YES! YES! UCS: WHAT A SHOW OF WORKING-CLASS POWER!

 

YES! YES! UCS: WHAT A SHOW OF WORKING-CLASS POWER!

How delighted I was to be invited by the organisers - People’s Past People's Future - to their showing, in Rutherglen, of YES! YES! UCS!

What a show! What an amazing night of popular theatre. What a powerful, awe-inspiring portrayal of the power of the Scottish working class, once mobilised. And what an impact it had on the audience, overwhelmingly local working-class people.

Written by Neil Gore for Townsend Productions to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the momentous 1971-72 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders famous work-in, the production is a phenomenal combination of entertainment, education on a key chapter in labour movement history, and lesson in class power, delivered with uplifting verve by two young women actors, Janie Thomson and Heather Gourdie.

Workers Occupy the Shipyards

The theatre show is part musical, part sketches and dialogue by the two characters, interspersed by powerful speeches, peppered with humour, pathos and brilliant storytelling. It draws the audience into the whirlwind events of the workers’ occupation of the closure-threatened shipyards, solidarity conferences and general strikes, and the ultimate victory of the class power unleashed against the vicious axe-men of the remote Westminster Tory government, led by Ted Heath.

In what was an overwhelmingly (almost 95%) male workforce, the play dares - successfully - to portray events through the eyes, experiences and personal growth of the two young women characters, Aggie and Eddy, who worked in stock control and the shipyard’s drawing room.

Through dynamic dialogue and song - backed up by vivid poster art, animation, real-life newsreel and recordings of powerful speeches by the likes of the workers’ main public representative, Jimmy Reid - we witness the personal growth of the two young women workers into dynamic fighters, at the same time as the play vividly recounts the mass struggles of the time: the power of the Scottish working class and their active allies across Britain and the far continents.

Personal dreams, doubts, bereavement and growth in ‘the college of knowledge’ that is the trade union movement are all skilfully, powerfully presented in a fashion that never loses the attention of the working-class audience. It is funny, moving, inspiring, and absolutely uncompromising in its socialist message.

Aggie goes from stock controller to shop steward, breaking through nervousness to become an inspiring orator, discovering the power of words to ‘light up something inside us.’ Eddy follows the advice of her dying shipyard worker father and ‘follows her dream’ to become an artist, but never loses her roots, taking up the fight for justice for workers blighted by asbestosis.

Part of the large, working-class audience in Rutherglen 

Hope Shines Eternal

And hope shines out. Hope based on this accurate account of the real victories of united workers’ struggles 50 years ago, but also hope that new, current generations will reawaken to such methods, as – in Aggie’s words – “the Tories never learn but also never forget nor forgive us.”

After an interval during which the People’s Past People Future organisers kindly laid on ‘a strikers’ supper’ of wholesome soup and rolls, the night was rounded off by songs from Rutherglen Community Choir and a powerful rendition of two of his union songs by 81-year-old socialist singer-songwriter, Arthur Johnston.

Socialism Returns!

And yet it didn’t end there! A big group of the audience – including many of the large numbers who bought my pamphlet Socialism Returns in the 21^st Century, as advertised by the organisers during the raffle! – kept me back for nearly an hour discussing why we need the spirit of UCS today, or as a few of them said, “we need a revolution!”

Many of these men and women were scathing about all the political parties – “For the first time in my life I won't vote for any of them" – but readily added they trust our party, the SSP, because they know we are honest and tell it how it is on the side of the working class.

I left this brilliant night thinking: imagine if YES! YES! UCS! was shown on mainstream TV!

Imagine the impact on younger people with little or no knowledge of such glorious periods of working-class struggle. Imagine how it would uplift and embolden workers today, as they face the capitalist thuggery at P&O ferries, fire and rehire, and a multitude of daily assaults on our lives as the profiteers seek to recover and replenish their ill-gotten wealth, at the expense of terrible suffering and privation for millions of workers and their children.

Which is why those in power would not dare televise it! And why it’s so important that others imitate the actions of People's Past People's Future by taking this marvellous, inspiring piece of popular theatre into local communities: to the people with most to gain by rising up in the manner of UCS.

As John Lennon sang in response to the UCS, “Power to the People!”

READ THE BLOG & BUY THE PAMPHLET 

Last August 2021 I wrote an article on the UCS work-in, on the 50th anniversary of one of the mammoth demonstrations through Glasgow in support of the right to work. 

It cannot match the graphic portrayal of musical theatre, but it helps give background reading to the events, and lessons for today. Please have a read of it. 

You will find it here: http://richieventon.blogspot.com/2021/08/ucs-still-inspiration-50-years-on.html

And consider ordering a copy of Socialism Returns in the 21st Century - which sold in large numbers at the People's Past People's Future presentation of YES! YES! UCS! 

Order here: https://scottishsocialistparty.org/product/socialism-returns-in-the-21st-century/

NATIONALISE P&O TO STOP CAPITALIST THUGGERY

P&O bosses have used the most outrageous capitalist thuggery in living memory, only comparable to Ronald Reagan's mass sacking of air traffic controllers in  August 1981, when he had PATCO strike leaders manacled, chained like slaves, then paraded on TV stations to cow the rest of the American working class.

But the crews on P&O were not even striking! They were sacked on the spot, without warning, by video, then forced off the vessels by mercenaries with handcuffs and balaclavas hired by Interforce, as minibus loads of people from all over the world were dragooned up the gangplanks to replace the 800 workers. When crews on many vessels refused to leave the ship, P&O bosses added blackmail to their physical force thuggery, threatening officers on board with loss of every penny in so-called redundancy money unless they surrendered.

