilization as basically hopeless instead of assessing the potential of what's there already for weakening international capital.
Looking for support in the real world means going through organizations, and this discussion has given examples of the confrontations this has led to nationally with the T&G and TUC, and internationally with the ITF. But the rank and file *has* been reached, both in Britain and abroad, and the effects of this have already been seen. There are signs of fresh mobilization around the world, and the example of Liverpool is giving hope and inspiration in these struggles.
The current Santos docks dispute (April 97) provides a perfectly clear example of this process. In the fortnight or so of the dispute, we have seen both the international dimension and national mobilization. At the same time, neither aspect excludes the other, in fact they reinforce each other. The conflict was quickly publicized on the Net, on the Santos dockers' own website and LabourNet and elsewhere. Before many days had passed, messages of solidarity from the Liverpool dockers were being read to a crowd of fighting workers in Santos to prolonged cheers, in the same way as Brazilian dockers had earlier expressed their solidarity with the Liverpool struggle. One of the main slogans of the Santos dispute is "Santos, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Seoul -- the same world, the same struggle".
The strength of the mobilization on the ground locally and nationally is impressive. Already we have seen the refusal of the local militia to intervene, making any strike-breaking military action a direct federal affair lifting the dispute into a nation-wide political issue. The military intervention by the Federal Police of two days ago *failed"! The occupations of the blacked vessels weren't broken, and the employers, the Sao Paulo Steel Company, were forced back into negotiations. Not only that but the strike has spread to the rest of Santos, and 18 other ports in Brazil are to be closed down. The mobilization is there. When it comes, it comes with a vengeance. What Michael L's perspective lacks is patience to cope with downs in the class struggle and confidence in the re-emergence of mobilization and the immense social power of the working class once it gets moving.
The task of political leadership is not to create mobilization, but to meet it where it is, encourage it to develop, and channel it to hit the enemy as hard as possible.
Hugh RodwellDate: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 08:05:51 -0400
From: Sam Lanfranco lanfran@YORKU.CA
Subject: Ports "crossing the threshold of globalization"
To: LABOR-L@YORKU.CA
In response to a LabourNet note:
>against the use of non-union casual labour at COSIPA's marine
>terminal. COSIPA's web site invites comments on "any doubts or
>suggestions" concerning its "new venture to cross the threshold of
>Globalisation" including "the new maritime terminal, its most recent
Doug Henwood wrote:
> I'm a bit mystified by a port crossing a threshold of globalization.
> Ports are all about international trade, and always have been, no?
------------------
I assume that Doug is making a little joke here, but there is a deeper point. As the famous Brando film "On The Waterfront" makes the point, Docks and Ports have always been about two very different things. The trade that passes through them is very international.
But, much of the time, the production regime, and in particluar how labor 'fits in' at the port has been very 'local' in its structure and control. Reflect on the labor regime on the ships that travel the seas. With 'flag of convenience' shipping labor conditions range from excellent to terrible.
There is something going on at the level of the organization of work, and rights of workers, at this point in time and it is probably an early warning for things to follow. For the large shipping interests, two ports in Sydney and London, or Hong Kong and San Francisco, are just two platforms at opposite ends of the same 'plant'. Things are loaded here and unloaded there - much like boxes switching assembly lines in a factory.
What is new here is not that the goods being moved are for global trade. Doug is right, they were always for global trade. What is new is that each port facility is increasingly being looked at as just another workstation in a global transportation plant. That they are 1000s of miles apart makes no difference to those trying to organize them. The strategy is the same as if they were simply different delivery gates at the same factory site.
Capital, in the form of the owners of the fleets and the port terminals understands that. The current struggles are helping drive the point home to labour. As for the state - it seems to be standing at the factory gate handing the keys to the fleet and port owners in a classic model of the state as handmaiden to capital.
Other than higher levels of organization on the part of global labor (part of what Labournet and LABOR-L support) the only other quiet actor which could play a stronger role is civil society organizations. I am not sure what it will take for them (those resident in major port cities) to realize what the game is here, what they have at risk, and where they should be playing their hand.
Sam Lanfranco lanfran@yorku.ca
From: Peter Waterman
30.3.97`SOLIDARITY ON THE WATERFRONT',
AND SOLIDARITY WITH THE WATERFRONT
I have followed the email debate about the analysis of the Liverpool dock dispute offered by Michael Lavalette and Jane Kennedy, either on the internet (ML) or in their joint book, Solidarity on the Waterfront: The Liverpool Lock Out of 1995-96, Liver Press, Liverpool, 1996, 147pp (GBP 5.95).
Most of the criticism is for the quality and content of their analysis, sometimes interpreting it in relationship to their association with the Socialist Workers Party and its newspaper, Socialist Worker.
