RUTHERGLEN AND HAMILTON WEST BY-ELECTION RESULTS: INITIAL THOUGHTS

Labour leaders Sir Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar are waxing lyrical about the result of last night’s Rutherglen & Hamilton West by-election being ‘seismic’; proof of the looming certainty of Labour sweeping into government; an indication that people see the need for ‘a fresh start’ and that they’ve entrusted Labour as the party to bring about ‘change’ from the ‘incompetence, inefficiency, and divisiveness of two governments’ – Tory and SNP.

A sense of proportion is important in politics, and above all a willingness to dig beneath the surface of things.

There is no denying Labour crushed the SNP in the vote – winning a 58% share of votes cast, compared with the SNP’s 27%. Undeniably, that is a huge turnaround from the voting shares in the 2019 general election in this seat, when the SNP won with 44% of all votes cast, against Labour’s 34% share.

Polarised Vote Between Labour and SNP

We predicted a massive polarisation and crushing predominance in votes between Labour and SNP, in a battleground that could help determine the fate of both Labour leaders and Humza Yousaf - which would crush and squeeze other parties, including the SSP.  On the day, Labour and SNP votes combined accounts for 85.3% of the total votes cast!

But despite the superficial talk of ‘a 20% swing from the SNP to Labour’ – heralding a Labour government next year, with at least 20 seats gained by Labour in Scotland - this vote was no ringing endorsement of Starmer’s right-wing Labour.

Labour’s vote actually fell by 700 since 2019. And the most crushing indictment of what is on offer to working-class voters from the major, ‘mainstream’, pro-capitalist parties is that a derisory 37% of registered voters turned out to vote – a catastrophic collapse from a 66.5% turnout in December 2019.

People were clearly sending out the message ‘a plague on all your houses’, ‘we’re fed up with the lot of you’.

Catastrophic Collapse for SNP

Chief victims of the consequences of this widespread voter disgust are the SNP – whose vote collapsed from nearly 24,000 to 8,399! That has huge repercussions for Humza Yousaf and the SNP.

Voter desertion from the SNP was undoubtedly driven – amongst a few factors – by anger at the Covid rule-breaking by former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier. Despite being chucked out of the SNP by Nicola Sturgeon on discovery of her cavalier breach of Covid rules, and sitting as an Independent MP since, Ferrier was still widely regarded as linked with the SNP – with not just the necessary 10% of the electorate but 15% of them turning out in July, photographic ID in hand, to cast their vote in the Recall Petition, triggering the by-election.

In tandem with that, we witnessed widespread, often scathing criticism of the SNP, in part driven by unionist media vilification, but more importantly by the lived experiences of thousands of people who feel bitterly let down and disillusioned with the SNP in government – compounded by the crises surrounding the police inquiries into their financial affairs, and the unprecedented divisions on display during the recent SNP leadership contest.

Workers’ Collective Action puts SNP on the Spot

In my opinion, underpinning all these factors is the eruption of workers’ collective conflict with the SNP/Scottish Green Party government, in several sectors such as FE colleges, schools, local government generally, the fire service, and previously on the railways – in stark contrast to previous years when they got away with appearing to be ‘all things to all classes, workers and employers alike’, during a period of very low levels of class struggle.

Now they’ve been put on the spot in wage struggles, trade union action on jobs and public services – leading to the frequent comments we encountered in the by-election along the lines “the SNP have had their chance, now I’m voting Labour.”

Tory Votes Collapsed into Labour

However, superficial commentary on ‘a 20% swing from the SNP to Labour’ misses another key factor; the Tory vote collapsed, catastrophically, from over 8,000 in 2019 to 1,192. And we have plenty of anecdotal evidence that many of them didn’t just stay at home but turned out to vote Labour “to get the bloody SNP out”, as more than one of them said to us.

Likewise, Labour will have gained some ex-LibDem votes, given the latter’s vote plummeted from 2,791 to 895.