In the weeks since, P&O top dog, Peter Hepplethwaite, has brazenly admitted they deliberately broke the law in their mass sackings, told MPs he would do it again, and made clear to MSPs he has no intention of resigning, despite his law-breaking. He tried to justify their replacement of crews on union-negotiated wages by slave labour on as little as £1.80-an-hour by boasting the average pay of his scab army is £5.50-an-hour. His basic salary is £325,000... and the rest!

Demand National Union Rates for the Job

Even the Tories felt obliged to huff and puff about applying the £8.91 minimum wage in British waterways – which not only is too little and too late, but dodges the central point that they’d still be vastly undercutting the wages negotiated by the RMT and Nautilus for the proper crews who've been viciously sacked. Instead of such chicanery, laws should be enforced that any seafarers get the nationally negotiated rate and conditions for the job.

And the Tories knew about this wage-cutting thuggery in advance. Not only did P&O inform the Tory Ministry days before, but apparently raised their intentions at least as far back as November.

On top of which, they are not the first pirates of profit to pursue this course, just the first to do it with such crass brutality and disregard for recognised unions.

Pirates of Profit

Irish Ferries, back in 2005, sacked hundreds of crew, albeit with legal consultation procedures, and replaced them with foreign agency workers. The RMT condemned the government at the time for “rolling out the red carpet” for these sackings. The same Irish Ferries last year announced plans to bring in ‘low-cost’ crewing models - similar to P&O – on their Dover-Calais service.

In 2014, the late RMT leader, Bob Crow, denounced “super-exploitation of foreign nationals in the British shipping industry, a massive scandal that the political elite want to keep quiet", as the union organised protests over Condor Ferries, on the south coast of England, hiring foreign crews on as little as £2.40-an-hour.

The response of trade unionists and socialists has been magnificent, with large, lively demos at all the ports, including Cairnryan and Larne. Workers recognise this as a dangerous attack on us all, which cannot go unchallenged. 

Defy Tory Laws to Win Reinstatement

As I’ve tried to convey when invited by the RMT organisers to speak at the demos at Cairnryan and the supply chain of slave labourers, Clyde Marine Recruitment, we need to learn lessons from our class enemies in fighting for reinstatement of the crews on their previous wages and conditions. Politely pleading with them won't win the jobs back. The bosses were shamelessly ready and willing to break the law in pursuit of  even higher profits for DP World,  who last month announced record profits of $3.8billion. Trade unionists need to be prepared to defy the Tories’ anti-working-class laws by taking what would be deemed by the Tories ‘secondary industrial action’.

Unions representing dockers at the ports should be organising non-handling of the P&O slave wage-ships, which are in any case so unsafe, crewed by people so untrained (as well as savagely exploited), that even the Maritime and Coastguard Agency has tied up two of them in the space of one week – at Dover and Larne – which is unprecedented.

Likewise, where any of the haulier drivers are in a union, steps should be taken to stop their use of P&O until the crews are reinstated.

As traffic is diverted to the likes of Stena line, workers and their unions will need to be vigilant and prepared to take appropriate industrial action on the impossible workloads that their own bosses will likely impose, especially at such peak travelling times as Easter. The entire industry is run by profiteers in a ruthless race to the bottom, and now is the time for the workers' movement to start to turn the tide.

Blockade the Slave Wage-ships 

While taking these steps, the wider trade union movement leaderships – national unions, TUC, STUC included – need to seriously build blockades of the ports, properly mobilising members from the workplaces, after organising meetings with RMT or Nautilus speakers, to form human rings of steel that prevent sailings by P&O slave wage-ships.

And the Tories’ crocodile tears don't  wash! They have consciously, systematically created the atmosphere and the battery of anti-union laws to punish workers with savage wage cuts to turbocharge profits for big business, especially in the aftermath of the Coronavirus crisis, as we've warned they would for the past two years.

They need to be bombarded by massive demonstrations of trade unionists and their communities with demands that the government should seize the ships, take them out of the hands of the law-trashing P&O pirates of profit, and take them into state ownership, to make them safe by reinstating the trained crews on the wages and conditions previously won by their unions.

Nationalise under Workers’ Control

It is outrageous that not only does P&O account for a huge proportion of passenger traffic, but 15% of UK freight, and yet they have been allowed by the government to add to their portfolio by being big players in the first, London-based Freeport being pursued by Boris Johnson's regime – the tax-dodging haven for exploiters being pursued not only by the Tories but also Scotland's government, as spelt out by the RMT's Gordon Martin in a previous issue of the Voice.

P&O is the epitome of capitalism, of ruthless class rule for profit, deploying physical force in pursuit of their aims when they think it necessary. The united response of the trade union movement needs to match that class determination, demanding nationalisation of P&O and the entire shipping and transport sector, under democratic workers’ control, to create a public service, not a haven for profiteering tax dodgers who will resort to the vicious super-exploitation of desperate people to achieve their maximum profit margins.

This whole episode reinforces the case for socialism, for a future based on People not Profit. 

WATCH VIDEO DURING BLOCKADE OF CLYDE MARINE RECRUITMENT AGENCY, SOURCE OF P&O SLAVE LABOUR: 

https://youtu.be/uOQsTi8K2ug