National Rank and File DELECATE CONFERENCE Photo: JOHN STURROCK (Report)
Socialist Challenge 21 June 1979, Page 6 ASH PHASE In downplaying these factors Cliff tends to reduce the problem to one of organisation. Thus he makes a major point of the fact that the number of full-time convenors has risen from around 500 in 1969 to something like 6,000 today.
He says that this gives a much wider base to the bureaucracy than existed before. The problem is that 'the organisation inside the factory relating the individual shop stewards to each other still goes through the convenor.
Presumably Cliff thinks that the solution is to provide some other means for stewards to relate to each other, and that is what is meant 'rank and file organisation'. But this is wrong.
First, the problem is not in and of itself that convenors are full-time -what's decisive is that they are paid the average workers' wage, are elected and recallable, represent the workers rather than participate with the bosses in running the company, etc. When a convenor pursues right-wing policies our job is to remove them - not set Ignored Nor was organisation the major problem in mounting Labour, The committees ignored the union's code of conduct and won active solidarity through flying pickets.
It was the political fight we lost by under Labour. The leaders in the workplaces - the shop stewards in particular militancy was no longer enough and fell for the ments.
Rank & File failed to take account of these problems when it called one-day strike in solidarity with the