Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Revolutionary Communist League of Britain

Turn the Unions into Fighting Class Organisations


The Struggle to Turn the Unions into Fighting Class Organizations is a Struggle of the Masses

Every worker in Britain has suffered through the betrayals of the opportunists in the Trade Unions. We have suffered through wage cuts, through unemployment, through open sabotage and through diversionary manoeuvres of the opportunists against our struggle. The five slogans raised by the R.C.L.B.:

NO CLASS COLLABORATION WITH THE BOSSES!
FIGHT FOR DEMOCRATIC UNIONS!
WE WON’T PAY FOR THE BOSSES’ CRISIS!
STOP PAYING LABOUR TO ATTACK WORKERS!
OPPOSE OPPRESSION AND DISCRIMINATION OF BLACK
AND WOMEN WORKERS AT THE PLACE OF WORK!

expose the opportunists and show the direction we need to take – the path of fighting class against class through united militant mass action. But to fight the bosses effectively, we must combine this with the struggle to root out the opportunists in the Trade Unions. This will be a long and protracted struggle, but it will be won by working for mass involvement in the Trade Unions, behind the 5 slogans – because these slogans represent the interests of the masses.

In this struggle we will come across many brands of opportunism hiding behind different labels. There are open supporters of the Labour Government – a government that is serving the bosses, and trying to solve the crisis of their system at the expense of our class. There is the opportunism of the so-called “Communist” Party of Great Britain which has abandoned Marxism-Leninism and the Trotskyites. Both of them refuse to expose the Labour Party as a bosses’ party – let alone as the best bosses’ party, the most successful in attacking our class. Both portray themselves as “saviours from on high” who will save us, but in fact they are just as bureaucratic and anti-democratic and fear mass involvement in the unions. Sometimes they sound ever so revolutionary and trot out their so-militant slogans, but then their ultra-left tactics and demands invariably have no effect except to divide the working class and sabotage the struggle as effectively as an open sell-out. Though opportunism hides behind many disguises, it will be exposed in its day-to-day activity, and in its reaction to the 5 slogans.

At the same time we must distinguish, particularly at the plant level among shop stewards etc, between those who are out-and-out opportunists, and those who make opportunist mistakes because that is “the way things have always been done.” Some local leaders who have made mistakes may well change through criticism from the workers. Others won’t. Those who genuinely desire to serve the masses cannot be treated the same as the bureaucratic hacks that have no faith in the masses.