[What's Wrong with the Unions? A Syndicalist Answer](http://syndicalism.org/texts/486/whats-wrong-with-the-unions-a-syndicalist-answer)
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By [Tom Brown](http://syndicalism.org/authors/235/tom-brown)

Published in 1955 by Syndicalist Workers Federation

Topics: [France](http://syndicalism.org/topics/France), [transportation
and
warehousing](http://syndicalism.org/topics/transportation%20and%20warehousing),
[manufacturing](http://syndicalism.org/topics/manufacturing), [craft and
industrial
unionism](http://syndicalism.org/topics/craft%20and%20industrial%20unionism),
[UK](http://syndicalism.org/topics/UK),
[boycott](http://syndicalism.org/topics/boycott),
[Italy](http://syndicalism.org/topics/Italy),
[history](http://syndicalism.org/topics/history), [strike tactics and
analysis](http://syndicalism.org/topics/strike%20tactics%20and%20analysis),
[structure](http://syndicalism.org/topics/structure),
[intro](http://syndicalism.org/topics/intro)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are several ways of beginning a book or pamphlet on a labour
question. One may start, as many pundits do, with Adam and Eve and work
on through history until one has reached the Tolpuddle martyrs on the
second last page. Or one might begin, continue, and end by quoting the
writings of bearded gentlemen who lived a hundred years ago. This method
saves writing half of the book if sufficient quotations are made --- and
it saves all the ideas. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the
scissors beat both of them!

There is a third method \... to begin with the subject at its place and
in its time. This I would do. I will take as my starting point a
discussion I had with my workmates a few days ago. This discussion is
woven, in my remembrance, into many other discussions, for they have had
the same theme and have ended without solution. And the subject has
probably often been discussed by you and your mates, be you miner,
clerk, bus driver, or machinist. "What's wrong with the unions?"

### Midwives and Gravediggers

Perhaps the most talked about union at the moment is the Transport &
General Workers' Union --- that big, ungainly, and redoubtable animal.
All seem to agree that it's far too big and too undemocratic. Some would
destroy it at once, others would reform it, and a few rejoice at its
dismemberment into more homely portions.

But many older members of the union, remembering past labour struggles,
hesitate to attack its fabric. The oldest dockers, for example, remember
the days when their calling was the most depressed of any, when wages
were very low, work casual and always uncertain; when men were often, in
their hunger, forced to fight like animals for a day's work, and when
the pub-owning stevedore robbed them of half their miserable wage.

They contrast those days with their later position, especially after
1920, when wages rose above those of many skilled men, the "slave"
market was curtailed, and most of the old abuses abolished. These men
say: "Without our union this could not be. As clumsy as it is, we don't
want to wreck it." Certainly, without the struggle, the solidarity, and
the discipline of the dockers' organisation, these fruits would not have
been gathered.

A similar, though less dramatic story is told of the London busmen, the
unskilled factory labourers, women industrial workers, and others.
Organisation and strike action have raised their living standard and
their position in society.

But these replies, sincere as they are, do not meet the main objection.
The T. & G.W.U. is a huge union, formed by amalgamation and a policy of
recruiting "everybody from midwives to gravediggers," and the brightest
battle honours on the union's flag belong to pre-amalgamation days. The
dockers' greatest victories, for example, were achieved by the old
Dockers' Union, before it was swallowed by the T. & G.W.U.

Now this union is a colossus which strides the country. It is big,
unwieldy, unresponsive to the changing needs of its members,
undemocratic, with appointed organisers, and irritatingly clumsy and
slow.

### The Outcasts Rise!

But these faults are not held alone by the Transport Union. Other unions
are similarly clumsy and huge, and the reason for these things may be
found in the earlier development of labour unionism in Britain. The
present trade union movement (I leave out the earlier, abortive attempts
to form unions) was in its initial stages limited to the miners and the
skilled craftsmen. The others were ignored for years. So trade unionism
became, except for the miners, craft unionism.

Then came the organisation of dockers, tramwaymen, lorry drivers, and
general labourers. Organised at first in particular unions, such as the
dockers, and in amorphous collections of unskilled labourers, they
tended to amalgamate without any defined boundaries, such as are natural
to a mining community or a strictly sectarian craft.

In some cases the new labourers' unions organised definite groups of
workers, such as the tramwaymen and dockers, but soon most of their
membership was spread throughout all industries --- engineering,
farming, milk distribution, and a hundred others. Because the craft
unions in these industries refused to organise unskilled labour, there
was no choice for the lowest paid workers but to join a general
labourers' union.