No Enthusiasm for Labour

Above all, people abstained en masse, with a mere 37% turnout, down from 66.5% in 2019! So, no ringing endorsement of Starmer's and Sarwar's Labour; there was no enthusiasm for Labour on the ground, and even many who voted for them on the day told us of their contempt for what Starmer represents. 

Yes, this by-election result reinforces the likelihood of a Labour government next year – primarily as a backlash against the corruption, incompetence, and class cruelty of the Tories. But the great advantage of the by-election - and in particular our courageous decision to stand an SSP candidate despite our accurate predictions of a polarised domination of the voting between Labour and SNP - is that it has helped unmask Labour in the eyes of thousands of people, including many who voted Labour whilst ‘holding their nose’ at the stench of betrayal emanating from Starmer’s weekly retreats on policies.

Change? No Change!

Starmer, Dame Jackie Baillie, and their tame parrot, Michael Shanks, trotted out clichés about the ‘need for change’ and ‘a fresh start’. But in the same breath they effectively warned people not to get their hopes up of either change or anything resembling a fresh start under a Labour government!

Despite our modest resources, the SSP played an invaluable and very incisive role in exposing Labour’s act of ‘getting their betrayal in first’, long before being elected.

SSP Exposed Labour’s Continuity Tories

We denounced – on street meetings, in leaflets, and press statements – their escalating reversal of previous promises: to abolish the bedroom tax; scrap the vicious two-child benefits cap and its attendant rape clause; ban all zero hours contracts; levy a wealth tax on the rich; take any action on climate change that differs from the Tories, such as stopping the 100+ new licences to tax-dodging Big Oil to plunder and pollute in the North Sea for profit.

We exposed their refusal to promise a £15 minimum wage; their refusal to breach Tory public spending limits and branded them as ‘the Continuity Tories’ – a phrase on our street meetings and leaflets which caught a lot of attention.

SSP Under a Labour Government

This was an important preparation for the role the SSP will have to play if or when Labour wins next year’s general election; warning working-class people of their capitalist politics, their support for the same rotten poverty, inequality, exploitation, and pollution as we’ve suffered under years of Tory rule. And more importantly still, popularising a genuine, hard-hitting, socialist alternative.

SSP Vote

As we expected and predicted, the SSP – along with all other parties and candidates – was squeezed by the polarised binary battle between Labour and the SNP, in the entirely undemocratic, unrepresentative Westminster First Past the Post voting system.

We lost count of the people who said, “I agree with what you’re saying, but you’re not going to win”. Unfortunately, they proceeded to waste their votes on either Labour or the SNP, sometimes despite believing that would indeed lead to ‘no change’.

We came a respectable 8th out of 14 candidates. We had to fight ferociously for every vote, and for every column inch in the media.

I will leave a fuller account of our outstanding campaign for a further article. For now, suffice to say we probably had more local activists campaigning than the victorious Labour – who mostly relied on MPs, MSPs, councillors, and hired party staffers to swamp the area. They came from all over Britain – including at least as far afield as London, the Midlands, and Cornwall!

Vibrant SSP Campaign

We were the only party to hold countless street stalls and street meetings at least twice a week, often simultaneously in two or three of the four towns.

We had two brilliant public events: a night of film and music, featuring the oft banned “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn! The Big Lie”, exposing the conscious sabotage of Corbyn’s election prospects by Starmer and the right-wing Labour machine; and an inspiring SSP public meeting, with speakers from the FE Unison strikes, University strikes, Fire Brigades Union, SSP candidate Bill Bonnar, and myself.

Both were regarded by SSP members and totally new people in attendance as one of the best events they could remember, adding several recruits to the SSP on top of those who’d already joined us in the three months of campaigning prior to then.

On the day, we came 8^th out of 14 candidates.

Another tiny group on the left – who we asked to stand aside in favour of giving the SSP a free run in a constituency where our party has a history of activity for the past 25 years, including contesting parliamentary and council elections at least 12 different times, and where they have literally never stood before  – added some confusion amongst voters attracted to a socialist alternative.

Whilst the SSP got about 160% as many votes as them, the pity is that our combined votes would have put us in at least 6^th place, beating the two reactionary parties, Reform (ex-UKIP) and Family Party.

