Other examples¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter, drawn from a polemical editorial, systematically dismantles the slogan “non-unionists first” as a tactic for managing redundancy. The core argument is that such a demand is not merely impractical but politically reactionary, undermining the very class unity a revolutionary party should be striving to build. The authors test the slogan against concrete workplace scenarios to expose its internal contradictions.
The first example posits a factory where only five percent of workers are non-union. If the demand succeeds and these five percent are sacked first, the authors argue the tactical position is fatally weakened: the union has already conceded that there is a basis for dismissals, and the remaining ninety-five percent remain vulnerable to further redundancy. If the management refuses the demand, the union is forced into a strike to enforce it. This, the chapter contends, leaves the non-unionists with no revolutionary alternative: if the strike succeeds, they are on the dole; if they join the union to make the shop one hundred percent organised, they are still sacked as the newest members. This is presented as the antithesis of a policy seeking maximum coordination between organised and unorganised workers.
The chapter then addresses the claim that the slogan protects militants from victimisation. It counters that the correct response to victimisation is to mobilise the entire factory—skilled and unskilled, union and non-union—for strike action for reinstatement. The “nons first” slogan, by contrast, cuts across this line of unity. Even if non-unionists are sacked, redundancy continues and trade unionists must still leave; the policy offers no safeguard for a militant steward or convenor.
The final example considers a factory where trade unionists are in the minority. Here, the authors argue, the “nons first” position becomes “fantastic and adventuristic.” The only viable struggle in such a context is through a correct attitude toward non-unionists, based on a programme of unity on the job. This is the opportunity to organise the factory around the issue of redundancy itself, not around a divisive and sectarian slogan. The chapter concludes by asserting that the more the slogan is related to actual practice, the more ridiculous it becomes.
The theoretical context is a Marxist critique of trade-union narrowness and adventurism, arguing against any policy that fragments the working class along lines of union membership. The polemic is directed at the editorial authors who advanced the “nons first” demand, accusing them of failing to work out the implications of their own slogans and of substituting a mechanical, divisive tactic for a revolutionary strategy of class-wide mobilisation.