Having demonstrated that "unity is strength," it seemed right and proper
to these new unionists to amalgamate the several general unions into
larger and ever more general organisations, until two unions, the
Transport & General Workers' Union and the National Union of General &
Municipal Workers numbered most of the unskilled, and even some skilled,
unionists on their books. The result was the overgrown, unwieldy,
undemocratic, and shapeless crowds which these unions now are.

But these unions did, nevertheless, raise the wages and the social
standing of their members, especially in relation to the skilled
craftsmen. For example, in 1914 a skilled worker in engineering or
shipbuilding in such towns as Glasgow or Newcastle received 37 shillings
without providing his own tools; his mate or labourer received 18
shillings. In 1924 the skilled rate in such towns for these industries
was 1 shilling 2 1/2 pence an hour, but unskilled dockers received 1
shilling and sixpence an hour. Of course, there was a social tendency in
that direction, but union organisation was needed to exploit and
complete that tendency.

Having completed its historic task of raising the unskilled worker, the
general union has now reached a dead end. With its present basis, no
further development seems possible. Its members are either apathetic or
discontented, there is a constant conflict between officials and
members, and breakaways are ever more frequently threatened.

### The Craft Unions

The position of the craft union is scarcely better. It seeks to justify
itself by organising men on a social basis which is mediaeval rather
than twentieth century. Its basis is not the factory or industry a man
works in, or the commodity he helps to produce, but the tools he uses
--- and even, in some cases, the tools he once used. This had some
meaning a few hundred years ago, for men in one small workshop, using a
kit of tools, might produce one complete commodity, as did the
coachbuilders, coopers, or shipwrights.

It was natural, then, to organise men according to the tools they used
\... carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, tailors, cutters, goldsmiths.
But now many tools and crafts are needed to produce even one commodity.
For one engineering product, the work of moulders, fitters, machinists,
electricians, and a score of others comes into play. And not only
tradesmen, but semi-skilled and unskilled labour (if we may use these
rapidly fading definitions) and office labour too (draughtsmen and
book-keepers).

Yet the old union demarcations persist --- like the Lord Mayor's Show, a
relic of another age. In an engineering shop where a few hundred or few
thousand workers produce but one commodity, 40 or 50 unions may claim to
organise the workers. Not only the craft unions, but the general unions,
lapping like the sea over broken dykes, claiming a large slice of union
membership behind their banners: "We organise everybody from midwives to
gravediggers." Yet all claim that this mess is organisation and shout:
"Unity is strength."

The simple truth is that the craft union was formed to fight a war on
two fronts --- against the employer and against other workers. It
bargained with the employer to get the highest price for its labour. To
increase its bargaining power, it sought to curtail the supply of the
commodity it was selling by restrictions, such as a long and low-paid
apprenticeship. It kept out the worker who had not "served his time" and
fought other crafts to maintain its monopoly of certain processes and
even sought to nibble at the preserves of other unions. Thus, in a
situation which demanded the highest degree of class solidarity and
consciousness, the skilled unions have been little more than limited
liability companies selling labour power.

More conservative than the Tories, the craft unions tried to hold on to
their exclusive and sectarian positions in a changing economy which fast
made them obsolete. Machinery has broken down many craft barriers, two
world wars have opened the gates to a flood of unapprenticed labour, and
social and political development has swept away social differences of
skilled and unskilled. Yet most craft unions go on clinging to a fast
diminishing tradition. Like the Bourbons, they forget nothing and learn
nothing.

### Sect or Industry?

What is the alternative to craft unionism and crowd unionism? Let us
take a walk through a factory --- say an engineering shop producing
locomotives. We start in the drawing office, go on through the pattern
shop, then the foundry, on to the machine shop, visit stores and minor
workshops, finally passing through the fitting and erecting shops. How
true must seem our earlier statement that all of these, say, 2,000
workers are united in producing one single commodity. Each is necessary
to the other; a single process operates from gate to gate.

Yet in this one factory, in the jackets hanging behind bench and
machine, are the membership cards of 20 to 40 different unions --- all
probably bearing such inscriptions as: "United we stand, divided we
fall," or "Unity is strength"! Some may even carry a picture of a small
boy watching his grandfather vainly trying to break a bundle of
firewood, and its companion picture showing the old man, who has now
tumbled to the trick, breaking them one by one, much to the child's
relief.

Unfortunate men! They are united in their work and divided in their
unions.