Indeed, if they hadn’t indulged in such a sectarian act, the vote for the well-established SSP would have been even greater than the sum of the two divided parts, as I asked them to recognise when we met to try and get them to stand aside.   

Popularising Socialism; Building the SSP

Our vote was never the prime criterion for us standing. We popularised a socialist alternative on the streets, had two brilliant public events, recruited large numbers of quality new members, helped train many members in the battle, and got a lot of very hard-earned press coverage. The SSP’s profile has been enhanced immensely.

Despite our modest vote, the campaign was a great success. It lays firm foundations for the future role of the SSP, as the growing socialist opposition to a mercilessly right-wing, pro-capitalist Labour government in the year or so ahead.  

It took great courage, and bucketloads of vision and dedication, to put up a socialist challenge in the specific circumstances of this by-election; we can be proud of all the SSP members and future members who waged this relentless socialist campaign for nearly four months.

 

IT'S OFFICIAL: LABOUR ARE THE REAL CONSERVATIVES!

“Labour are the real conservatives.” 

So says Sir Keir Starmer, making official what most of us already knew. 

The knight of the realm went on to elaborate: “Somebody has got to stand up for what makes this country great”, declaring his intention of making Labour “change its DNA”, in a project he described as “Clause 4 on steroids”. 

The latter refers to the infamous Tony Blair’s purge of socialist members and socialist aims from the Labour Party thirty years ago – scrapping the socialist Clause 4 Part 4, which pledged Labour “to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” 

So Starmer’s ‘Clause 4 on steroids’ mission to make Labour ‘the real conservatives’ leaves little to the imagination. 

Beware of False Friends 

As growing hatred for Tory atrocities against working-class people obliterates over 1,000 of their council positions in England, and opinion polls speak of Scottish Labour winning seats off the SNP, working-class people desperate for change should beware of false Labour friends. 

There are some good and decent people in the ranks of Scottish Labour, trade unionists included. And the Scottish Socialist Party has a proven record of organising with them in common cause on picket lines, in building solidarity with strikers, in taking action against the profiteers, racists, fascists, and other human dross. But we have no illusions in Scottish Labour as a party of the working class. 

When Anas Sarwar made bogus claims about supporting workers’ rights, when he addressed the recent STUC Congress, he should have been called out for rank hypocrisy, given that for years he refused to even let USDAW recruit workers in his warehouse, let alone recognise the union for negotiations. Then he tried to disguise his track record by handing over his shares to his young children in a trust. It's no coincidence he did so after I and others in USDAW had called him out for his anti-trade union antics, when he was seeking the support of our union as deputy leader of Scottish Labour, with the unqualified support of USDAW’s dominant right-wing leadership. 

The truth is Scottish Labour have long since abandoned the working class and only make noises about supporting trade unionists in a cynical play to exploit workers’ votes, as the increasingly discredited SNP/Scottish Green government comes into collision with trade unionists. 

The hunger to dump the Tories is in danger of getting a New Tory PM

Starmer Abandons All Promises 

Under the centralised dictatorship of Keir Starmer, Labour has abandoned even the timid reforms they previously promised. As the giant energy companies rip billions of profits out of people in desperate fuel poverty, Starmer has abandoned Labour's previous policy of a public energy company - which in any case merely amounted to a state company competing with the existing profiteers, rather than the necessary full-blown public ownership of all forms of energy which the SSP advocates. 

Starmer’s Labour have likewise dropped the demand for nationalisation of Royal Mail and done a complete U-turn on abolition of student tuition fees down South, which had been a policy that mobilised tens of thousands of young people behind Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. 

Blair's landslide election in 1997 left Tory laws and inequality intact

Labour Denies Democratic Rights 

The ‘Starmtroopers’ - as Sir Keir’s disciples rather stupidly and distastefully decided to label themselves - are not even democrats, let alone socialists. 

They point blank refuse even the right to a referendum vote on Scottish independence, with the same devotion to (literally and politically) wrapping themselves in the blood-stained flag of British imperialism - the Union Jack - as the Tories. 

