Arrogance, Chauvinism and Contempt for the Workers

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Brown’s Speech to TUC:
Arrogance, Chauvinism and Contempt for the Workers

Reflections on the TUC Congress 2007

In an outrageous show of arrogance, false promises and chauvinism, Prime Minister Gordon Brown patronisingly lectured the delegates to TUC on September 10 about “working together”, “raising our game” and making this century a “British” one. He shamelessly set out the government’s agenda to pursue the neo-liberal programme of privatisation and kow-towing to the monopolies and international financiers in saying “all of us must prepare for the global era”. His rhetoric about “our” obligations to the “international community and to the new democracy in Iraq” was coupled with targeting “terrorist extremism”, thus taking up where Tony Blair had left off, as with his theme of intervention in Africa in the guise of condescending saviours. Through this whole manipulation of the objective situation, Brown was attempting to impose on the workers’ and trade union movement also that Britain is the country with high ideals, a moral purpose, and which is on the side of liberty on a world scale. By putting this theme at the beginning of his speech, by pushing with different wording these so-called “universal values” much beloved by the previous prime minister, by emphasising that “there is nothing that those in the cause of justice cannot achieve if they stand together”, Gordon Brown was seeking to prepare the ground for his main call. This was that the unions should work together with government, big business and the banks in the project of backing globalisation and making Britain competitive in the face of the growing economies of China and India. That is, the workers should engage in social partnership on a grand scale and lay aside any hint of their independent programme. But Gordon Brown in treating the workers with such contempt was insulting the delegates’ intelligence. They were not fooled.

            As the bourgeoisie’s present champion, Brown spoke to TUC Congress 2007 hailing the free market economy and the benefits of globalisation, as solutions that could provide every worker with a job, higher British living standards, and better public services. While claiming to hold the workers’ interests at heart, Brown was promoting that the very system that in reality has failed the workers time and time again only offering the exploitation of persons by persons, could be yet again the saviour of the British people. If it has not been possible in the previous ten years of New Labour, not to mention the previous century and before, how could it be conceivably possible now?

            Brown spoke of the “biggest transformation in employment our economy has seen for 100 years”! His hollow promises are simply there to make out that the Labour Party is on the side of the workers and attempts to combat the growing dissatisfaction that the workers have with the government, even though there has been a change of who is in the saddle.

            Brown had audacity enough to speak of “a new role for new trade unionism in Britain”, stating “our workers given the power to acquire the skills that give us the bargaining power, the higher wages and then the prosperity”. In other words, the workers should negate their interests in favour of doing business with the very people who live off their labour and keep them from power.

            Brown’s chauvinism and contempt towards other countries was unveiled in his aggressive statements that China and India pose a threat to Britain as developing economies. He caricatured the argument that Britain should not be engaged in a “race to the bottom”. Workers and their unions are forcefully arguing against the destruction of the manufacturing base and the driving down of workers’ wages and attacking their conditions of work. Their argument is that following the agenda of neo-liberal globalisation is a “race to the bottom” in the global market. Gordon Brown caricatures the argument that Britain should develop its manufacturing base and that workers’ rights and interests must be defended as one of “sheltering from change”. It is a caricature because not only does it not take account of the internationalism of the workers in fighting for the rights of all at home and supporting all those engaged in that struggle throughout the world, but it dismisses the necessity for a self-reliant economy serving the needs of its population. Rather it promotes the neo-liberal agenda of the monopolies competing and enforcing their dictate globally, which in Britain’s case, according to Gordon Brown, must be through a hi-tech, high-skill economy. His chauvinism continued: “Some people think that the twenty first century will be China’s century….But I think that we have the skills, the inventiveness, the creativity, and the spirit of enterprise to make it a British century.” This is ludicrous as it stands, but by a British century Brown means precisely the primacy of the values that New Labour has been promoting under the guise of “our way of life”. Let us tell the Prime Minister that the empire on which the sun never set was dealt a death blow by the people’s struggles some time ago, and in its death throes, in the project to “make Britain great again”, can only be seen the ugliest chauvinism and injustice, with aggression, occupation, sabotage and subversion abroad, and in its service the escalating anti-social offensive against the people at home.

