OVER the past two weeks we have described how the formation of a privileged layer in the trade unions with interests more in keeping bosses than the workers is indispensible the tenance of capitalism in Britain.
The ability of this layer to impose its will lies in its political weight not in its numerical strength which is minute will strong membership of the unions.
.The political traditions of the labour bureaucracy were formed as a result of a split in the working class during the early period of capitalist development. A skilled section of the working class was won to the detence of the capitalist order by literally being bought off.
However the conditions which allowed this aristocracy of labour to changes in the capitalists I nis centration of the tionalisation of mainthe world market This troduction the millionsthe engineers upside down.
developed develop were soon undermined by the position of brought through inter-imperialist competition.
Slage ol British capitalist development was marked by the conownership. the raproduction techniques, the merger of industrial and banking capital and the carving up of economic upheaval stimulated British workers to organise themselves on a massive scale.
In engineering for example, the inlilass DIVUUCLIO methods struck at the status of the craft workers while at the same time encouraging the organisation of the unskilled in an unprecedented way.
In less than two decades this process turned the trade union outlook of From the 1890s onward a pressure Amalgamated Society of Engineers to organise on a class instead of a craft basis.
The 1898 lock-out proved to be the last stand of the ASE as a craft union, an organisation of the Labour aristocracy. The inevitable rules revithe ASE came in 1912 This was only part of a more general process. were formed for the first time massive scale Because of participation, the wave of industrial unrest between 1890 and 1914 was accompanied by a growth of socialist COLSCIOUSIC S among a minority of workers.
At the same time the 'deskilling of the modernised industries led to a rapid shrinking in the size labour aristocracy, though not in the privileges of those that remained.
A new section of these privileged workers was the growing The special attention to this layer, as a way of blocking the new workers offensive drawing them into the administration of the state. Their growing privileges intertwined with the political tradition of attachment to the capitalist Order the general secretary of one of the most important unions stepped into a job in the Labour Bureau formed by the liberal politician on Mundella Marxist the Board of Trade, forerunner to the ministry Tebbit now heads.
The process of integration took a big step forward in World War as militant union leaders were drawn further into official administration. This was consolidated on the back of the defeat of The series of mass national strike waves between 1910 and 1914 gave a big impetus to political support of the working class for the Liberal Party and the forma labour tion of the Labour Party. gave The bureaucracy went along with this idea of a Labour party but only so as to impose Liberal-Labour policies on it!
While organisationally, therefore, the Labour Party represents a big step As early as 1886, the President of forward the The the break bureaucracy campaign and ministries labour'.
Socialist Challenge ARGUMENTS for SOCIALIS politically it represents the interests of the Labour bureaucracy.
Labour Party leadership plays the same role as the trade union As Leon Trotsky put it: "The same leaders guide trades unions, betray the general strike, lead the electoral later at the "The Labour Party and the trade unions — these are not two principles they are only a technical division of 18 February 1982