Now it must seem obvious that all men and women in this one factory
should belong to one union, whatever their craft, whether they be
skilled or unskilled, male or female. The clerical and drawing office
staff, too, should be organised in this one engineering workers' union.

The industry, the commodity produced, gives a good, easy basis of union
organisation. A worker going from one engineering factory to another
finds himself on familiar ground within a few hours and usually
understands the problems of other workers like himself fairly easily.
The limits of the industry, then, should generally be the limits of the
unions. It would obviously be foolish to suggest that the engineering
union should organise farm labourers or miners or midwives into its
ranks. Yet some unions spread themselves over even more diverse
occupations than these.

### False Industrial Unions

The syndicalist propaganda for industrial unionism has, in some
industries, been met by the transformation of some craft unions into
false industrial unions. Most prominent of these is the Amalgamated
Engineering Union, which opened its doors first to the semi-skilled,
then the unskilled and, a few years ago, the women workers.

But the A.E.U. is not an industrial union. It has not succeeded in
amalgamating the many craft unions in the engineering trade, yet it
seeks to organise sections of workers in almost every industry ---
building, electricity, milk processing, chemicals, and many others, even
where a union claiming to be industrial is organising most of the
workers. For some years the A.E.U. has been in dispute with the miners'
union, because the latter claims all workers in the mining industry.

There are other unions, such as the Electrical Trades Union, which have
a similar double basis --- to seek to organise a large slice of one
industry and fragments of all the rest.

The Syndicalist conception of industrial unionism is certainly not that
of the A.E.U., E.T.U., or other so-called industrial unions. We believe
in one union only for one industry. But revolutionary industrial
unionism means more than that --- it has its beginning, its foundation,
in industry. Most unions --- the miners' is an exception --- are
organised on a doss-house basis. A doss-house is not concerned about
where a man works, but only where he sleeps, and most trade unions
organise their members according to their place of residence. If a
London A.E.U. member works in a factory at Acton, but lives in
Willesden, he will usually join a Willesden branch of the A.E.U. His
fellow workers in the Acton shop will, similarly, be organised by
branches in the localities where they sleep --- perhaps a hundred
branches in 30 or 40 places, often 20 miles apart.

One result of this seemingly convenient arrangement is the unsuitability
of the branch meeting as a means of discussing workshop problems, for
our member may, when he goes to his branch at Willesden or Poplar, be in
the company of men who work in scores of different factories or even
industries, and are unwilling to devote the whole of an evening to
discussing his particular place of work. One may see the result of this
in the dull, lifeless business routine of trade union branch meetings
and in the irrelevant matters they discuss.

The place to start the industrial union branch is industry --- the
factory, mill, mine, shop, or office. Every worker in the factory should
be a member of the one branch, or sub branch where the factory is very
large. The branch should meet at, or near, the factory, and the
secretary, treasurer, and shop stewards be elected from the factory. In
such a branch, all matters relating to the particular factory could be
discussed in an atmosphere of understanding and interest.

### District Federation

But a worker's problems are not limited to the place where he works, I
can hear someone say. That is true, and the factory branch is only the
beginning of Syndicalism. In all things which are particular to our
factory, the branch has autonomy, but there are other problems which may
concern, say, similar factories in the same district. This presents no
difficulty, however, for the industrial branch will be federated to the
district federation of engineers --- or miners --- or railwaymen.

It is surprising how, on reflection, we find certain industries fall
into fairly distinct districts \... Lancashire cotton, West Riding wool,
London transport, Durham coal, and so on. Here the superiority of
Syndicalist over territorial organisation will be seen, for a district
of one industry in, say, the West of Scotland, will overlap and underlap
that of other industries. The organisational basis of Syndicalism is
adaptable to this, but the territorial method, such as that of
parliamentary groupings, has to squeeze, lop off, and fill up to make
its rigid pattern on the political map.

Look at any population map. You will see how, while people live together
in moderately defined regions, their work districts overlap each other.

Now, while the district federation of the industry deals with things
which are peculiar to the industry of its district, and not the special
concern of one particular factory, there are problems which can be
solved only on a national or country-wide basis. Just as the branch has
autonomy over its own affairs, but federates to the district to tackle
more general questions, so the district federation of each industry is
federated to its national federation of engineers --- or textile workers
--- or chemical workers.

Up to now we have thirty or so industrial unions or federations and I
can hear some of our critics crying that we have left labour still
divided, but again the Syndicalist principle of federation goes to work.
The industrial federations deal with those questions that are peculiar
to each of their industries, but some problems may concern more than one
industry --- such as a strike of railwaymen directly concerning busmen,
and there are questions which affect all workers, whatever their
industry. So there comes about the federation of all industrial unions
on a national scale --- the National Federation of Labour.

