1919-2019: CUT HOURS - NOT JOBS OR PAY!

A century ago, a mammoth crowd of 100,000 marched on Glasgow’s biggest ever May Day. An even more impressive 100,000 rallied in the substantially smaller city of Belfast.

At both mass rallies, motions were carried in solidarity with the Russian socialist revolution, still fresh and inspirational to workers on these islands - as the Bolshevik government fought off 21 invading imperialist armies, hell-bent on overthrowing their attempts to reconstruct society on socialist lines.

Revolt on the Clyde and the Lagan 

But the scale and power of these workers’ rallies was more than an outpouring of international solidarity. It was primarily fuelled by the momentous mass strikes and struggles just weeks before (in January/February 1919) when 100,000 on Clydeside and 60,000 in Belfast challenged the rule of the employers, government and their armed state, seizing temporary control of production, emergency services, to a degree transport. In Belfast, they formed their own, united Picket Peace Corps of 2,000 strikers, which established workers’ law and workers’ order for the two-week duration of a virtual general strike. A terrified ruling class feared socialist revolution, mobilising the media and police to try and bludgeon the strikers into submission. When that failed, they hesitantly resorted to use of troops to break the strikes.

What makes this glorious chapter of workers’ history so richly relevant in 2019 is the issue that Belfast and Glasgow workers fought on in 1919: they threw down the gauntlet with the clear-cut, unifying demand for a shorter working week, without loss of pay.

They dreaded mass unemployment, as hundreds of thousands of demobbed soldiers returned from the imperialist First World War. Equally, they revolted against the joyless drudgery of a 54-hour week, which lengthened further during war production. Matching the needs both of workers suffering the tyranny of endless work, and those facing the starvation of mass unemployment, Belfast workers downed tools, demanding a 44-hour week without loss of pay; on Clydeside it was the Forty Hour Strike.

The heroic exertions of these workers were undermined by national union treachery, ruthless deployment of military force by a terrified capitalist class, and tactical mistakes by the Strike Committees. However, they won a record-breaking seven hour cut to the working week in both cities – without loss of a penny’s pay. 

Order the pamphlet here: 

https://scottishsocialistparty.org/product/1919-revolt-on-the-clyde-and-the-lagan/

Shorter Working Week – Without Loss of Pay

The demand for a shorter working week – but, critically, without loss of earnings - is as urgent today as 100 years ago, if not more so!

It should be vigorously fought for by the socialist and the trade union movement, with thorough preparation in workplaces and union forums, out on the streets, in collective bargaining with the employers, and through political struggle. Which is why I’m proud that my own Usdaw union branch, Glasgow no.1, is proposing precisely this policy and course of action at the Usdaw national conference (ADM), with the aim of then taking it into the wider trade union movement – just as we have the parallel policy of a guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week.

Why? Just as in 1919, when workers took mass strike action to cut long hours of drudgery and simultaneously mop up mass unemployment, so too in 2019 we need policies to combat agonisingly long hours for millions, along with solutions to the dread of mass unemployment through automation - the ‘fourth industrial revolution'. 

Longest Hours in Europe

If capitalism was a person, it would be declared clinically insane. Whilst at least 3.8 million workers in the UK suffer insecure and short-hour contracts (with the attendant poverty pay and mental ill health), over 3.3 million work more than 48 hours a week. And 500,000 of them put in 60 hours or more!

It’s official; full-time workers in the UK work the longest hours in the whole of Europe. An average of 42.3 hours a week; 2 hours more than the EU average, and 4.5 hours more than Denmark’s 37.8 hours.  

Scotland’s last population Census recorded 39% of all workers - 984,000 – worked between 38-48 hours a week. Even more disturbing, 295,000 Scottish employees toiled for more than 49 hours... a century after our forebears fought and won a maximum 47-hour week!

Other sources show at least 54,000 people in Scotland chained to their work for over 60 hours a week.

But surely things are getting better? Well, very recent research for the British TUC found the number working over 48 hours has increased by 453,000 since 2010 – a 15% rise in ‘over-employed’ workers. And going back to the European averages for full-timers, Britain’s working week has only shortened by 18 minutes in the past decade. At that rate - assuming no reduction in hours worked in other countries - it would take the UK 63 years to catch up with the EU average!

