Strikes and the Labour Government¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter from Socialist Appeal argues that the wave of strikes sweeping post-war Britain—among dockers, building workers, engineers, railwaymen, and transport workers—is not a disruption to be suppressed but a necessary expression of working-class militancy that should be directed against the capitalist class. The strikes are presented as the industrial counterpart to the political victory of the Labour Party at the 1945 general election, both reflecting a deep hatred of capitalism born from wartime privation and exploitation. The text situates this British unrest within a broader international context, noting that even in America, the “world citadel of capitalism,” an even greater strike wave has erupted against capitalists and bankers who profited from the war and now seek to impose its costs on workers.
The chapter’s central polemic is directed against the Labour and trade union bureaucrats, and particularly the Stalinists, who argue that strikes will “embarrass” the Labour government and aid capitalist attacks upon it. This claim is rejected as a ruse to baffle the workers. On the contrary, the text insists, mass pressure against the capitalists is precisely what would assist a Labour government serious about curbing monopoly power. Such pressure acts as a counterweight to the pressure of the monopolies on the government. The authors point to the speeches of Labour leaders—Bevin, Attlee, Morrison, Cripps—as evidence that radical pressure is vitally necessary to convince them the working class “means business.” If further sacrifices are demanded, they argue, the employers should bear them.
The chapter also engages in polemic against the capitalist press, specifically the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, which are already blaming “Trotskyist agitators” and “subversive elements” for the strikes. This is dismissed as the “age-old trick of the reaction”—blaming revolutionary socialists for the ulcers of a rotting capitalist system. Workers do not strike for fun or because of agitators; they strike because of legitimate grievances caused by capitalism itself. If the Labour government rectified those grievances, the protests would cease.
The text warns that action by the government against the workers can only disillusion them, while the capitalists will bide their time to overthrow the government. It calls for radical measures against capitalism and for the setting up of committees in every industry to support a Labour government that acts against the capitalists. The Revolutionary Communist Party declares its wholehearted support for every struggle of the workers, arguing that such struggles prove the workers mean business and that any failure by the Labour government to take real action under such favourable circumstances is a betrayal of the working class.