### National Federation of Labour

The National Federation is a gathering of all the strength and counsel
of the industrial federations, covering every industry and service ---
mines, factories, power stations, offices, schools, hospitals, railways,
shipping\.... It is able to swing its forces from one front to another,
to aid any one section of labour by the solidarity of whatever other
sections are needed.

Such a federation is quite different to the present Trades Union
Congress, which has rarely been more than an annual consultative meeting
and has long since degenerated into a political debating society.

As well as federation on a national scale, some form of general local
organisation is necessary. Quite simply, the industrial branches of each
union join together in a local federation in each city, town, or farming
district. While this may seem somewhat akin to the existing trades
councils, there is an important distinction. Trades councils are, in the
main, rather loose federations of trade union branches formed on a
residential basis and, in any case, are usually confused as to their
exact function, become bogged down in local politics, and can rarely
distinguish themselves from the local Labour Party and its functions.

The Syndicalist local federation, on the other hand, is largely a body
of delegates from factories and other places of work in or about the
town and is concerned with truly labour problems, rather than who shall
wear the mayor's brass chain next year or who shall be nominated as the
town's dog-catcher.

### Delegates

While Syndicalists look to the elemental mass meeting of the workers at
their place of work as the foundation of organisation and the greatest
source of labour's strength, there are, nevertheless, certain functions
which cannot be carried out by a mass meeting --- certain details and
arrangements where delegation of function is necessary. So the meeting
elects delegates to carry out its wishes and general resolutions.

But these men and women are nothing *but* delegates. They are elected
for certain limited functions, to carry out certain general
instructions, and always subject to recall. The right of recall is
fundamental to Syndicalism, though it is somewhat strange to the
orthodox labour movement and completely foreign to the Communist belief.

It is the simple principle that whoever elects may recall, whoever gives
may take away. A delegate is elected to carry out a certain function or
policy; if he disregards the wishes of his fellow workers, then they may
at once recall him. How the trade-union movement has suffered from
neglect of this principle, which trade-union leaders and would-be bosses
have always disliked.

The nearest the trade unions have come to it is in the shop steward
movement, but for years the Communists --- often with considerable
success --- have fought fiercely against this principle, seeking to make
each Communist shop steward a *papier-maché* Stalin and even denying the
workers the right to make strike decisions.

But the Syndicalist stands firmly by these things --- the mass meeting,
delegates not bosses, the right of recall. Here, indeed, is the hallmark
of Syndicalism.

It is now evident that Syndicalism is organised from the bottom upwards
--- the factory, the mass meeting, the delegate --- and that all power
comes from below and is controlled from below. This is a revolutionary
principle, one of the few truly revolutionary principles advocated in
the twentieth century. In all other movements, government, regulation,
is from above downwards. The capitalist, the dictator, the leader, the
hereditary boss tells his flock what they must do --- strictly in their
own interests, of course! But he decides what is good and what is evil.
All movements so based, even if claiming to be revolutionary, are
founded upon the concept of slave and master --- though maybe a
self-styled kind master. Only Syndicalism is based on free men.

All parties, capitalist or "labour", and all social relationships except
Syndicalism, are at one in opposing the principle of control from below.
All are willing to fight to the last ditch to preserve the principle of
control from above, the relation of master and servant. Communism,
Conservatism, Labourism, capitalism, business (big or small) --- all are
bound and rooted in the master principle, as were the previous systems
of feudalism and chattel slavery.

The Syndicalist principle of control from below, then, is truly
revolutionary and, as such, is repulsive to the political parties and
excites the anger of groups and individuals who wish to appear
revolutionary while, at the same time, they retain the principles of a
conservative society.

Control from below runs through all Syndicalist manifestations --- its
organisation, its activity, and its idea of a future society.

### The Right To Strike

In our strike activity, we find ourselves at once in conflict with the
Communist Party, which denies the right of the worker to make his own
decisions. To us, the decision to strike or not to strike belongs, as a
group agreement, to the workers concerned in a dispute. It is for them,
as a collective body, to decide when to strike and when to return.

To this principle, the Communist official will bow only when he is
forced, or --- as most often happens --- when, having made a fiasco of a
strike he has called, he is anxious to get the strikers back to work
before his ill-judged and mismanaged skirmish collapses. Then he will
call on the workers to vote, "to make their own decision," knowing full
well that only one decision is possible in the circumstances he has
created.

