Resolution on industrial policy (Submitted by WIL)¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter digest, drawn from a resolution adopted by the Workers’ International League (WIL) in October 1943, presents a strategic analysis of the British industrial landscape during the third year of the Second World War. Its core argument is that a profound contradiction is developing: while British imperialism enjoys military success, a crisis in arms production, precipitated by the influx of American ammunition, is forcing capitalists to clamp down on wages and conditions. This is evidenced by the National Arbitration Award No. 326 for engineering workers, which the resolution interprets as an attempt to fix a wage ceiling. The chapter contends that this offensive, combined with intensified exploitation through piece-work, income tax burdens, the failure of joint production committees, and the victimisation of militants, is driving a sharp radicalisation of the working class.
The resolution draws on a detailed chronicle of industrial disputes from 1941 to 1943 to substantiate its claims. It notes the shift from isolated strikes in backward areas, such as the Betteshanger strike and early coal field disputes, to broader, more solidaristic actions. The Tyneside ship-building strike of 1942, involving over 20,000 workers, is highlighted as a turning point, marking the year with the most strikes since the 1926 General Strike. The chapter argues that the nature of struggle is transforming, citing the nationwide support for the Neptune Engine Works strike and the solidarity of miners in South Yorkshire and South Wales as evidence of workers closing ranks. The strike of 23,000 Nottinghamshire miners over the imprisonment of one lad is presented as a demonstration of the struggle assuming a political character.
The resolution is heavily polemical, directing its fire at two principal targets: the Stalinists (the Communist Party of Great Britain) and the trade union bureaucracy. The Stalinists are denounced as the “most vicious strike breaking force in British working class politics,” who have used their entrenchment in militant areas like the Clyde and South Wales to put a brake on struggle. The trade union leadership, personified by Ernest Bevin, is accused of becoming an appendage of the capitalist state, with the industrial truce placing the movement in the state’s clutches. The chapter also argues against the “ultra left sectarians” who would abandon the mass trade unions for ad hoc factory organisations, using the Barrow strike to demonstrate the power of co-ordinating legal union activity with illegal rank-and-file action.
The theoretical context is provided by a historical comparison with the shop stewards’ movement at the end of the First World War. The resolution argues that the earlier movement was absorbed by the union leadership due to a lack of conscious revolutionary leadership, leading to two decades of relative stability. The current period, however, is deemed different: the workers have a higher level of political consciousness, yet distrust all established political tendencies, leading to a semi-syndicalist trend. The integration of the bureaucracy with the state machine, however, creates objective conditions for any militant industrial movement to clash with the state, raising the struggle from wages to a political plane. The formation of the Militant Workers’ Federation is hailed as a turning point, a national link-up of militants that could become the focal point for the coming storm. The resolution concludes by asserting that the factory committees are “embryonic Soviets,” and that the task of revolutionary socialists is to make workers conscious of their potential as organs of power, thereby converting the mass industrial organs into instruments of socialist revolution and providing the cadres for a Bolshevik party.