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REDUNDANCY AND ECONOMIC NECESSITY
SW are indeed correct in stating that the J-A concessions cannot guarantee 12,000 jobs - there are not that many new ones to be found or created. However, the abolition of the Temporary Unattached Register and the continued guarantee of no compulsory redundancy ensures that dockers will be paid for self-imposed non-work. And Jones and Aldington are both realistic enough to see that this guarantee cannot be retracted until the dockers themselves are ready to accept the fact of having to look for jobs elsewhere (very probably in schemes like the one for an industrial estate in derelict dockland in London that the PLA will develop). Incidentally, the results of the secret report of 12,000 jobs to be lost, which SW revealed, were available to any consumer who cared to purchase a copy of The Economist for 19-25 August. Perhaps SW called it secret because they do not believe workers should read the 'lies' The Economist must print as it is a journal for the ruling class.
The J-A Committee solution to the job problem is a short-term one. To be successful in the long-term, it depends on those 12,000 dockers leaving the docks voluntarily. The Committee has promised to find as many jobs as possible for these men inside dockland (through industrial estates) and outside dockland as container and cold storage workers. In the meantime, the Committee has guaranteed these men employment even though they may not be selling their labour power. The dockers accepted this settlement. And indeed, it compares very favourably with that of other workers in industries whose commodities are no longer in as great demand and where increased capital has meant higher labour productivity. The Economist commented:
"The answer to the rundown in jobs in traditional dock-land, and other industries that need to change, is to create enough jobs in the country as a whole for no one to be afraid of the mobility required by an expanding economy. After all, in percentage terms the rundown in dockland is no worse that what the railways and coal mines have gone through fairly painlessly, and in actual numbers of men it is a fraction of the size." (l9.8.72, p.64). (In the ten years from the end of the '50's to the end of the '60's mining shed about 300,000 men). The ruling class has since the end of World War II accepted that this social and productive dislocation should be compensated for; this is precisely what they have offered and what the dockers have accepted. The dockers found Devlin's compensation inadequate and came out for more; their case was granted.
SW however sees the answer in granting the dockers the right to work in their specific jobs. Their jobs are being robbed says SW. Jobs have been robbed in this way as long as the productive forces have developed; they will be robbed in this way under socialism. SW replies that the docks should be nationalised under workers' control. In the first place, SW does not specify how workers' control is to be achieved. Presumably if the dockers want it, it will happen. There is no explanation as to what workers' control means politically or in the production process. Perhaps it is just one of those things that every worker, is born to understand automatically - in the same way the ruling class are born with silver spoons in their mouths. It remains at the level of a talisman - if you demand workers' control it must be correct - and we will treat it in that way.
The second half of the demand for nationalisation should be examined more thoroughly.
As previously stated, the registered docks are running down not because of the private employers' desire to do down the dockers, but because they are no longer fulfilling a need of the productive forces. If the employers implement the necessary changes in the production process and the workers consent to work those changes, the registered docks can survive but with a reduced labour force. They will be able to continue to fulfil an economic need. SW demands that the state take over and administer the docks, provide the necessary capital for them on the same basis as before, i.e. no lost jobs. This amounts to demanding that the state act against the needs of the productive forces and refuse to let them develop. (Don't forget that SW demanded that all docks be nationalised. This presumably means that no new ports will be developed "just because" it makes sense geographically to do so as this would rob jobs). SW's conception of the state accords with the highest bourgeois idealist: it is above society and above the real needs of society, administering and ordering society in accordance with some moral order. It is unjust that dockers should be robbed of their jobs, therefore the state must enforce morality and restore the dockers to their jobs. SW's conception is also typical of Trotskyist bureaucratic notions: nationalisation will work because the state can do what it wants; after all it is the arm of the ruling class and could put the docks in running and prosperous order if it wanted to.
These notions are also an aspect of the British working class' consciousness. It derives not from the success of IS' propaganda but from the evolutionary socialism of the late nineteenth century fostered by the Fabians. The ruling class have never been averse to nationalisation - Gladstone in 1844 argued that Parliament should cede itself the right to acquire railways if necessary, after they had been developed by joint stock companies -provided there was a good economic reason for it, i.e. it aided the development of the productive forces and it made political sense. Thus the Conservatives brought electricity and broadcasting into public "trusteeship" in the late 1920's. Lloyd George forced the unwilling myriad of railway companies to rationalise themselves into four before he would decontrol the industry after World War I. Many of the registered docks are in municipal ownership of some kind, from the early 19th century when the local merchants realised that the capital necessary to develop them could best be got from "the community". It is likely that some kind of nationalisation of registered ports will occur in the next few years, particularly if a Labour Government is returned in the next election. But, it will be nationalisation and job-robbing as well. We have seen that the large employers themselves are not at all averse to a further weeding out of the smaller ones. Especially if nationalisation will help labour relations (as it undoubtedly has in the coal and railway industries) are we likely to see it occurring in the registered docks.