After the fuel blockades

Painting things red

Last week's edition of The Socialist, weekly paper of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, contained what was for it an unusual attempt at serious analysis (September 22).

Normally its readers are fed a dull diet of snippets of union and industrial news, sprinkled with a thin layer of superficial political comment. But this issue breaks completely from the normal practice and carries a four-page supplement on the fuel crisis, written by SP general secretary Peter Taaffe.

Clearly this represents a departure. But it has to be said that comrade Taaffe's argument is fundamentally flawed in its efforts to marry, on the one hand, the SP's previous predictions of a 'crisis of expectations' on the part of the working class following the election of New Labour three years ago with, on the other, the mass petty bourgeois upsurge that all but paralysed Britain two weeks ago.

Comrade Taaffe begins by correctly noting that, "The dramatic 'seven days in September' of the fuel crisis and its aftermath represents the most serious challenge to the Blair government since it came to power in 1997." However, the title of his article, "A turning point in Britain" - suggesting not only an event of monumental significance, but one that perhaps can set this country on the path of working class power - is, to say the least, overstated.

Taaffe's reasoning can be summed up in his final paragraph: "The main conclusion which workers should draw is that the situation is so fragile, so explosive, that any number of events could trigger an upheaval which could take a 'spontaneous' character to begin with, but which would quickly raise the possibility of organisation, of programme, and of ideology, thereby laying the basis for a rapid growth of socialist ideas."

What comrade Taaffe is describing - whether or not he realises it - is nothing short of a pre-revolutionary situation. One where those below - workers, the middle classes, the petty bourgeoisie - are being driven to the point where they will no longer accept being ruled in the old way, while the ruling class is, as a result, beginning to arrive at the position where it is unable to rule in the old way.

What then is so "explosive" in the "underlying situation in Britain"? After all comrade Taaffe talks about the "continuation of the boom". He also notes the fact that "last year British workers were 30 times less likely to go on strike than they were on average during the 1980s". Well, it may be that the stressing of this imagined tinder box of a situation is one of the "points the Socialist Party has consistently made", but the only evidence Taaffe can produce for the actual existence of "the mood which was developing below the surface in Britain" is "the wave of small, but important industrial battles which The Socialist has reported in the last month". So important, apparently, that they have largely been ignored by the mass media.

In truth the insistence on the coming upsurge has been reduced to an article of faith - all Taaffe has got left as he desperately tries to hold together his crisis-ridden organisation. Of course, if you continually and incessantly predict an upturn in the class struggle, then sooner or later you will be proved right. However, this soothsaying has nothing whatsoever to do with Marxism or science. For that our analysis needs to be based on hard reality, not wishful thinking.

But unfortunately comrade Taaffe's belief in the inevitability of an impending working class revolt leads him to utterly misread the balance of class forces involved in the fuel protests: "It is true," he writes, "that the movement initially had a large element of middle class protesters - farmers, hauliers, etc - in its ranks. But this was by no means the whole picture ...

"There was a strong 'plebeian' element; small business people linked up to owner-drivers as well as lorry drivers employed by the oil companies, some with a trade union consciousness ...

"There were traditional Tory voters or small business people, many leaning towards the Tories. At the same time participating in the protest were traditional 'Labour supporters' who said they will never vote Blair again. Present also were lorry drivers who were sympathetic to the protesters and were quite clearly members of the Transport and General Workers Union."

Taaffe admits that, "'Middle England', the so-called 'Sierra man' or 'Mondeo man', was behind the protesters and still is." Yet for him it is the participation of the minority of unionised workers that leads him to lend the movement a working class coloration: "... the enduring image which remains is the colossal potential power of the working class, even of small but decisive sections of the working class. It was not so much the pickets of the oil refineries, but the preparedness of the tanker drivers not to cross them, that displayed the huge potential power which workers in the fuel supply industry have."

As a result, according to our comrade, New Labour was "terrified by the newly revealed power of decisive groups of workers" into setting up its task force to look into ways of combating any rerun of such actions.

Taaffe is correct to point to our potential power, but that should not lead him to characterise the tanker drivers' actions as the main feature of the protest. Were these workers acting independently, on their own initiative, as conscious agents of our class, or merely in sympathy with a movement whose petty bourgeois leadership he describes only too clearly? Certainly without their support the protest could not have succeeded with such rapidity, but it is just as facile to say that capitalism itself could not operate without the cooperation of the mass of workers. Does that make the working class capital's principal driving force?

Only about a third of tanker drivers are workers employed directly by the oil companies. The majority are either self-employed owner-drivers or paid by hauliers - the type of small businesses that were at the heart of the protest. It is true that many employed drivers were sympathetic, but one aspect of their refusal to drive through the picket lines was the fact that they were encouraged to act in this way by their employers - Taaffe admits that the oil companies collaborated passively.