The long hours culture that blights family life for millions isn’t even good for the economy. Danish workers have the shortest week in Europe but are 23% more productive than Britain’s. German workers have the shortest annual hours in Europe but are the most productive. 

Tiredness from overwork can kill

Burnout Britain

Exhaustion, stress and burnout are the increasingly common hallmarks of working life for workers – side-by-side with millions of others suffering poverty, anxiety and mental health problems as a result of mass under-employment and job insecurity. Numerous medical studies have linked overwork with heart disease, diabetes, stress, depression, and a five-fold increase in the risk of strokes.

Remember the tragic death last Christmas of 23-year-old junior doctor, Lauren Connelly, in a car crash after a 12-hour night shift? Even after that tragedy, Scottish Health boards still had rotas of over 90 hours a week – 104 hours in Glasgow. And we had the undercover journalist who filmed Amazon workers falling asleep literally standing up, during a 55-hour week, with relentless, impossible targets. Glimpses of the curse of long hours on workers’ wellbeing.

Add to that the grand theft of wages through unpaid overtime - the equivalent of working for absolutely no pay until 1^st March this year!

And the employers’ robbery of statutory paid holidays – which unpublished government (ONS) figures reveal steals £3billion a year off workers who are dragged in to work when they should be on paid leave.

Plus the growing proportion of our lives taken up commuting to work, as capitalist employers ‘rationalise’ and centralise their workplaces; rocketing housing costs drive many further away from their place of work; and chaotic, privatised public transport shoves motorists into lengthening traffic queues, polluting our planet - and lengthening the working day (unpaid), by an average of 24 working days last year!

The demand for a shorter working week is an urgent answer to those devouring their lives at work – living to work, with little time for anything else - and for job-creation for those impoverished by the chronic under-employment of zero and short hours contracts, or simply unemployed.

Make Automation a Blessing, not a Curse

It’s also at the heart of the answer to one of the biggest challenges of the 21^st century: the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ of automation, Artificial Intelligence and robotics. The scientists argue over the scale of impact on jobs, but all agree this threatens mass displacement of people in jobs as varied as retail, manufacturing, transport, fast food, logistics, office admin, carers, nurses, paralegals – even doctors, writers and composers!

New technology should be a blessing, a means of escaping endless hours of often unfulfilling work; a way for humans to be liberated into expanding their interests, skills, family and social life, participation in the democratic running of communities, workplaces and government. But under the rule of capitalism, the rule of profit, this new wave of technology is a dystopian nightmare, with the real and present threat of mass unemployment and impoverishment. For example, it is widely predicted that one million of the UK’s 3 million retail jobs could be obliterated within 10 years. 

Drive For 35!

An immediate, all-too-modest demand for a maximum working week of 35 hours – without loss of pay – would itself free up millions of new jobs, based on the obscenely long hours endured by several million UK workers (3.3 million on 48+ hours, for starters).

It would be good for workers’ health, physical and mental; reduce accidents at work, caused by fatigue; reduce sickness and absenteeism; and as several experiments here and abroad prove, it would boost productivity.

The CWU last year won a deal that will cut the working week for 120,000 Royal Mail workers from 39 to 35 by 2021, with the first hour reduction already implemented – without loss of pay. 

We need a generalised, immediate ‘Drive for 35’ across the unions.

We already have the technology to retain or boost output of goods and services whilst cutting the working week much more radically than that, for instance to a 4-day week, and a 6-hour day. That's in stark contrast with 1.4 million people working all seven days of the week right now, in Britain 2019! 

4 Days’ Work for 5 Days’ Pay

A 4-day week would not only enhance the quality of workers’ lives, and facilitate childcare (especially benefiting women, and encouraging more men to share caring and domestic responsibilities), but also reduce the damage to workers’ wallets and the environment, by slashing commuting times.

But reduced hours must be without reductions in earnings. With the odd, bizarre exception, workers aren’t chained to their jobs because they’re incurable workaholics. They work endless hours for two main reasons: to try and survive on the rotten hourly pay rates that have been systematically imposed to boost profits, and out of fear of losing their job, in a world of rampant job insecurity, leading to the modern phenomenon of ‘presenteeism’.