When the vicious anti-protest Public Order Bill of Rishi Sunak was rammed through parliament on the eve of the coronation and used to arrest peaceful protesters calling for a republic on the day of parading a parasite king around in a gold, bejewelled carriage costing millions to public funds, Labour's leadership refused to pledge that they would repeal this anti-democratic legislation. 

The pathetic excuse given by Labour's Foreign Affairs spokesperson, David Lammy was “It would take up too much parliamentary time. Labour can’t come into office picking through all the Conservative legislation and repealing it.” 

What contemptible scorn that shows towards people's civil rights. And what an alarming signpost towards what a Labour government will do with the most repressive anti-union laws in the western world. 

History of Betraying Workers 

When it comes to anti-trade union legislation, Labour seems to have cooled off even on its very specific, limited earlier pledge to scrap the Tories’ brutal Minimum Services Level Bill. This threatens workers with the sack if they refuse to go to work on strike days, despite their union having cleared all the high hurdles required to carry out a legal ballot for industrial action. 

However, these unforgivable stances by ‘modern’ Labour are no accident or aberration. They are merely the modern manifestation of a long, inglorious history of pro-capitalist Labour leaders siding with the employers’ class against workers - deploying the full force of the law, and more, going back decades. 

During recent ambulance workers’ strikes, Labour MP Stephen Kinnock publicly supported the Tories’ use of the army to break these frontline workers’ action in pursuit of decent pay. He's the son of the ermined Lord Neil Kinnock, who refused to support the year-long miners’ strike of 1984-5, despite representing a South Wales mining community, and then joined the chorus of denunciation of those heroic workers in the latter stages of their desperate fight for survival. 

Labour Kept Tory Anti-Union Laws 

Throughout the 13 years of Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (1997-2010) they steadfastly refused to repeal the vicious battery of anti-worker, anti-union laws imposed by Thatcher’s Tories in the aftermath of the miners being defeated. The only real exception to that was that they lifted the ban on trade union membership at the GCHQ spy centre… but that was only conceded on condition of a strict no-strike clause. 

During the mid-1990s, when council workers in the Labour-led Glasgow City Council were driven to take strike action, Labour council leader Frank McAveetey threatened to jail the rank-and-file union leadership, courtesy of the Tory anti-union laws. 

Blair converted Labour into a nakedly, proudly capitalist party by scrapping the socialist aims encapsulated in Clause 4 part 4 - “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange” - by neutering the influence of trade unions over party decision-making, and by shutting down Labour Party democracy to prevent socialists within its ranks winning any influence, nationally or locally. 

He achieved his openly stated mission by converting Labour into the equivalent of the American Democrat Party; another capitalist institution, which certainly exploits and abuses workers’ votes, but doesn't even pretend to be a workers’ party, let alone a socialist one. 

1945 Labour government used troops against dockers 5 days after being elected  

Serialised Use of Strike-breaking Troops 

However, even so-called Old Labour, which preceded Blair’s New Tories, has a history stained by the use of anti-union laws and even the deployment of troops, to break the will of workers in struggle. 

A few random examples suffice to show that whilst up until about 30 years ago Labour could be defined as a mass workers’ party with a primarily pro-capitalist leadership, that meant they refused to challenge the capitalist class and frequently sided with the exploiters against the workers whose votes they relied upon. 

It was a Labour government which is 1977-8 deployed troops against striking firefighters, earning the derision of working-class people when the army's Green Goddesses often had to be push-started, such was their state of dereliction, as they feebly tried to respond to fires.

The 1964-70 Labour government of Harold Wilson drafted “In Place of Strife”, a package of anti-union laws lifted straight from the Tories’ playbook, which was only halted by the ferocious opposition of the organised trade union movement, driven from the bottom upwards. 

Labour government used troops against firefighters' strikes

Concession and Repression 

Even the frequently lauded post-war Attlee Labour government of 1945-51 has a chequered record. It's true that under the mass pressure of demands for radical change and the fear of revolution that swept Europe, they carried out the most radical reforms in the history of Labour in power - creating the NHS, welfare state, and building tens of thousands of council houses. 