In unions over which the Communists have gained control, the officials
have taken from the members the right to strike and vested it in
themselves, so that the workers are like cannon-fodder at the disposal
of generals.

A worker who has not the right to strike is less than a man, he is a
slave. Only this right raises him above the beasts of burden.

Knowing this, Syndicalists have always fought in its defence. In the
unions, in capitalist society, in Franco Spain as in Fascist Italy and
Bolshevik Russia, they have defended the right to strike.

The strike, the withdrawal of labour power in varied ways, is not the
only weapon of working-class struggle, but it is the chief one --- and
the basis of others. By striking, however, we do not necessarily mean
the conventional method of long negotiation, several months' notice, and
then a withdrawal of labour into the streets, to await the result of a
long, drawn-out struggle in ever-increasing poverty.

Certainly, such a struggle may have to be faced, but other methods,
quicker and not so painful, are quite often open to the workers. Such
ways have been thought out, used, and developed by Syndicalists of many
countries, with great success. The lightning strike, "work to rule," the
"strike at work," the boycott, the sympathetic strike, the guerrilla and
the stay-in strike are Syndicalist weapons, which even trade unionists
have learned to use with excellent results, Syndicalist propaganda
having made them familiar to thousands.

Let us consider, briefly, the nature of some of the Syndicalist strike
tactics. The lightning strike, not alone because of its speed, but also
as a result of the time and place of its blow, is usually more effective
than the orthodox, long drawn-out affair, played according to a set of
rules almost as traditional as those of chess. It is particularly
effective on a small scale, as in a single factory or group of
factories. Here again, the right of the workers to decide is important,
for the worker on the spot usually knows better than any remote official
when is the right time, where is the right place to use the lightning
strike. Only he knows all the many, often minute conditions which will
determine its success or failure.

The practice of guerrilla strikes has been tried in England by one
orthodox trade union, with some success, but this experiment was but a
pale imitation of the red-blooded Syndicalist method. The guerrilla
strike is particularly well suited to certain industries, such as
engineering, which are of a diverse character. Even in the pre-war days
of slump, some sections of engineering were quite prosperous ---
aircraft, for instance --- while other sections, such as shipbuilding,
were in the lowest depths of industrial misery.

Yet wages for the whole industry were based on its most depressed
section. Obviously, here was a case for obtaining better conditions as
time, place, and circumstance allowed, winning a pound in this town or
ten shillings in that factory. Certainly this was tried, with some
success, but in every case the workers concerned found themselves in
conflict with their unions, who had all made agreements fixing national
wage scales and outlawing guerrilla strikes.

One of the foundation principles of Syndicalism is the sympathetic
strike, but for a hundred years this principle has had but a flickering
life in Britain. How many times have we seen strikers defeated, not by
the employers, but by their organised trade-union brethren, who
blacklegged against them? Busmen against railmen; London tube men
against London busmen working for the same company; ship repair workers
on strike and members of the dockers' union and the National Union of
Seamen taking the ships to be repaired in France or Holland; iron
moulders on strike, while machinists and fitters worked scab castings.

So the unhappy tale might go on. Only recently have we seen the faint
beginning of the sympathetic strike in England. A lot more Syndicalist
propaganda is needed to bring it to fruit, and a Syndicalist form of
federal organisation is needed to make it work effectively. Then we
shall realise the strength of the historic slogan of the
[I.W.W.](https://syndicalism.org/topics/IWW): "An injury to one is the
concern of all."[^1^](#1)

### The Boycott

Akin to the sympathetic strike is the boycott, little used by unions ---
apart from the strong Syndicalist organisations of Spain and Sweden. It
is worthwhile recalling the origins of the term boycott.

In the fight of the Irish peasants against the landlords, the tenant
farmers formed the Irish Land League. The landlords were evicting
tenants who could not pay their increased rents, and replacing them with
new tenants. The League forbade farmers to occupy the farms of evicted
peasants, but some farmers defied this order.

Then the League used its greatest weapon, against which the landlords,
the magistrates, and the military were helpless --- the "boycott". Farm
labourers and house servants left these farms, the cows went unmilked,
and the crops rotted in the fields. The carter, the grocer, the butcher,
even the doctor and the undertaker refused their services to the
boycotted farmers.