In 2018, the TUC found 81% of workers want to reduce working time; 45% of them want a 4-day week. But if it means an equivalent cut in wages, how can working people afford it?

Capitalist employers often use short-time working and layoffs – with equivalent cuts in pay – to offload a crisis in their business onto the shoulders of workers who have produced their profits for previous years. Or simply slash hours – and pay – to increase workload and turbocharge their profit margins – as the multi-billion Tesco's and ASDA are currently doing. That’s decidedly not what we mean by a shorter working week. 

The battle for an 8-hour day was at the heart of the international workers' movement & May Day since the 1880s

Gigantic leaps in technology make a 6-hour day eminently reasonable 

Cut Hours – Not Pay!

The socialist and trade union movement should make far more of an outcry for policies like 4 days’ work for 5 days’ pay, and a 6-hour day for 8 hours’ pay.

This would be a radical redistribution of wealth – from profit to wages. That’s precisely why most capitalist employers will resist, in the belief that such rational, humane change to the nature of work would take a slice off their profit margins.

Aside from the fact that’s debatable (given the potential for increased productivity), it’s not really the point. We can’t afford a system that condemns millions to working longer than the 47-hour week that was conceded in the teeth of mass workers’ revolts a century ago. We can’t afford to continue with a system that is wrecking the health of millions of workers and adding to pollution of the planet.

We need a society where an adequate, decent wage is earned in a far shorter working day, week and year, freeing up time for the pursuit of real democracy and human fulfilment. But it won’t be gifted to us by a benign class of capitalist vultures. The events of 1919 demonstrated the brutal lengths their class predecessors were prepared to go against the Forty Hour Strike.

We need to take our inspiration from the readiness to struggle displayed by masses of workers in Belfast and Glasgow a century ago.

We need to battle to cut hours, not jobs or pay, harnessing all the marvels of 21st century science for the benefit of people and planet, not profit for the plunderers.

These demands should become the battle-cries on and beyond May Day 2019, standing on the shoulders of the (extra)ordinary workers’ struggles of 1919.

THE LIMERICK SOVIET, 1919 - when workers ran the city!

"We make bread not profits!" Bruree village Mill Soviet - following Limerick example

This year has a bumper crop of very significant centenaries for workers and socialists, but one that barely merits a mention in Scotland or Britain is the Limerick Soviet of April 1919.

This was a two-week general strike in Ireland's west-coast city, commencing Monday 14th April 1919, primarily against the declaration of martial law by the British government, with military occupation, which provoked outrage from most of the 40,000 population.
For at least ten days, the elected Strike Committee seized control of all the major decisions over production, transport, food supplies, law and order, energy supplies, propaganda – and even produced their own currency!

It was a movement that terrified the ruling capitalist class - not just of Britain, but also the aspiring native capitalists of Ireland, who were hell-bent on gaining the power and privileges of an independent Ireland for their own class.

In the sober but terrified editorial tones of the main mouthpiece of British capitalism, the Times newspaper:

“The internal control of the city has passed into the hands of the Strike Committee, who are adopting the most approved soviet methods. They regulate the opening of the shops and even direct sales. They are also endeavouring to decide prices... As money is running short among the strikers, they are about to issue an equivalent of promissory notes, of a value from one to ten shillings, guaranteed by ‘the Workers of Limerick’ and signed by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council.”

Their dread of “the most approved soviet methods" has to be understood in the context of the time. This was a mere five months after the workers and peasants of Russia had seized power, ruling through Councils of directly elected and immediately recallable delegates from the workplaces, military units and peasants.
It was pre-Stalinism, when the young workers’ state was a shining beacon for workers across the globe, Ireland and Britain included.
‘Soviet' was simply the Russian word for Council or Committee; the vibrant and democratic forum for decision-making by the toiling masses, in the early years after the 1917 socialist revolution.

The Times, military chiefs, capitalist overlords and their government puppets had every reason to look on in dread at equivalent developments in their own first colony, with the potential of the ‘contagion’ spreading to British cities. Especially those with large Irish populations, including those like Glasgow which had just been through the tumultuous battles of the Forty Hour Strike, mere weeks prior to the Limerick Soviet.