Alongside that they nationalised a series of collapsing industries, such as coal mining, railways, gas, and electricity. 

But the same Labour government sent troops in against striking dockers five days after being elected – and again used 21,000 troops to break dockers’ strikes in the autumn of 1945. On 14 different occasions, between July 1945 and October 1951, the Labour government sent troops in against strikers, including dockers, gas workers, and lorry drivers at Smithfield meat market. 

Those examples could be greatly added to but suffice to show that any party which accepts the continued rule of the capitalist class, and refuses to mobilise workers for socialist change, will frequently side with the sworn enemy of working people and utilise the same anti-democratic, anti-worker, anti-trade union laws that the open enemies of the working class in the form of the Tories readily use. 

Indeed, that also applies to the SNP, who recently declared their intention to use the army to break a firefighters’ strike, after the sweeping majority vote for industrial action was announced by the FBU.

Whilst SNP threaten use of army to break firefighters' strike, SSP stand with workers

Build a Working-Class Socialist Party 

Workers need a genuine workers’ party. Socialists need to be organised in a socialist party. 

The Labour Party does not qualify for either definition. Their historic track record, their readiness to do deals with Tories, and their abandonment of even the mildest reform policies make them unfit for the loyalty and votes of the working class. 

Individual socialists in Scottish Labour are nothing short of political prisoners. They should be released and offered a home in the SSP, which genuinely stands up for the historic socialist aims of full trade union and civil rights; democratic public ownership with workers’ control; and a socialist democracy where the fabulous wealth of the nation is used in a Socialist Green New Deal that could reverse the capitalist onslaught on jobs, incomes, public services, and the health of the planet we live on. 

No trust in Starmer’s and Sarwar’s New Tories! 

Join the SSP and help build a genuine working-class socialist party!

https://membership.scottishsocialistparty.org/join_us/

THE TITANS OF TIMEX, DUNDEE 1993

A typical early morning picket, Timex 1993. Photo: Craig Maclean

Thirty years ago, on 29 January 1993, workers in the multinational Timex Dundee factory launched a seven-month battle that electrified workers across the UK and far beyond.

A mostly female workforce of 343, they fought with heroic courage to stop the decimation of jobs, wages, holidays, pension rights and other conditions, but were confronted by mass police intimidation and press smears. 

At a localised level, this titanic battle between workers and a ruthless capitalist employer, backed to the hilt by a press lie-machine and a virtual police occupation of parts of their own city, had many of the hallmarks of the great miners' strike of 1984-5. 

This showdown occurred under a Tory Westminster government that had constructed a mountain of anti-union laws to block workers’ resistance to being exploited. But the workers and their shop stewards drove a coach and horses through the Tory laws designed to help multinationals and millionaires profit from generations of workers and then toss them aside like squeezed lemons. 

They ignored the limit of six to a picket day and daily. They fought on despite elected shop stewards being banned from the picket line, with court interdicts and threats of being jailed. They confronted a diluted version of apartheid South Africa’s pass laws, which banned pickets from areas of their native city - which were saturated by police.

Waves of Solidarity

This courageous fighting militancy triggered waves of admiration and support from tens of thousands of workers across the UK, who collected in their workplaces for the Timex workers’ hardship fund, and travelled hundreds of miles to join them on the mass pickets and demos that were an almost weekly occurrence for much of the 7-month showdown.

And if the national union leaderships and STUC had shown half the determination and courage of those who mounted daily 24-hour pickets in all weather; regular mass pickets; protest demos and solidarity strike actions with the Timex workers, they could have won a clear, history-changing victory.

Timex had a Dundee branch factory for 47 years, with 5,000 workers in the 1970s. It was one of the shiny new electronic industries - alongside the likes of National Cash Registers - that was bribed to set up shop in the former city of 'jute, jam and journalism', as shipbuilding and heavy industry collapsed, with an array of council and government grants and tax breaks. 

