By Steve McKenzie (Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley Unite Community)[Photo Credit AP/Matt Dunham]
In the Bulletin of the Left Opposition, November/December 1929, Leon Trotsky wrote,
“The Marxist would say to the British workers ‘The trade union bureaucracy is the chief instrument for the oppression by the bourgeois state. Power must be wrested from the hands of the bourgeoisie and for that, its principal agent, the trade union bureaucracy, must be overthrown.’”
This article, from 95 years ago, (on pages 467 and 468 of Trotsky’s writings on Britain), refers to the contemporary politics of the time and the events that dominated them, such as the betrayal of the General Strike by the trade union bureaucracy in 1926, three and a half years before this article was written.
The Labour party, which was in government at the time, was the political voice of the trade union bureaucracy, much more so than would appear to be the case today. The question that genuine trade unionists should ask today, is whether Trotsky’s prognosis is as true now as it was then.
In 1929 the British economy was in freefall, still reeling from the costs of the first world war, and things were about to get worse. The USA was in the ascendancy, and destined to become the world’s number one capitalist superpower following the second world war. From being the rulers of an empire that spanned a quarter of the globe, Britain’s ruling elite had been reduced to the role of bag handler for US imperialism.
Losing the manufacturing base
After the second world war, as the empire shrunk, Britain, that had once been the workshop of the world, also began losing its manufacturing base, at an increasing rate of knots. Today Britain has been reduced to the level of a rentier, service-based economy, with manufacturing only accounting for a very small percentage of the economy.
The incompetent and corrupt nature of successive Tory governments in recent times is a reflection of the state that the British economy has been reduced to. The Labour opposition, (most likely soon to be the government), has moved so far to the right, that it isn’t even accommodating the right wing of the affiliated trade unions any more.
However, our question remains, despite all of the changes. Do the fundamentals remain the same and was Trotsky right?
The betrayal of the miners and the printers in the 1980’s would appear to confirm that things hadn’t changed at that stage. The defeat of the public sector pensions dispute in 2011, when the right-wing unions colluded with the employers to break the unity of the public sector workers was telling.
The role of the right-wing union leaders in helping to undermine and bring down Jeremy Corbyn indicated that little had changed. The eagerness to sell poor wage deals to bring strikes to an end in the recent strike wave would tend to suggest that on the fundamentals, despite the existence, of course, of some individual, dedicated socialist officials, Trotsky was right.