Limerick 1919 was a powerful link in the chain of revolutionary events that spread across the island of Ireland, particularly in the years 1918-23.
Prior to the First World War, a rash of strikes involved particularly newly-organised, super-exploited sections of workers, such as the Belfast dockers, women in the Belfast mills, Wexford foundry workers.

As the British government made parliamentary preparations for Irish Home Rule, native Irish capitalists fought ruthlessly to put Irish workers in their place, to stifle their demands and aspirations.
This culminated in the 1913 Dublin Lockout, orchestrated by William Martin (‘Murder') Murphy – described by Jim Larkin as “a soulless, money-grubbing tyrant” - and the Dublin Employers’ Federation, who starved and brutalised men, women and children, in their mission to smash the growing forces of trade unionism, led by the likes of Jim Larkin and James Connolly.

'Big Jim' Larkin during the 1913 Dublin Lockout

It was during that showdown between two Irish classes that the Irish Citizens Army (ICA) was formed, to defend the strikers. When the ICA went on to join forces with the nationalist Irish Volunteers in the 1916 Easter Rising, it was no accident that Murphy used his ownership of the Irish Independent to bay for the blood of Connolly in particular; he recognized the great Marxist workers’ leader as a mortal threat to the upstart capitalist class of Ireland.

Connolly’s execution by British imperialism, and Larkin’s departure to the USA (and subsequent jailing there on charges of sedition against the war) beheaded the Irish workers’ movement in the period after the War – the period of greatest potential for workers’ power and socialism, and the time of greatest need of experienced, capable socialist leadership in the workers’ movement. This was to be underlined in red in the events of Limerick, and indeed throughout the period 1918-23.

Those few years included 3 general strikes, hundreds of strikes and workplace occupations, widespread land seizures by land labourers, and several local Soviets – including early 1919 in Monaghan Asylum, and in particular a rash of Soviets after the example of Limerick set out a model for workers in other towns, villages, factories, creameries, the Arigna mines...

1919 kicked off with the Belfast general strike for a shorter working week, without loss of pay, during which Protestant and Catholic workers united and controlled the city for 4 weeks, in a momentous challenge to the ruling capitalists, their politicians and their state - which we have described elsewhere, in my pamphlet 1919 REVOLT.

Revolt on the Clyde, the Lagan, the Shannon... 

Limerick was a city of abject poverty, slum housing and grossly over-crowded conditions, but also with a working class population imbued with rebellion and resistance. The militant, growing ITGWU union had, by late 1918, over 3,000 members in the city, and its main organiser was a Marxist, Sean Dowling.
The Limerick United Trades and Labour Council had substantial authority, coordinating many protests and strikes.
The city had a very popular paper, edited by a baker and trade unionist, called The Bottom Dog. Though politically very confused, with strains of anti-Protestant bigotry and anti-Semitism, the paper strongly advocated union organisation of both men and women, and was self-described as “the voice of the oppressed whether by nation, class or sex.”
On May Day 1918, 15,000 rallied and passed resolutions with “greetings to our Russian comrades.”

Thousands at Robert Byrne's funeral

As the mostly rural guerilla-based War of Independence raged, an attempt was made by the IRA to rescue a local member and hunger-striker, Robert Byrne. In the melee, Byrne (and an RIC officer) were shot dead, provoking fury in the local population, who hated the RIC as the paid agents of Britain and the Irish capitalists.

About 10,000 assembled as Byrne’s body was removed. The British authorities feared an escalation of the unrest after his funeral and used the repressive Defence of the Realm Act to declare most of Limerick a Special Military Area (SMA). This meant martial law, with thousands of workers forced to show military passes to army patrols on their way to and from work, which inflamed people further.

On the day of the funeral, thousands marched and lined the streets, as British troops lined the route, bayonets fixed, accompanied by armoured cars and overhead military planes.

Immediately, the workers of Cleeves Condensed Milk factory pressed the Trades and Labour Council to meet the day before the SMA was set to take effect. After prolonged discussion, the meeting decided to call a general strike from the following day, Monday 14th April. About 14,000 workers responded the first day, with growing numbers later.

The Limerick Soviet leadership

What followed was a glimpse of how the future could have been. The Strike Committee and a series of Sub Committees took control of the city for ten days.