But as the SNP government of today would do well to heed, reliance on multinational capitalists setting up branch plants in Scotland for its skilled, cheap labour and generous business tax regime is a recipe for the creation of urban deserts when they up sticks and move on to even richer pastures, devastating whole communities in their global race for maximum profit. 

The Sussex Spiv 

Timex, whose HQ was in Connecticut, brought in a ruthless Sussex spiv, Peter Hall, as £100,000-a-year director of operations in Britain. He started to strip the Dundee plant of jobs and working conditions. Before Xmas 1992 there was open talk of layoffs. On 5 January the workers each got a letter, some of them 'thick', meaning they were sacked, others 'thin', not laid off. 

The workers responded to this vicious attempt to divide and conquer by occupying the canteen. The slippery Hall promised negotiations with their union, the AEEU (now part of UNITE), and up until 29 January the bulk of the workers did rotating shifts to fill the gaps created by layoffs, awaiting the promised negotiations. Meantime they voted by 92 per cent to strike, which they did on 29 January when it was plain the promised talks and attempts to bring in ACAS weren't going to happen.

Women workers were the backbone of the inspiring Timex struggle

Strike and Lockout

Round-the-clock pickets were mounted, rotas arranged, food and shelter organised on the Harrison Road gates.

Mass meetings of strikers had agreed to march back to work en masse on 17 February, united, demanding reinstatement of all. The Timex bosses locked them out, demanding lay-offs, a 10 per cent pay cut across the board, loss of holidays, increased hours, cuts to pension rights and other humiliations as the price for opening the gates. The workers refused to be cowed, and were locked out for the next 6 months, until Timex eventually gave up their attempt to run the factory with unskilled, untrained, underpaid scab labour and closed down its Dundee plant on 28 August 1993.

Eight years after the defeat of the miners, the defiant stance of Timex workers was an inspiration to hundreds of thousands of workers across the UK, who for years had faced managerial dictatorship and multiple setbacks in the wake of Thatcher’s Tories inflicting defeat on the vanguard of the trade union movement, the miners. 

The Timex revolt occurred at a time when the miners and rail workers were gearing up to strike together against job losses, and public sector workers planned action against the 1.5 per cent pay limit of the time.

Scottish Militant Labour - the biggest single component forming the SSP 5 years later - played a major role in mobilising solidarity and discussing tactics with the Timex strikers

Scottish Socialists 

Some of us who went on 5 years later to be founding members and organisers of the SSP gave our practical and political support to the strikers throughout their battle. We held regular discussions with pickets and the Strike Committee, and organized solidarity speaking tours round workplaces and public meetings all over the UK and Ireland, and even through contacts in other parts of Europe. 

Women workers blossomed as public speakers, winning the hearts and minds of tens of thousands. As one of them expressed it at the time, "When I was in there in the factory I felt like a nobody, now I am somebody. I feel ten times more important than anyone in there [scabs]".

Mass Pickets

One of the key means of building wider support for the locked-out workers was mass pickets, often on a Monday morning, with buses and carloads from all over the UK arriving. On several occasions at least 1,000 thronged outside the main gates; arguably the biggest pickets in Scotland in modern history.

Two schools of thought competed. Some top union officials, who had done nothing to call or build these expressions of workers’ solidarity, wanted just a passive gathering. Others, including the Strike Committee and pickets themselves, agreed with those of us who advocated mass human walls of solidarity outside the factory entrance to block buses ferrying in scabs. 

We argued that to be fully effective, and to sustain the momentum and involvement of workers trekking across the country to join them, the mass pickets needed to aim at halting the buses, halting production, even if only for a few hours or a day. And on some occasions, Hall gave the scabs a day off when a mass picket had been announced - a tremendous boost to morale at the time.

Police were mobilised from across the UK to escort scab-carrying buses through the pickets

Police thuggery

Mass police operations were mounted to block the pickets from being effective, with police violence and snatch squads. Some of their actions were beyond belief for the workers, a harsh eye-opener to the role of the state. 