            With industrial action taking place like that of the POA and RMT unions, the workers are not under any illusion that Brown and the class he represents are going to provide any answers to their problems. Brown’s speech did not tackle anything that might show any recognition of the interests of the working class. The working class and trade union movement must condemn the agenda which Brown represents which is the agenda of big business, and their attempts to get the unions on side. The unions must be representative of the working class, developing the trend of acting in a new way with workers being fully involved in the decision making so that their interests and the interests of the whole society are gaining ground on the interests of the monopoly class. The unions must not be answerable to the government; they are not its economic wing.

            The workers and their unions must reject with the contempt it deserves Gordon Brown’s invitation to “work side by side in a national effort” so that “Britain can succeed and lead in the new world economy”. They must expose and condemn the chauvinism with which Gordon Brown calls for Britain to be the “first country” (!) which can “genuinely say we liberate not just some of the talents of some of the people but all of the talents of all of the people”. Brown’s government of “all the talents” is one that deliberately excludes any role for the workers and their representatives but to be fodder for the monopolies’ reactionary programme to take the world further down the road of fascism and war. This cannot and will not be accepted. The mood of the workers is to respond to the call to take up responsibility for the fate of society, to identify and fight for their interests, to refuse to conciliate with the reactionary programme of neo-liberal globalisation. WDIE salutes all those workers and unions in struggle to develop the workers’ resistance and establish a Workers’ Opposition to compel the monopolies and their political representatives to answer to the public good. The watchword of the trade union movement that an injury to one is an injury to all is one that must be fought for throughout society.

The TUC held its annual congress on September 10-13. The delegates passed many motions which reflected many serious concerns of the workers in Britain. The mood of the Congress was set alight on a number of occasions, when the speeches of those union leaders who were determined to take a stand in favour of the workers and against conciliation with the government’s anti-social offensive was met with loud applause. Also tackled was the issue of taking up social responsibility – for example the POA (Prison Officers Association) who are taking a stand on inmate conditions. At best, the TUC Congress embodied the principles of the trade union movement that an injury to one is an injury to all, and that unity is strength. Examples of this were the motions demanding that a campaign for the Trade Union Freedom Bill be vigorously organised, that the lack of progress on repealing anti-trade union laws is totally unacceptable, and that TUC policies that are contrary to the government’s policies will be fully acted on.

But there are some inherent issues that need to be tackled. One such issue is the language used to describe oppressed workers. In this system, all workers are oppressed by the relations of production themselves, but the TUC has seemingly prescribed the notion that vulnerable workers, such as migrant workers, be “supported”. The theme of Congress 2007 was “Supporting Britain’s vulnerable workers”, and the conception put forward by the General Council is that there exists such a thing as vulnerable employment where vulnerable workers are exploited. The issue is to work together to defend the rights of all. Increasingly workers are not protected and the issue is to highlight what is the cause of such an alarming situation, where growing numbers of workers are low paid, without rights and benefits. The crucial question to address is that it is attacks on the most vulnerable workers that are used to split the workers on the basis of race, gender, legal status, etc., to undermine the entire working class. So it is not to say that someone is vulnerable therefore they need more care. It is the objective conditions created by the capitalist system that makes them vulnerable. What is to be said is that workers should stand up for their interests and fight oppression as one, and have their rights recognised. Migrant workers should be seen as part of the British workforce and therefore be included in the trade union movement and the wider polity. When one looks at the objective reality that the workers are being oppressed there then comes the realisation that there is something to fight against and something to fight for. If however one sees the issue as that of workers being vulnerable as a problem of their being and that other workers should simply give them support, then one would never see a path to end vulnerability. The workers should be affirmed as fighters against oppression, mechanisms to defend wages, working conditions and trade union rights strengthened, and the unorganised workers organised. In this regard, WDIE calls upon the trade union movement to build on the discussion and resolutions at the TUC and pledge to organise a mass movement of the working class to guarantee the rights of all.

 

The text of all the resolutions carried at Congress, together with the General Council statements adopted by Congress and results of the elections to the General Council and Congress General Purposes Committee can be seen here.