They organised picketing and propaganda, producing the daily Workers Bulletin. Production was halted, except where the Strike Committee decided otherwise. Vehicles were only allowed to move by displaying a sticker saying ‘Working under the authority of the Strike Committee.’
The workers’ committees exposed any attempts at profiteering by shops and shut them down. Red Guards were deployed to enforce the decisions of the Strike Committee, including price controls.
In defiance of blood-curdling predictions of famine in the city by the hostile capitalist press, the general strike organisers’ Food Control Committee set up a food depot outside the city, across the river Shannon, and got ample supplies from farmers in County Clare. These supplies of essential food were then smuggled past the army sentries in boats with muffled oars, and in hearses!
The people were fed at fixed, low prices through food depots inside the city – proving the social benefits of eliminating the profit motive!

Limerick, April 1919

And as bemoaned by the frightened Times editor, they printed their own currency during the second week of the Soviet, calling them Labour Notes, which were accepted in the shops. This act, perhaps above all others, symbolised the degree to which the working class had forged a rival power to that of the British government and its martial enforcers.
And for the Soviet’s duration, with the workers taking control of law and order, the city was a model crime-free, peaceful enclave. A glimpse of how society might become; an example the capitalist state couldn’t afford to allow to survive too long!

Workers confronted the troops and fraternised with the rank-and-file 

In contrast to the widespread hatred towards the RIC police, sound class instincts and creative leadership led to appeals towards the British soldiers, worrying the army top brass that they couldn't rely on the conscripts to mete out full frontal repression and assaults on the strikers and their working class army of supporters.
In one well-planned incident, 1,000 young men and women confronted the soldiers without carrying any military permits, asking to leave the city boundary for a GAA sporting event, later returning en masse in repeat defiance, the women especially fraternising in a conscious attempt to break the discipline and morale of the army. The Workers Bulletin even wondered if anyone had ever imagined a scenario where the soldiers’ guns were turned the opposite way (which can only have meant where soldiers turned their guns on their officers) and in a class appeal, openly declared “Our fellow trade unionists in khaki are refusing to do the dirty work.”

From the outset, the local Strike Committee looked towards the national trade union and Labour party leadership to spread the struggle, in particular by calling a national general strike.

We can, of course, only speculate what Connolly and Larkin would have done if they’d been alive or in Ireland, respectively. But their entire track record as fearless workers’ leaders suggests they would indeed have used their positions in the leadership of the large and growing ITGWU, and as key founders of the Irish Labour Party in 1912, to build for a national general strike.
Furthermore, their record of uniting Protestant and Catholic workers in the north east of the country would have been invaluable in such a workers’ movement, in sharp distinction from the suspicions, even hostility, the pro-capitalist, nationalist Sinn Fein leadership evoked amongst Protestant workers.

Mass workers' power on display 

Not so the leadership who took over from Connolly and Larkin.
Tom Johnston and William O'Brien had caved in to the appeals from the Sinn Fein leadership to stand aside in the December 1918 general election; to give Sinn Fein a clear run, and ‘not split the Home Rule vote’ - under the pernicious slogan ‘Labour must wait'.
In keeping with this collaboration with the anti-strike, pro-capitalist Sinn Fein leadership, the Labour and trade union leadership shrank from any suggestion of building a country-wide general strike in solidarity with the Limerick Soviet.
They had talked of calling a ‘national holiday’ on May Day 1919, but were terrified at the thought of the Limerick workers’ challenge to capitalism and its state forces feeding into such a national stoppage.
When one of the usually-moderate leaders of the Strike Committee, Sean Cronin, met with the national executive of the Irish Trade Union and Labour Party, six days into the Soviet, he reflected the far-reaching demands of the combatative Limerick strikers - by calling on them to replace the local Strike Committee and make Limerick the headquarters of Ireland’s national and social revolution!

Horrified at such a scheme for leading a challenge for power by an already-aroused and agitated working class – who were engaged in strikes in Dublin, Drogheda, Wexford, Dundalk and several other parts of the country at the time of Limerick – the Irish Trade Union and Labour executive deliberated a couple of days and instead brought forth the crackpot proposal of a total evacuation of the entire city as a means of protest. Where to? How? Why?!

