26. “Ignorance is Strength”¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 26: “Ignorance is Strength”¶
The 1992 Trades Union Congress represented a nadir for British trade unionism, as the right wing consolidated its dominance through a series of strategic mergers and political capitulations. The amalgamation of the AEU and EETPU into the AEEU created a powerful right-wing bloc that effectively constituted an EETPU takeover, dismantling the engineering union's democratic structures and installing a Trojan horse for business unionism. This rightward shift was reinforced by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which prompted former leftists like Charlie Wheelan to embrace pro-capitalist positions. Meanwhile, John Smith sought to weaken Labour-union links; union leaders initially resisted the original OMOV proposal in 1992, but later accepted a compromise after Smith promised full employment and a minimum wage. John Monks became TUC general secretary in 1993, pursuing "modernisation" by distancing unions from Labour and inviting Tory and CBI speakers to Congress.
The employers' offensive constituted a counter-revolution on the shop floor, destroying elements of workers' control through lean production, just-in-time principles, flexibility, casualisation, and zero-hours contracts. At Rover, the 1992 New Deal increased output from seven to eighteen cars per worker per year. By 1993, inequality in Britain reached levels unseen in a century. The Timex Dundee dispute exemplified union betrayal, with the AEEU repudiating sacked shop stewards and opposing mass picketing.
Trade union membership fell sharply to around seven million as manufacturing jobs were axed, mirroring the decline after the 1926 General Strike. Union leaders responded with mergers—some driven by bureaucratic self-preservation, others producing progressive formations like Unison, RMT and PCS that concentrated power and laid the basis for industrial unions. The "new economy" created call centres employing more workers than coal, steel and shipbuilding combined, but replacing skilled industrial jobs with low-paid, stressful work. Six per cent of call centre workers suffered serious psychiatric problems, with twenty per cent annual staff turnover. By the early 2000s, many centres closed or transferred jobs to India, where wages were a tenth of British levels.
The growth of services reflected British capitalism's organic decline into a rentier economy dominated by finance capital. Thatcherites ignored Marx's argument that real wealth comes from industrial production, wrecking manufacturing in the process. Stress became the modern workplace killer: forty million working days were lost to work-related illness in 2002. Right-wing union leaders capitulated, with the AEEU signing single-union "sweetheart" agreements with Nissan, Toyota and Sony, endorsing Human Resource Management as "here to stay". This class collaboration, enforced by Tory anti-union laws, built up shop-floor resentment that would later produce a backlash.