Ignoring such details, the SP leader concludes: "This movement had some of the features of a general strike, or near general strike, in the way that it quickly paralysed society." This is another example of peculiar Taaffeite logic. Surely the main feature of a general strike - the defining feature for revolutionaries - is not the ensuing paralysis, but the coordinated actions of millions of workers, acting as a class for itself. You can be sure that a general strike conducted along those lines would not have the support of any section of the bourgeois media. Yet the fuel protests elicited in general a sympathetic response in the press. And the attitude towards the protesters by elements of the state (not least the police) was decidedly ambivalent.

Taaffe is determined to prove the clear hostility of the ruling class. He writes: "The overwhelming majority of the press and the media, despite their initial sympathy with the aims of the protesters, speak with one voice against the danger of mob rule ... Moreover, once the capitalists, their appendages in the media and, unfortunately, the summits of the TUC realised the widespread implications of the strike [sic] and what it meant for their rule, they acted with one voice to demand that it be called off ... The protesters were presented as an unruly violent mob."

The comrade is clearly painting a one-sided picture. Yes, the ruling class is always wary of action from below that risks running beyond its control. But that does not mean that bourgeois elements will not support its aims. Some rightwing journalists not only expressed sympathy, but gave their whole-hearted backing to the blockades. The oil companies themselves, of course, were hardly up in arms against the action. They would be more than happy to see a reduction in petrol duty in the expectation of enjoying a boost in sales and therefore profits, at least in the short term.

And what about the Tories - for the best part of a century the preferred political party of the bourgeoisie? William Hague described the protesters as "fine, upstanding citizens". They were "hard-working, law-abiding people" who enjoyed "the support of the great mainstream majority of the British people". Taaffe keeps quiet on this in order to show the blockaders in a wholly positive, unproblematic light - he wants us to believe that the bourgeoisie eventually came down overwhelmingly against them, while by contrast members of the SP were "on the protest".

Taaffe is rightly critical of the TUC leadership, which adopted an entirely negative, pro-Blair attitude towards the protesters. But he claims that, "The only delegates at the TUC conference who voted against the general council statement were those from the Socialist Party ..." oh, and "a few others" (like Arthur Scargill, for example).

However, comrade Taaffe goes on, "If the leadership of the labour movement had intervened to give support to the protests but channelled it in a positive, working class, socialist direction, many of these protesters could have been won to the labour movement."

There are several problems with this. Firstly, which section of the "leadership of the labour movement" does Taaffe have in mind? It is hard to imagine any of the current tops taking up, even in their wildest dreams, a "working class, socialist" position, let alone acting on it. Secondly, we cannot hope to win the petty bourgeoisie as a class to "the labour movement" as such. While it can be won as an ally against the big monopolies - whose interests in the long run are antithetical to its own - this section is not against capitalism in general. Rather it demands reforms and 'fairer' treatment under the present mode of production.

We must certainly put forward immediate programmatic demands that are sensitive to its needs and fears. The petty bourgeoisie can at least be neutralised, and indeed won temporarily to our side - even if we cannot expect it to adopt the red flag as its own. Moreover, a mass movement which remains led by the petty bourgeoisie cannot be transformed into a socialist force. The working class will only be able to influence this section through the hegemony of its own independent programme, not by tailing petty bourgeois demands, however militant.

It would not be Peter Taaffe if the article did not link his unshakeable faith in the imminence of working class revolt with an equally determined belief in an impending capitalist crash. It is in this context that the fuel protests will act as a catalyst for working class action in comrade Taaffe's view: "... in this period, the last stages of a growth cycle, there is a tendency for workers, particularly in the light of the huge boost in income to the employers, to demand 'their share'.

"The impossible living conditions of many workers ... inevitably mean a demand for increases in wages ... Other groups of workers could be encouraged by the outcome of these protests and move into action in the next period. Therefore, rather than the tranquil, peaceful scenario envisaged by Blair and Brown in the run-up to the election, a period of upheaval and industrial movements could unfold in Britain in a winter, if not of discontent, then certainly of 'unrest'.

"Further convulsions are being prepared, particularly in the event of a serious economic recession or slump."

There is one thing totally missing from Taaffe's mechanical reasoning, and that is any notion of the active role of class consciousness. We are living in a period of reaction of a special type, where workers do not have a vision of themselves as a fighting class, let alone a vision of a new society. In these circumstances it is criminal to passively await salvation in the shape of economic slump - still worse to tail the movement of another class while giving it a proletarian coloration.

Far from relying on the next recession, we must begin the long task of establishing our own working class alternative - first and foremost, we must win the battle of ideas. That is why this weekend's Socialist Alliance conference in Coventry assumes such importance. Comrade Taaffe should ensure that the Socialist Party joins with the rest of the revolutionary left and devote his energies to the immediate practical task of building a united electoral challenge to Blair.

By doing so he can help bring nearer the day when all revolutionaries in Britain are organised into a single democratic centralist party.