In fact, this bizarre idea had first been raised by Sinn Fein in the Dail, as they wriggled to find a way of defusing the class showdown in Limerick, only then to be adopted by the Labour leadership.
It was a complete abdication of leadership, one strand to their betrayal of what could have been built into a mass workers’ movement on social issues taking leadership of the national struggle for self-determination, pursuing an independent socialist Ireland – with high prospects of uniting workers in the north east around this class-based struggle, hot on the heels of their own recent general strike in Belfast in January/February that year.

Given that 70% of Irish trade unionists were members of British-based unions then, such a socialist challenge for workers’ power would have undoubtedly fed into the agitated state of consciousness of millions of workers in Scotland, England and Wales in the same post-War upheaval.

Probably precisely because they had at least a glimmering of what was at stake, in their craven desire not to unleash a mass workers’ movement they couldn’t control - and not to upset the applecart of a capitalist system they were increasingly buying into, and had no vision of overthrowing - the leaderships of both the British and Irish trade unions and Labour parties made their tactical moves.
They openly declared opposition to the continuation of the Limerick general strike, around 22nd April.

British imperialism forced to abandon Military Permits in Limerick

This emboldened the military general staff, led by Brigadier General Griffin, and the Limerick Chamber of Commerce. From the very early days of the Soviet they'd been meeting, seeking a ‘solution’, at first offering the utterly unacceptable ‘concession' of employers issuing passes to their workers, instead of the army issuing military permits.
Griffin had played a waiting game, probably unsure of his troops’ loyalty if they were deployed prematurely against strikers; one Scottish regiment had been withdrawn when they refused to obey orders.
But when the British TUC leaders scandalously came out against Limerick on the 22nd, and the Irish trade union and Labour Executive arrived there the next day, Griffin made his move, offering that no military passes would be required for workers going to and from their meals.

This satisfied the other two forces who had been meeting with the military and business bosses, desperately seeking a way of ending the Soviet – the Catholic Bishop Hallinan, and Limerick’s first Sinn Fein Mayor, Alphonsus O'Mara.
These two piled renewed pressure on the Strike Committee to capitulate, whilst the Pontious Pilates of the Irish Trade Union and Labour ‘leadership’ – including O'Brien and Johnston – stood by in alleged neutrality.
On the 24th April, the Strike Committee issued a Proclamation instructing those workers without need of military permits to return to work - a partial end to the strike – and by 27th a complete end to the strike was reluctantly declared.

The power of this heroic and ingenious struggle by Limerick’s workers forced British imperialism into a rapid retreat; a week or so after the Soviet had ended, on 5th May, the military permits were entirely scrapped in the city.
The ruling powers had overreached themselves, provoking a general strike and workers’ seizure of control of the city - endangering the security of their own capitalist power and privilege, had there been a capable, resolute socialist party and leadership to give strategic and tactical guidance to workers in Ireland at the time.

The tragic missing factor of a powerful, determined and conscious socialist party, rooted in the unions and working class, was made all the more painful and dire in its historic consequences in the years immediately following the Limerick Soviet.
A contagion of strikes, workplace occupations, and land seizures spread across the island – with at least a hundred local Soviets declared, in particular the Munster Soviets (Ireland's south-west province).

Irish Labour leaders tried to quell workers’ (including their own members’) revolutionary revolts, and met with and collaborated with the nationalist, pro-capitalist Sinn Fein leadership who ruled the Dail from its declaration in January 1919.
The latter nationalists routinely used Republican Courts and armed force – sections of the IRA (both those for and against the Treaty, during the Civil War) and then the Free State Army – to evict and smash up land seizures by land labourers, and workplace Soviets. On occasions they kidnapped their leaders and held them hostage to enforce return of the landed estates to the big landowners.
All this was an uncanny vindication of James Connolly’s warnings to his Irish Citizens Army, as they headed out to stage the 1916 Easter Rising, to hold onto their guns in the unlikely event of victory, as they would later have to deal with the very different class aims of the Irish Volunteers!