Successful as it was in early 19th century Ireland, how much more
victorious can this weapon be in our modern, complex society. The
boycott can be used by certain sections of industrial workers, in
particular transport men, to support other striking groups, but it can
also be used in a general-public way to aid strikers in public service
by blacklisting the disputed concern's goods and services. Newspapers,
shops, cinemas, theatres, laundries, coal merchants, and life insurance
are examples which spring quickly to mind.

Many ingenious strike tactics have been invented by the French
Syndicalists. Of these, the work-to-rule strike of the railmen is,
perhaps, best known. When, under nationalisation, French rail strikes
were forbidden, their Syndicalist fellow workers were delighted to urge
the railmen to carry out the strict letter of the law. Now French
railways, like those of most other countries, are governed by thousands
of laws, most of them unused and ignored, their place being taken by
commonsense and experience.

But the French railmen worked to the rule-book. The railway laws were
carried out just as the government said they ought to be.

One French law tells the engine-driver to make sure of the safety of any
bridge over which his train must pass. If, after personal examination,
he is still doubtful, then he must consult the other members of the
train's crew. Of course, trains ran late!

Another law for which French railmen developed a sudden passion related
to the ticket collectors. All tickets had to be examined thoroughly on
both sides. The law said nothing of city rush hours. The results of
working to rule were to tie up the railways, make the law look an ass,
and win the railmen's cause.

It is interesting here to recall that groups of English Syndicalist
workers on the old North Eastern Railway carried out this tactic about
35 years ago with complete success.

More recently, largely as a result of Syndicalist propaganda, London
busmen have, with great success, tried this method.

### Good Work Strike

A similar Syndicalist strike tactic is the good work strike. Workers,
particularly in Spain, who were building cheap working-class houses, put
best workmanship into even shoddy materials. Doors hung straight,
windows opened and shut, roofs were waterproof, and walls perpendicular.

The most amusing case of this form of strike action comes from the
U.S.A. and concerns an accusation made against the militant union, the
I.W.W. In a canning factory, the labels for the tins are said to have
been mixed, so that poor people buying what they thought was cheap pink
salmon, were delighted to get sock-eye steaks. From the poor districts
came orders for more of "that salmon", while from better-off districts
came bitter rebukes and insults.

Many other examples of Syndicalist strike strategy might be given, had
we the space, but enough has been said to show that Syndicalists are not
committed to only one strike method, but adapt their tactics to the time
and place, so that the greatest victory may be won by the least amount
of human suffering.

But all such ways of striking are skirmishes before the real battle,
training for the most powerful of Syndicalist weapons --- the stay-in
strike.

### Stay-in Strike

The workers, instead of walking out and leaving the factory or other
plant in the hands of the employer, stay in and lock out the boss. This
at once prevents the factory being used for blacklegging and protects
the strikers.

This method was tried by the automobile workers of Detroit and other
parts of the United States in 1937. There, strikers had suffered defeat
by using the conventional strike method, principally because their
picket lines had been battered by the police and by employers' gangs.
But in 1937, by "seizing" the car factories, they at once made the
strike blackleg-proof. They were no longer assaulted by the police, for
now they were barricaded in the factories. The strike was completely
successful in a few weeks.

But Spain, France, and Italy, with their strong Syndicalist traditions,
give us the best-known examples of the widespread stay-in strike. In
France, the last occasion of its use on a nation-wide scale was June,
1936. To combat falling wages, the engineering workers declared a strike
and seized the factories. They were quickly followed by millions of
others, even by saleswomen in the fashionable shops.

The stay-in strike action --- swift, widespread, and determined --- at
once arrested the downward trend of wages and gained solid increases on
previous rates. It also gained for most workers the forty-hour week,
holidays with pay, and other improvements. Shortly after this sweeping
victory by workers' direct action, there came into being the notorious
"People's Front" Government of Liberals, Communists, and Socialists.
Abroad, this government was given the credit for the workers' gains of
1936 by lying Popular Front propaganda, although the "People's"
Government was elected *after* the event.

This government, as must be expected of any such reactionary
combination, at once began to gnaw away at the workers' gains by acts of
legislation, until most of them had been lost and the way prepared,
first for industrial conscription, then for the Vichy government.
Remember, the Vichy fascist government of 1940 was built on the
foundations laid by the reactionary "People's" Government, after the
French workers had relinquished the proven weapon of direct action for
the paper sword of political action.

### An Italian Lesson

Italy in 1920 gives us another example of large-scale stay-in strike
action. This, too, began in the engineering factories. The Italian
engineering employers had demanded a substantial reduction of wages and,
meeting refusal, decided on a lock-out. The engineering workers, with a
strong Syndicalist minority, decided to use the chief Syndicalist
weapon. Telephone and telegraph wires hummed, couriers and
motor-cyclists sped through the night, and, in one swift, co-ordinated
action, the metal factories were seized by the workers.

