BETWEEN one and two million on strike. Ters of thousands demonstrating against the Tories - that was 14 May. But despite this response from hundreds of thousands of workers, the Tory Party and its press allies presented the TUC's Day of Action as a victory against the working class Why has this occarred! PHIL HEARSE looks at 14 May and its aftermath.
14 May represented by far the largest action so far against the Tories. At first sight, berween one and iwo million on strike and tens of thousands of demonstrators against Tory policies hardly represents a 'victory' for the Tories.
But in the period leading up to the Day of Action, the Tory leadership and the unprecedented press barrage upped the stakes enormously.
A challenge was thrown at the feet of the TUC leaders — to carry out an enormous mobilisation of their members, or have 14 May counted as a defeat. Murray and Co entirely failed to rise to that challenge; the only effective reply they could have made was to go all out; to vehemently denounce the Tory press; to make it clear they were not prepared to be bullied.
But instead the TUC leadership prevaricated.
The strategy of the Express, the Sun, the Mail and the rest was to appeal over the heads of the trade union leaders to their members. The mass media effectively said to rank-and-file trades unionists: 'Murray is leading you nowhere. On 14 May you will lose a day's pay for nothing. Not many people will strike. Don't put yourself on a limb for nothing.
This line of argument was backed by the decision of the High Court against the print unions; that their instruction to members at Express Newspapers to strike was illegal. NATSOPA's refusal to withdraw the instruction provided the high point of resistance to Thatcher's rule on 14 May, and Express management duly withdrew its threat to sack the printworkers who took action.
The only reason that the Tories' onslaught could be effective was because most of the unions had made strike action op-. tional. They did not issue clear instructions for mass strike action. Yet it was not only a firm lead at this level that was lacking.
Leaflets Millions and millions of copies of the Tory newspapers argued the case against the TUC action, but hardly anything was done by the unions to counter this with arguments of their own.
They should have produced tens of thousands of leaflets. Union districts should have organised hundreds upon hundreds of meetings to explain the case for 14 May. In the event the case of the unions, the working class point of view, went by default.
In the light of this, the fact that so many thousands of workers took strike action is remarkable, and represents a glimpse of the deep-seated hatred and frustration with which this government is regarded.
The response to the call was uneren, area by area, sector t, sector. The biggest response came in areas like Scotland, Sand Wales, South Yorkshire and Merseyside. This repeated the par tern of the general clection, reflecting the mulitant traditions those areas. More than that, it stowed that where ibert militant lead: staere taere was esca 25 i Suri TRie and te It MICS -By raising the sails of tis see Je To este par the TiC leaderst de ine spot Muray an Je scher scuben of the General Conci comit salt tara rumed ja saratio around bi going all out io bave a massive statisacon of the rank and fike. • This thes were sox propared io do; ther Derer wanted a one-day general strike or anything like it. Petrified As Murray said: 'We achieved everything we wanted to on 14 May.' Precisely. Nothing scares the union bureaucrats more than the thought of the membership, in their millions, taking strike action. The dynamic towards a general strike petrifies them. They wanted just a 'protest'. If the propaganda barrag of the press made that protest ineffective, that was a price thes were prepared to pay.
There was a deep-seated cynicism about the Day of Action, even among the militants. The reason for that is obvious. The arguments of the Tory press - that one-day action would affect little — struck a chord. The one-day action was com pletely unconnected with any perspective for on-going action or long-term plan to kick out the Tories.
14 May, as a 'protest', had no specific demands attached to it. It was simply 'to raise the level of public debate', and to ga the goverment to change course.
Such a perspective had an air of complete unreality about it. Anyone with the least bit of sense could see that the Tories are not going to be turned aside by 'protest'. This is the most derermined and right-wing government since the war. What is need ed is mass industrial action leading to a general strike. That's the only thing which will succeed in throwing the Tories out.
Whatever the short-term demoralisation resulting from the relative lack of impact of 14 May, it will continue to have reverberations inside the labour movement. Thousands of people could see that they were being let down by their leaders; they could see that if a fight against the media offensive took place, it was possible to build a much bigger action.
Socialists have the job of turning this frustration from demoralisation and anger into determination to push the strug gle forward. We have to continue a fight inside the labour movement to commit it at every level to mass action against the Tories. The targets have to be the special Labour Party con ference on 31 May, and then beyond that the Trades Union Congress in the autumn.
But it is impossible to fight the right wing and to commit the trade union leaders to action without building an organised left wing in the unions. That is the key to whole situation. Withou an organised left, 14 May will be not a beginning, but the precursor of more demoralisation and defeat Socialist CI 22 Maj
THE printworkers who led the march past