Workers' unity and socialism remain the key across a century

The Limerick Soviet – certainly for most workers in Scotland and Britain – is as little known of as the mighty, united general strike by Belfast workers in January/February 1919, which involved a massive 60,000 workers, lasted four weeks, involved Protestant and Catholic workers taking control of the city... and was likewise branded ‘a Soviet’ by many of its terrified capitalist enemies.

Both were part of a wave of workers in revolutionary challenges to their capitalist masters, British and Irish, that swept the land - particularly from 1918 to 1923.
How different Ireland and its subsequent history could have been, with a trained, experienced socialist leadership, deeply rooted in the workplaces and on the land. And how different this course of events could have been in Britain, and indeed Europe, had the spirited Irish workers been equipped with a socialist party in their midst that had been capable of seizing the opportunities for building workers' power and a socialist Ireland.
It would even have potentially ended the isolation of the young Russian workers' and peasants' state, preventing that isolation from breeding the cancerous tyranny of Stalinism a few years later.

So anyone who today is serious about wanting to challenge the poverty, inequality, repression and exploitation that is the very nature of the capitalist beast, should help lift the blanket of silence thrown over the Limerick Soviet and similar events.
Learn from them, be vastly encouraged by them, and rededicate themselves to helping create the organised socialist party required, a century on from Limerick, to help complete the socialist transformation that our predecessors caught a tantalising glimpse of in their heroic struggles.

STUC CONGRESS: PREPARE WORKERS TO WIN!

The 122nd annual Congress of the STUC assembles in Dundee as the noise surrounding Brexit drowns out the cries of workers for justice, security and equality.

With 39 affiliated trade unions, organising a total of 550,000 union members, the Scottish TUC has the potential to coordinate action around an entirely different vision of society, where the needs of millions in society replace the greed of a few thousand shareholders.

But to fulfil that potential requires a determination to take the vast array of progressive policies agreed by Congress delegates out to the workplaces and onto the streets, consciously engaging and mobilising workers in collective action.

This is not just a socialist pipedream. The theme of the STUC Congress is “Organising and Winning", with absolutely justified celebration of the recent victory by Glasgow's Equal Pay strikers.

This is a salutary example of how, after years of blockage by the Labour council and hesitancy by some of the unions, followed by foot-dragging by the SNP council, a campaign of conscious involvement of the women workers themselves unleashed an unstoppable force.
The magnificent 8,000-strong strike last October, and the heroic solidarity action by male cleansing workers, in bold defiance of anti-union legislation, forced the council into action, at a cost of £500million.

Equal Pay Strike & Teachers’ Victories

Other recent examples of the potential power of workers taking action, once a bit of leadership is given and members imbued with clear goals and events to mobilise around, include the EIS school teachers’ pay victory, and that of Home Care workers in Dundee city council.
Once the EIS had resolved to demand a 10 per cent pay rise, as part-compensation for a 24 per cent loss over 8 years, a systematic plan of school-based meetings empowered EIS members who had reached breaking point with pay cuts, work overload and stunted job prospects.
In turn, the mobilisation of up to 30,000 on their national demo both reflected the determination and added to it, laying the foundations for successive rejections of several ‘final’ offers from COSLA and the Scottish government, winning the concession of over 14 per cent over three years, on the eve of an actual strike ballot.

More recently, sustained campaigning by the joint unions, and then an overwhelming vote for strike action against the SNP-run Dundee city council, has forced them to abandon plans to impose either split shifts or pay cuts of £4,500 (through reduced hours) on home care staff. Another important victory for workers organising themselves for action.

The profoundly simple lessons of these and other struggles need to be applied by the STUC and its affiliates, if we are to avoid the vast variety of progressive policies being passed but then left to gather dust in union offices, or to merely use up digital space on union HQ computers.
That applies to issues immediately arising from Brexit, as well as a broad spectrum of issues in our workplaces, communities and entire society.

We Won't Pay for Brexit!

We are all too familiar with the cynical spin-doctor’s line about it being ‘a good day for bad news’. Brexit has been a good three years for bad news, with the cacophony of squabbles between different wings and factions of the capitalist class and their political parties distracting our attention whilst they slaughter workers’ rights, public services, benefits and jobs.

