In April 1970, a bitter strike broke out at the Pilkington Glass Factory in St Helens, Lancashire. The workers were members of the General and Municipal Workers (GMWU), which was bureaucratically controlled and stood on the far right of the Labour movement. Its general secretary, Lord Cooper, also had other outside interests, such as governor of the London School of Business Studies, director of Telefusion Yorkshire, and director of the National Ports Council. In the tradition of right-wing “democracy”, he ruled the union with a heavy hand. The Pilkington GMWU branch of 7,400 members was the largest in the country. Incredibly its branch meetings were not open to ordinary members, but only to shop stewards. Negotiations were conducted within a Joint Industrial Council, which was supervised and heavily influenced by union full-time officials.
A spontaneous unofficial walkout at Pilkington’s main factory over bonus pay quickly spread to the other sectors. The workers were demanding a £10 wage rise. At first, the shop stewards called for a return to work, but under intense pressure they were forced to declare the strike official at branch level. Reflecting the colossal discontent within the work-force, the strike rapidly spread to other Pilkington factories throughout Britain. Within a week, the GMWU national officials intervened to get the strike called off, but were met with determined opposition. The Joint Industrial Council was hastily convened and recommended a £3 wage rise – but the strikers rejected this offer out of hand.
The older shop stewards, who had originally acted as a break on the struggle, were pushed to one side and replaced by the Rank and File Strike Committee (RFSC), which assumed charge of the strike. The GMWU leaders, now in league with Pilkington management, used every device to get the industrial action called off, but failed miserably. However, on 16 May, in a poll organised by the local church, a small majority voted in favour of returning to work. With pressure from the TUC itself, the RFSC saw no alternative but to call off the strike.
The workers were extremely bitter at the manoeuvres of their own trade union officials. The task facing the RFSC was to conduct a serious struggle to transform the union on democratic lines, as a genuine instrument of the members. Unfortunately, many workers were influenced to split away from the GMWU, egged on by groups on the left, particularly the Socialist Workers Party (formerly the International Socialists), who urged them to break from the GMWU and set up their own union. The SWP produced leaflets entitled NUGMWU Scab Union, and a pamphlet that argued:
Can the GMWU be reformed from within? The obvious answer is to say no, since the right-wing bureaucracy has so many safe guards built into the constitution to prevent militants getting into influential positions, since the rules prohibit organisation between branches, and since history shows how the NEC can chop off and re-organise any sections whose policies, etc. it does not like.[14]
We have heard such arguments many times: that the workers cannot change the unions from within: that the only answer is to split away and form a new union and so on. Such splits are always ruinous for the trade unions, whose only strength is their unity. Attempts to form minority “left” unions merely serve to strengthen the stranglehold of the bureaucracy and weaken the Left, while sowing division and confusion among the workers. The net result is always the same: an increase of non-unionism. Many workers drop out of the union altogether. And the new “left” union, if it survives at all, inevitably moves to the right and plays a reactionary role. On the other hand, the majority union will eventually respond to the pressure from below and the old bureaucrats will retire or be replaced by more militant elements. This is just what happened here.
The RFSC changed its name to the Pilkington Provisional Trade Union Committee and around 3,500 handed in their resignations from the GMWU. As a result of the Bridlington Agreement they were refused membership of the TGWU. By the end of June, the Committee established their own Glass and General Workers’ Union (GGWU). In a scandalous manner, Pilkingtons and the GMWU bureaucracy nationally colluded to break the new union. In August, the GGWU imposed an overtime ban which led to suspensions and a short strike at the Cowley Hill plant. This led to 480 workers being sacked. Some were later re-employed, but 130 remained sacked, including the leaders of the GGWU, Gerry Caughey and John Potter. Within weeks, the breakaway union was wound up. It proved a very bitter experience, with victimised union militants sacked and blacklisted from work.
Those who seek short-cuts where none exist merely simply served to break away the more militant and class conscious workers from their less militant brothers and sisters. The split of the GMWU at Pilkingtons only served to reinforce the position of the right wing and the union bureaucracy, which in one fell swoop got rid of any potential challenge to its authority.
“Impatient leftists sometimes say that it is absolutely impossible to win over the trade unions because the bureaucracy uses the organisation’s internal regimes for preserving its own interests, resorting to the basest machinations, repressions and plain crookedness…” stated Leon Trotsky just before the war, “Why then waste time and energy? This argument reduces itself in reality to giving up the actual struggle to win the masses, using the corrupt character of the trade union bureaucracy as a pretext.” The class-conscious workers must learn from the history of such disastrous splits and avoid them in the future.
The argument that it was impossible to change the GMWU was shown to be completely false. Pressure from the rank and file forced the GMWU leaders to shift tack. The official union branch at Pilkingtons was divided into six factory branches, this time with the right of every member to attend the meetings. Lord Cooper retired early and was replaced in 1973 by David Basnett, who was a moderate but more responsive to the views of the rank and file. This served to move the union towards the centre-left and opened it up to democratic reform. Strikes in other industries were increasingly made official by the GMWU – in complete contrast to the past. From £27,000 paid out in strike pay in 1967, the GMWU’s strike pay figure rose to £700,000 by 1971. Unfortunately, those militants misled by the ultra-left groups, who could have acted as a catalyst to push the union further to the left, were now outside of the union, without work or influence. It was a tragic end to a brave fight. Nevertheless, Basnett’s election was clearly a product of the strike upsurge, which served to shift the union in a more progressive direction.
1970 was the year when the Wilson government went to the polls and was defeated by the Tories led by Edward Heath. The period of counter-reform under Labour had disillusioned its supporters, resulting in large Labour abstentions in the July 1970 general election. The coming to power of the Tory government’ constituted a sharp change in the political situation, opening up a tidal wave of struggle not seen since the 1920s.
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‘The Pilkington Dispute’, International Socialists pamphlet, 1970