Communist Buses, Socialist Trams
The Coronation
celebrations had proceeded in the face of a bitter and prolonged strike by
London’s busmen. A meeting at the headquarters of the Transport and General
Workers’ Union voted to continue the strike but made plain the divisions within
the labour movement that it had thrown up. The T&GWU was only notionally the
busmen’s representative. In reality the strike was being driven by elements
very far to the left, notably the “Rank and File” committee. The busmen were
trying to bring the trolley bus and tramway workers out in sympathy but the
union’s official leadership was firmly opposed. Ernest Bevin, the general
secretary of the T&GWU, was resolutely anti-communist firmly blocked any
union support for extending the strike to other transport workers. The busmen were
on their own.
On the other
side of the Atlantic another bitter industrial dispute presented almost a
mirror image with “independent” steel producers holding out against – depending
on your stance – union recognition or the closed shop. Two producers with
78,000 workers in the State of Ohio were confronting the CIO on the issue. Drastic
action was brewing. The steel makers were laying in stocks of food at their
plants in anticipation of a de facto siege by pickets, which would prevent
non-striking workers from reaching their work.
The divisions
within the Spanish Republic’s “national” government in Valencia never reached
the open civil war suffered in Catalonia but they were savage enough. The
vaguely centrist government of Largo Caballero finally succumbed and was replaced
by one under Moscow’s candidate, Juan Negrin, the minister of finance. Weirdly
Negrin’s avowedly authoritarian approach to government was applauded by right
wing figures such as Winston Churchill, who failed to detect that Negrin’s
agenda went further than controlling anarchist elements. But for this misunderstanding
it would have been clear that the Spanish Republic was now dominated by
Stalinist forces.
Comments
Post a Comment