The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 8, 1926, Page 5

Auypines + THE DAILY WOR wry Editor —— KER. Second Section! This Magazine Section Appears Every Saturday In The DAILY WORKER. SATURDAY, The British General ~~ MAY 8, 1926 Strike <B> 290 An Affair of American Labor HARRY GOSLING, president of the General and Transport Workers’ Un- retary of Miners’ section of the Inter- ion of Great Britain. FRANK HODGES, international sec- national Federation of Trade Unicns. HE general strike has its roots in England, Wales and Scotland; its branches and its foliage hang also over the labor movement of the United States. Its fruits, when-they.ripen,.will.fall upon ’ ‘American soil, into American trade unions as well as into* British. | There could hardly be any happening in any other labor move- ment in the world that could have a more direct effect upon the American trade unions than this colossal experience of the British trade union movement. The co-incidence of common language, sim- ilar traflitions, to some extent a common history and form of develop- ment—and, yes, even the present “Anglo-American” co-oporation of imperialist capitalism which has dictated the orientation of official American trade unionism—all of this has prepared a condition in which a major event in the British labor movement cannot but have an immediate effect upon the American labor movement. The British trade union movement, at the height of British im- perial ascendancy,’ was traditionally the most reactionary on earth. The American Federation of Labor, as the United States ascended into world imperialism, took the British trade union movement as a model of respectability. Thus reaction built a bridge—which other feet may cross. When, with the dizzy decline of British imperial propsperity, the British Trade Union Congress made an accord with the trade unions of the Soviet Union, a single rebuff to the British fraternal delegate to the last convention of the American Federation of Labor was not enough to cut the bridge between British and American trade unionism. The bridge still remains. The effort to maintain the fiction of the American labor move- ment being independent of the labor movement of all other coun- tries, is a strained one. We remember that when the pulling power of the Russian revolution began to be felt in the socialist party of the United States, the Hillquit leadership (even after expelling more than half the membership) was able to remain in the saddle only by pretending to negotiate for “conditions” for joining the Com- munist International. Later, when this means had given them @ respite, the Hillquits raised the slogan of “the British way” against “the Russian way.” The idea was that the working class of “demo- cratic America” would find its example, not in the “barbarous” tactics of the Russian proletariat, but in the “civilized, democratic” way of the British working class. The “British way” was then being shown in the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald. The slogan of the “British way” was very effective"mong the many thousands of half-conscious workers who were then following the leadership of the socialist party. If there be a few honest workers still the dupes of Mr, Hillquit, there will be some wide eyes staring hard, now, at the British example. When it came to the British general strike, it was not possible for the president of the American Federation of Labor to express in plain, clear terms the traditional policy of the Gompers dynasty in yegard to genera] strikes, William Green has not said flatly,.and could not say flatly, that the American Iederation of Labor con- demns this general strike; he has only expressed in-a rather nervous message of sympathy his fear that: JOHN R. CLYNES, president of Na EMANUEL SHINWELL, national tional Union of General Workers. Clynes went into the cabinet of the organizer, Amalgamated Marine Work- British capitalist government during the war. In 1917, Lord Rhondda said to him: “You and |, Clynes, stand be- tween the country and revolution.” ers’ Union. “The great danger involved in a general or sympathetic strike is the possibility that the original grievances which are the primary causes of the strike, and which are, in this case, meritorious, may be lost sight of , because-of..the charge that the general strike is a challenge to govern- ment and-to the existence of government. The issues of the strike be- come obscured and the public mind becomes confused. Public opinion in Great Britain might support the workers in their demand for the redress of just grievances, whereas it would solidly support the government in its efforts to maintain control of the government.” The words, “the government in its efforts to maintain control of the government”—are not a misprint. “The government, in the first use of the word, means the capitalist class, the employers who are fighting the strikers, whilst “the government” at the end of the sentence means the state power. Mr. Green means that public opinion would solidly support the capitalist class in maintaining its state power over the workers. But of course in saying “public opinion” one always means oneself. Mr. Green means that he, Mr. Green, in his official capacity, would support the British workers for certain limited demands called “just,” but would turn about and support the British employers if the contest were to go so far that the workers would win complete control of Great Britain in the form of state power. We might revert to an illustration from British history of the time of Cromwell who accused the Earl of Manchester with “un- ’ willingness to have the war prosecuted to full victory.” In this time when the British workers are in the midst of the class struggle Mr. Green wants the British workers, he says, to win a partial and limited victory, but is unwilling to have the struggle prosecuted to full victory. It is hardly likely that the present general strike can reach that development. The British workers also are still led by Man- chesters instead of proletarian Cromwells—are still led by Hender son, Thomas, Clynes and MacDonald—by the “heroes of Black Friday.” The willingness to have the struggle “prosecuted to full victory” could only take the form of a determination to seize state power by councils of British workers, and a clear program for. di ing so; and this quality is not in the Hendersons and MacDonalds. It can be only in the workers’ political party, the Communist Party, which is not yet in leadership of the masses of workers, It is not likely that the present phase of the class struggle in Great Britain will be the decisive struggle. It is a mobilization, it is a preparation, a colossal experience in the process of develop- ment toward the struggle which must Imevitably come to its goal in the state power. Mr. Green sees this when he trembles before the “danger” of the partial demands becoming “obscured” thru the inevitable emergence of the necessity of facing the decisive question of state power. We do not pretend to know in advance the outcome of the British general strike. But whatever ita immediate future course it has already thrown down a thousand pillars in the cathedrals of capitalism whose priests are the disciples of Gompers and whose altar boys are Hillquit and Berger, In no labor movement in the (Continued on neat page—page &) é