The STUC will debate Motions demanding defence of the rights and conditions of workers – including migrant workers – in the wake of Brexit. We need to loudly declare ‘We won’t pay for Brexit!’
Other Motions rightly demand that exit from the EU and its pro-privatisation regulations should be an opportunity to abolish contract tendering for the likes of Scotland’s ferries, and for permanent public ownership of our railways – as opposed to the Scottish government's continued preference for leasing the service out to the chaotic Abellio.

As capitalist profiteering – aided and abetted by the excuse of Brexit – leads to growing job losses and closures, we should support the calls for an industrial strategy that would create jobs and vastly enhance housing, transport, retail and energy.
It’s not good enough to rely on Scottish government Task Forces - usually designed to smooth the path of closures and redundancies, as seen at BiFab and Springburn Rail Depot.
All experience shows this requires democratic public ownership of the giants currently bestriding the economy; otherwise we will continue to witness private profit ruling and ruining people.

Public Ownership & Green Jobs

Likewise, public ownership of all energy sectors, including renewables - alongside transport, construction and the banks – is the prerequisite for job-creating measures that simultaneously tackle the life-threatening climate chaos.
A Just Transition to ‘green jobs' – including through a defence industry diversification plan – is at the heart of what’s required to save both people and planet. Pleading with the profiteers won’t work; nor will praying for peace between rival capitalist powers, who preside over a world wracked by wars and ethnic civil wars.

The STUC should enthusiastically support the Motions demanding an end to austerity, reversal of public sector pay cuts, and for the Scottish government and local councils to set No Cuts budgets, spearheading mobilisations of trade unionists and communities to win back some of the billions stolen by successive Westminster governments; butchery in turn passed on by Holyrood.
Serious struggles to win collective bargaining rights is equally important to reversing the theft of wages, rights and conditions across all sectors.

Sign the Online Petition HERE - TODAY!

£10 Now & Guaranteed Minimum 16-Hours Contracts

One of the pivotal policies that the entire trade union movement should unite in action around is being proposed at the STUC by my own union, Usdaw: an immediate minimum wage of £10-an-hour, regardless of age; guaranteed minimum 16-hour contracts for all workers who want them; and the legal right to contract hours based on actual hours worked – abolishing zero hours contracts.

In reality, the £10 minimum agreed by the TUC almost 5 years ago is rapidly falling behind a genuine living wage, with at least 14 per cent inflation since, which is why Usdaw (in our forthcoming annual conference document) calls for £10 as the immediate minimum, “rising with either inflation or average wages, whichever is greater”.
Alongside calls for more systematic action on equal pay for women workers, these fighting demands could and should be used to engage, motivate and mobilise workers into action.

Workers Need Socialism

Underlying the wide-ranging policies being debated at STUC is the urgent need for root and branch transformation of the entire system we live under.
Every specific demand for action points to the need for democratic public ownership and control of industries and services, if workers are not to remain enslaved by the pursuit of maximum profit by those in power. In one word, it demands socialism.
That won’t be gifted to us by the capitalist class, nor by parties married to the mis-named 'free enterprise' economy.
It won’t be achieved by resting on our laurels after agreeing transformative policies at STUC Congress.
It requires consciously-led mass action around achieving those policies, rooted in an understanding that we are engaged in a struggle between opposing classes.

We need to prepare workers at every level for what is at stake.
If we fail to prepare, we have to prepare to fail!
With a socialist vision of the future, and key fighting policies to mobilise around, pockets of struggle in recent times prove that we can organise to win. The alternative is too horrendous to contemplate, regardless of the details around Brexit.

[Some of] MY LIFE AND TIMES AS A SOCIALIST!

A huge thank you to Jim and all at Sunny G radio for inviting me to do this extended interview on some of my experiences as a lifelong socialist. It covers parts of my upbringing and early influences in Ireland; the civil rights movement and 'Troubles'; victories for mass workers' struggle in Liverpool; expulsion from the Labour party; Scotland and the foundation of the SSP; a wide range of principles and policies I've fought for; and publications I've written as a contribution to working class socialism. Please find the time to have a listen (link below). Consider ordering some of the books and pamphlets. And strengthen the struggle for socialism by joining the SSP. Thanks. Here's the link to listen - comments and shares welcome! https://scottishsocialistparty.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Sunny_Govan_-_Richie_Venton.mp3