My particular interest in the book is, however, as one of the rare examples of a study of contemporary and, indeed, ongoing dockworker protest, from both a politically-committed and critical position. I have done similar such studies, in the case of the Lagos cargo-handling workers and unions in the 1970s, and of the Barcelona-based attempt to create an international network of dockworkers in the 1980s. In both cases I had to deal with the relations of dockworker struggles with the national and international union structures, particularly that of the International Transportworker's Federation (ITF).
In both cases I had to come to terms with my own identity and `subject position', as a non-docker (not subject to their hard and dangerous lives and restricted life-chances), as an outsider (white in the one case, foreign in the other), as an academic (earning a good living and/or prestige by my research), and as a particular kind of Marxist Internationalist (a democratic workerist in the '70s, a `Liberation Marxist' in the '80s and '90s). This is how I attempted such a coming to terms.
As a non-docker: By trying to show respect, to avoid offence, to communicate dockworker lives and understandings, and the rationale behind worker and union protest action.
As an outsider: By trying to overcome eurocentrism and to recognise what these people had to teach Europeans (due to the Franco period, the Spanish labour movement still had `non- European' characteristics in the 1980s).
As an academic: By using all the theoretical and methodological tools at my command, by making draft materials available for comment, by promising to incorporate such comments into my texts (with acknowledgement), or providing an appendix for comments I could not accept or incorporate, by making either the exposition, or related outcomes (popularised versions, a tape-slide show, classes) available to the organisations concerned.
As a Liberation Marxist and internationalist: 1) As a Liberation Marxist: by trying to be open and explicit about my political/theoretical position, proposing that workers and socialists had to learn from the new alternative social movements, by avoiding any assumption of political superiority, by learning (a great deal) from those I was writing about, and adjusting my Marxism accordingly. 2) As an internationalist: by forcefully criticising (but not dismissing) the failed or failing `traditional labour internationalism' of the movement - from waterfront to international level; and by arguing for a `new labour internationalism' - worker-based but democratically- addressed (to workers, women, pacifists, environmentalists, human-rights activists, etc). This is what I now call `the new global solidarity'.
The word `trying' is repeated, because, unlike L&K I can produce no evidence of the response to my work, which others will have to judge from the published and unpublished materials themselves.
Some brief words about 1) Liverpool and 2) the L&K book.
I have written about the Liverpool dockers only indirectly, in relation to my Barcelona study and to a forthcoming book entitled From Labour Internationalism to Global Solidarity. I have been simultaneously inspired by and critiqued (not opposed) their strategies. I have referred to them, but not in writing - and only partly in joke - as the Zapatistas of the European labour movement. This is, after all, a very traditional, white, male, localised section of the working class. Their attachment to their hard, dirty and dangerous jobs - which they will not sell even for GBP 25-35,000 - is like that of peasants to their land and community. Yet, simultaneously, they are prepared to ally themselves with, and respect, anarchists and environmentalists, and to endorse a wide democratic appeal for social justice. They have also shown themselves to have learned from and be adapting themselves to the new assertivity of their partners in Women of the Waterfront (Wow indeed!). Locally- identified as they might be, they have not only undertaken pathbreaking international solidarity activities but forced their International Trade Secretariat (a revealingly awful designation), the ITF, to support them! Manual workers they might be, but they have moved from letters and phone to fax and email - and demonstrated the potential of the latter for `communicating global solidarity' at waterfront level. This is a new/old, local/global struggle, combining elements appropriate to the old national/industrial capitalism with those appropriate to the new global/information one. Thanks companeros and companeras (Spanish for male/female workmate, partner, friend and comrade)! Win or lose, the labour and new social movements can and will learn from you!
As a fellow Liverpudlian once sang, `A working-class hero is someone to be!'. So is a working-class heroine. Specially at a time when local hero/ines can be global ones too...
I am myself also indebted to the L&K book. This is despite the criticisms made of it by people better informed than I to make such judgements. If it had been less controversial, it might not, after all, have been subject to this unique international debate, one in which workers/unionists have been involved, alongside their intellectual or professional friends and supporters! What L&K report or reveal is, after all, open to interpretations other than their own. This applies not only to the evidence concerning internationalism but that concerning women (which I would interpret in terms of a `popular feminism' also familiar from the Zapatista movement in Mexico). The form in which they have communicated their findings, in a rapidly- produced, cheap and eminently accessible book, is a model.
I look forward to hearing from these other companeros/as - to whom I gave a diskette of my Barcelona study. I would like to know 1) how they respond to the criticism of their book and 2) to what I have said here.
'Communication is the nervous system of internationalism and solidarity' (Jose Maria Mariategui, Lima, c.1923)Institute of Social Studies,
POB 29776 The Hague,
Netherlands.
Tel: +31-70-4260-579,
Fax: +4260-799.
Emb: waterman@iss.nl.
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