Other industries at once responded. Railwaymen and road transport men
moved supplies. Food was provided by the workers in bakeries and flour
mills, by the co-operatives and by the peasant organisations. Post
office and telephone workers maintained communications among the many
factories "on strike".

But what of the government, the army, and the police? Railwaymen were
willing to refuse to move any soldiers under arms or any military
supplies. The police were helpless, for the strikers were barricaded in
the factories, surrounded by barbed wire and electrified steel fences.

At that time in Italy there was a strong, well-armed Fascist military
organisation, but it was helpless against the stay-in strike. The
workers had the means to arm themselves in defence against the
Blackshirts --- steel, forges, and machines. Mussolini looked on,
powerless to intervene.

George Seldes, in his best-selling biography of Mussolini, *Sawdust
Caesar*, writes of this strike:

> Not a safe was cracked. Nor a skull. \[\...\] Commotion everywhere
> except in Italy. It is true that day by day more and more factories
> were being occupied by the workers. Soon 500,000 "strikers" were at
> work building automobiles, steamships, forging tools, manufacturing a
> thousand useful things, but there was not a shop or factory owner
> there to boss them or to dictate letters in the vacant offices. Peace
> reigned.[^2^](#2)

The Italian workers were victorious. The employers withdrew their
demands for wage cuts and, instead, offered increases and other
concessions. Unfortunately, the workers accepted these offers and,
against the advice of the Syndicalist minority, handed back the
factories. They enjoyed their gains for a little while, then reaction
began nibbling at the gains of 1920, until, two years later, the workers
--- weak without their factory fortresses and their direct action
spirit, and debilitated by political propaganda --- were defeated.

Again the political fabulists click their typewriters, falsifying
history, and political speakers, by malice and by ignorance, propagate
falsehood, declaring that the Blackshirts expelled the strikers from the
factories and instituted the Fascist State from that action.

In truth, Mussolini, who at the beginning of the strike loudly opposed
it, soon fell silent and took no action against it, mute and awed as he
was by the mighty force of workers, conscious for a brief hour of their
great strength. The stay-in strike was in 1920; the Fascists gained
power in 1922, after the Italian workers had relied on political action
for their defence. Two years of history are thus neatly clipped out by
the scissors of "progressive" political propagandists, in their attempts
to discredit the stay-in strike.

Of course the workers were wrong in the limited use they made of this
strike weapon. They ought to have retained the factories and extended
the strike to all industries, using it as the basis of a new society.

### Blind-alley Unionism

The greatest weakness of the trade union movement is its lack of an
ultimate aim. Created to secure a higher wage and a shorter working day,
it achieved its aims and now finds itself at the blind end of a limited
path. Its own members are becoming dissatisfied with such a
circumscribed social function. In any case, the usefulness of wage
advances in conditions of inflation is increasingly questioned, yet, at
the same time, the permanence of the capitalist system is accepted.

Wage increases and rising prices make the trade union movement look like
a dog chasing its own tail. The constant scrabble for paper pennies has
even led to the abandonment of the shorter working week and the
eight-hour day ideal of 70 years ago. True, on paper we have a 44-hour
week --- *on paper*, but systematic overtime is becoming almost
universal and is even established in some trade union agreements. It is
often said that some people were in favour of the 44-hour week only
because their overtime would start sooner.

Here is the end of trade union thought. It can no more think itself into
a further stage of social development than a man can lift himself by his
own shoestrings.

The trade union is designed to function only in a commodity society,
where everyone is selling something, and in which the worker has only
his labour power to sell. The price of commodities rises and falls with
changes in supply and demand and the price of the commodity, labour
power --- wages --- also rises with an increase in the demand for
labour, as we see at the present time. But, with an increase of the
labour supply beyond the needs of the market, wages fall. British
labour's wages, however, are not governed alone by national conditions,
but, more than most countries, by international factors. Changes in
India, Japan, the U.S., and Australia are, almost at once, felt in
Britain.

It is in this world market society that trade unions function and beyond
which they have no hope or knowledge. It is true that many unions have
in their rule-books a preamble in favour of the nationalisation, or even
socialisation, of the means of production and distribution, but such
declarations have no more significance than the dubious Latin
inscriptions on coats of arms.

The trade union is not designed or organised for any higher function
than selling labour power in a labour market.