They crushed pickets up against fences whilst they escorted scabs into work. A young woman had her arm broken during arrest by snatch squads on the picket line, was dragged into police cells, then taken to have her arm set on the hospital, and brought back to the cells for 27 hours before being released - without charge!!

A Glasgow socialist who drove a minibus to the mass picket to drop people off was arrested and charged with attempted murder, but after the fury that erupted at the arrest she had her charge reduced to dangerous driving; from ‘attempted murder’ to ‘attempted driving‘!!

Despite the peaceful nature of the pickets themselves, Tory prime minister John Major denounced "picket line violence“. The majority of the press took their cue from this monstrous lie, with headlines like "mob fury". 

Police chiefs and editors collaborated with Timex bosses to demonise the pickets and their supporters, in a vain attempt to isolate them from the mass of workers.

Union Right-Wing Treachery 

But the most scandalous aspect of this was the way right-wing AEEU and STUC officials and Labour politicians aped the Tory talk of ‘picket line violence‘. 

Needless to say most of them had never attended a picket, especially during the 90-day sacking notices. But when the Timex workers’ resilience and mass pressure for action from below by active trade unionists obliged the STUC's general secretary Campbell Christie to lead a special STUC General Council trip to the picket on 19 May, he rightly stated, "There will be no peace and tranquility at the Timex factory until all sacked workers are reinstated". 

But he went on to wreck the impact of that comment by telling TV cameras, "We will be asking people to come to Dundee...but we don't want anyone to come to break the law or create violence." 

As I wrote at the time, "Who did Campbell have in mind? Was it over 500 'outsiders', bussed into Dundee at public expense, fed and paid overtime from the public purse, who fought desperately to clear the road for Peter Hall’s hired scabs...and who dress in distinctive blue uniforms?"

AEEU leaders Gavin Laird and Jimmy Airlie went far further in their treacherous treatment of 343 members who had inspired fellow workers across the land. 

They wrote to Timex workers threatening them with expulsion from the union. They threatened to withdraw the modest £30 a week strike pay these workers got. They tried to ban a prominent strike leader from speaking on socialist public meeting platforms.

Boycott 

Instead of these acts to undermine the fight, they should have thrown the weight of the union behind the boycott of Timex products that had been gathering pace across the UK. And as we argued at the time, they should have been organising AEEU workplace meetings with Timex speakers alongside national union leaders calling for a 'boycott' of Timex at firms that supplied them and were their chief customers, such as Creda, IBM and Electrolux.

General Strike

Alongside mass pickets to blockade the scab factory to actually halt production, and union-organised boycotts of Timex supplies and products, the other chief strand of struggle was unified solidarity strike action.

The call for a 24-hour general strike, initially in Dundee, later Scotland-wide, was repeatedly discussed, debated and pondered on the picket lines and Strike Committee. Those of us advocating this did so in the context of mounting opposition to the Tories from numerous sections of workers, including teachers, firefighters, miners, rail workers, NHS staff, council staff and postal workers. In the latter case, posties took unofficial strike action - and won!

The wave of support for Timex was shown by the 10,000 who marched with them as early as mid-March. On several occasions, we advocated that the STUC should call a one-day strike, at least in Dundee, and then build for it through workplace meetings. That was no mere socialist wishful thinking, plucked out of the air, but based on the fact that partial walkouts were organised from below in the absence of a fighting plan being forthcoming from either the AEEU or STUC leaderships. 

One of many large solidarity marches, mostly built from below by shop stewards and union activists

Strikes From Below

In mid-April, the STUC called a demo, and 1,000 joined the mass picket earlier that morning. Big contingents of Dundee workplaces walked out to join the 6,000-strong demo, in the likes of NCR, Valentine’s, Bulkbag, Holochrome, Ninewells hospital laundry and Dundee district council. In some firms, management gave time off work as they faced a 2 or 3-hour strike anyway. 

If union national leaders had built on this, solidarity strike action even in the Dundee area itself would have divided employers, as they lost production due to the stubborn refusal of Timex to reinstate their workers.