### A New Society

Any major advance by labour can be achieved only by escaping from the
bonds of the wages system, and that means a radical change in the social
order --- a change from private to social ownership and the designing of
production for men's needs, instead of for their fluctuating purchasing
power.

But it is just here, in the contemplation of an alternative to
capitalism, that the trade union stops dead. Negotiate an extra
threepence an hour or question the redundancy of some machinists, yes
\... but a new society? That is like asking a fish to move on dry land.

A society such as we desire, based on the economic and emotional needs
of all, and not of a ruling class, must have an economic and not a
political foundation. As Jim Connolly so often quoted:

> There is not a socialist in the world to-day who can indicate with any
> degree of clearness how we can bring about the co-operative
> commonwealth except along the lines suggested by industrial
> organisation of the workers.
>
> Political institutions are not adapted to the administration of the
> co-operative commonwealth that we are working for. Only the industrial
> form of organisation offers us even a theoretical constructive
> socialist programme. There is no constructive socialism except on the
> industrial field.

Syndicalism, distinct from orthodox trades unionism, regards wage
struggles not as principle ends, but as secondary aims and means to a
greater end --- the abolition of the wages system and the creation of a
new society. The organisation of Syndicalism, in industrial unions, is
in harmony with this end. The strike strategy of Syndicalism, leading to
the social stay-in strike, is true to the ideal of a society of free
men.

While its aim in every wage struggle is to win that limited fight, at
the same time it uses the struggle to enlighten and raise the confidence
and fighting ability of the workers for the greatest struggle of all,
when we shall demand, not the half-loaf which is said to be better than
no bread, but the whole bakehouse.

So long as labour is a commodity --- something for sale on a labour
market --- subject to a variable economic climate, the worker will
remain a slave. Not a slave serving one particular master, but the slave
of a master class. At the best of times his living will be determined by
his commodity basis and limited by the "cost of living." At the worst,
it will sink, in times of economic depression, to starvation and misery,
even in a world of plenty. Atomic power and space travel will still find
him trudging the streets seeking work, or sitting by a fireless grate.
The worker can become master of his fate only when he has become master
of the machine.

But it is obvious that private ownership of the means of production
cannot be spread over millions of persons. Private ownership of
factories, mines, and modern transport systems is possible only for the
few. When the many control the means whereby they live, they will do so
by abolishing private ownership and establishing common ownership of the
means of production, with workers' control of industry.

This is not to be confused with nationalisation and state control, which
has been well described as "the government of the people, by the Civil
Service, for the Civil Service."

Where ownership is, in theory, said to be vested in the people, but
control is in the hands of a small class of bureaucrats, then common
ownership does not exist, but the labour market and wage labour go on,
the worker remaining a wage slave to State capitalism.

Common ownership demands common control. This is possible only in a
condition of industrial democracy by workers' control.

The framework of the Syndicalist organisations of struggle is easily
adaptable to the supreme task of taking over industry, and can evolve
into the complex and refined system of control necessary for modern
industry.

Miners would control the mines on behalf of society as a whole, textile
workers the mills, railmen the railways. The factory would control
affairs proper to the factory; the district of each industry the affairs
of that industry in its own area.

What had been the National Federation of Labour, the grand army of
workers welded together in the struggle against capitalism, would become
the Economic Council of Labour --- a delegate body to co-ordinate the
work of the various economic syndicates.

Production would be for human needs and not for the profit of a few. The
wage system would be abolished and, with a rise in techniques, there
would come, not the present fear of redundancy and starvation, but a
full and free life, such as we wage slaves have dreamed about but never
yet tasted.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Endnotes**

1\. Interestingly, this incorrect phrasing reveals the historical
ancestor of the IWW's famous slogan ("an injury to one is an injury to
all"), which is often overlooked. It was the Knights of Labor ---
founded about 35 years before the IWW --- that was known for the motto,
"an injury to one is the concern of all". ---Syndicalism.org eds.

2\. The passage as quoted by Brown was slightly incorrect; we corrected
it. See the book at the [Internet
Archive](https://archive.org/details/SawdustCaesarTheUntoldStoryOfMussoliniAndFascism)
(p. 87). ---Syndicalism.org eds.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Additional Information**

This is pamphlet \#1 in the SWF's series "Direct Action Pamphlets". Text
taken from [Kate Sharpley
Library](https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/79cq0w) and proofed against
pdf of the pamphlet at [The Sparrows' Nest Library and
Archive](http://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/4757.pdf).