But instead of taking up this, the best the STUC could do after 92 days of struggle was to promise “to consider demonstrations against those who supply Timex”, with Campbell Christie declaring “There will be no secondary action and we will not be calling for secondary action”, and BBC TV reporting “He rejected the call for a 24 hour general strike despite repeated calls for it.” 

Christie explained, “Tory anti-union laws are unfair and the STUC want them changed, but the Timex campaign has to operate within the legal constraints introduced by the government.” 

The real fact of life was that Timex workers defied these vicious laws for the previous 90 days, and inspired such vast working class solidarity that the bosses dare not use Tory laws to remove all bar 6 pickets, for instance.

One STUC General Council member took the next logical step, arguing against Strike Committee members who advocated a 24-hour general strike, advising them to “wait for a Labour government”. If they had swallowed that line, all too common in the unions at the time, they would have had to wait 4 years - and then get treated to Blair’s New Tories in office!

John McAllion, Labour MP at the time, now a member of the SSP. Photo: Craig Maclean

Handpicked Workforce

After the 90-day sacking notices expired on 17 May, Timex bosses would have dearly loved to pick and choose who to reinstate. But the workers made it plain it was ‘one back, all back’, demanding removal of the scabs and reinstatement of all 343 under their old contracts with continuity of service. 

The Strike Committee called more mass pickets and a rally, appealing to workers across Scotland, who responded in their thousands.

Instead of escalating the action, the AEEU leadership of Laird and Airlie had secret phone calls to Timex, who came up with a new “offer”. This was, as one woman picket described it, “diabolical crap”! 

They offered a 27 per cent pay cut, loss of shift premiums, loss of the Xmas bonus, and skill tests for workers’ own jobs so as to weed out those they wanted to be rid of. 

Despite Laird recommending this, a mass meeting threw it out by 341 to 2, and I witnessed women literally chasing him down the street to the train station in fury!

Timex next tried to cow the workers and clear the gates of pickets with a threat of closure by Xmas, with vague talk of enhanced redundancy payments and taking back 100 or 150 workers on reduced wages. 

Women told us, “We will hunt down Fred Olsen [Timex owner] across the world and destroy him” and “If Olsen pulls out of Dundee we will drive him out of Europe.”

Factory Occupation

The time had arrived for a new tactic to stop asset stripping of the machinery and to force reinstatement, either by bludgeoning Timex bosses into submission, or a Tory government alarmed at rising turmoil into intervening: a factory occupation. 

We discussed that with the Strike Committee, who were open to the idea, but all the obstacles thrown up by mass policing and the cowardly role of national union leaders meant it didn’t happen. 

Nevertheless, the plan Timex bosses had of bringing back some of the skilled workers to bolster production, with predictions of at least £25m sales in the remainder of 1993, and to then either continue production in a high tech factory with a skeleton workforce of skilled workers on Third World wages - or to sell it off for a good price - collapsed in the face of incredible tenacity by the workers. 

They were forced to pull out of Dundee in late August - possibly afraid the workers would precisely seize the factory. They caught them unawares with such a sudden closure.

Permanent Closure

That was a tragically sad day for a city whose workers had piled up Timex profits for generations, with whole families working there. 

But for most of the heroic fighters who had inspired a generation during their prolonged battle, it was the lesser of two evils; a better outcome than to let a ruthless multinational cast aside its skilled, organised workforce for a slave camp geared to churning out profit on the backs of super-exploited workers.

This chapter in Scottish workers’ history is rich in lessons - too numerous to cover in one article. But above all, it proved the willingness of working people - working women in particular - to stand up and fight for their rights if they are given even half a lead. 

And it underlined the need to construct a fighting leadership in their unions, in contrast to those over-paid union officials who quake in their well-heeled boots at the thought of defying vicious anti-union laws designed to enslave workers for profit. 

We should never forget the women and men of Timex who showed such courage, tenacity and ingenuity - in a titanic battle that could have been won with a different type of leadership at the head of the unions. 

A new young generation of workers should be inspired to follow their example - and learn from it.