Fight to win. (Notebook/Carnet).

Clarke, John

FOR SEVEN YEARS NOW, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has been on the front lines in a struggle against the Tory regime in Ontario and its implementation of what activist Jaggi Singh has called a "voluntary structural adjustment program." This is an apt term since the cuts to public services, the gutting of social programs, and the removal of protective regulations were not ordered by the International Monetary Fund but have been implemented by the Tories simply as a gift to the profit hungry. As an organization that mobilizes the poor and homeless, OCAP has been up against the most extreme effects of the Conservative agenda. The removal of an income support system, the freezing of the minimum wage, the obliteration of employment standards protections, the cancellation of social housing, and the removal of effective rent controls have combined to put thousands on the streets and condemn a major section of the working-class population to worsening poverty.

As the Tories have systematically embraced social abandonment, they have shown an increased and predictable interest in the only alternative means of regulating those they are impoverishing and rendering destitute -- direct state repression. Super jails are opening up across the province, "safe streets" legislation criminalizes panhandling and other acts of elemental survival, and police forces are encouraged to "socially cleanse" urban areas marked for commercial development or residential gentrification. I was recently told of two cops in one Ontario city who are now rendering the streets "safe" and driving out those begging for change by holding the hands of those who offend down on the sidewalk and breaking their fingers by stomping on them. This situation is not just a matter for deep humanitarian concern but a serious warning to the workers' movement. If the working class is reaching such a level of polarization and a section of it is experiencing such misery and privation, we are in a profoundly dange rous situation. It is this that prompts OCAP to by pass the politics of futile indignation and token protest and to build a massively disruptive form of social resistance which can actually stop the attacks and induce a political crisis.

A great deal of criticism has been thrown at OCAP. I reject much of it as the indignation of the comfortably irrelevant, without denying that we have made our share of mistakes along the way. What seems to me of greater importance, however, is the fact that OCAP, for good or bad, has stepped into a vacuum created by the failure of the labour movement to lead a sustained and generalized resistance to the most regressive government in Ontario since the 193 Os. Even if we were to conclude that our small-arms fire has been misdirected, the real issue is that the big guns have all but fallen silent. In the late 1990s, we had the Ontario "Days of Action." No one who participated in them could deny that they gave us a glimpse of the vast social power of the working class. Anyone who saw the centre of the largest city in the country paralysed by a political strike would have to acknowledge the massive potential that had developed. However, at the same time, the Harris regime was far more serious and single minded th an anything the labour leaders had dealt with before. Harris was not going to be bluffed with mere shows of strength. A real contest would have to be taken up that escalated economic disruption and social mobilization to the level where corporate interests could discern a massive threat and where the state could be thrown into political crisis. This, and I will return to this point in due course, was simply not a possibility for the present union leadership.

Having gone as far (and in some cases further) than they were prepared to go, the only option for the labour leaders was to call off the campaign. While many thought they were living through the prelude to a general strike, those at the top saw the Days of Action as a limited pressure tactic that had come to no avail and thus had to be ditched. A few years on, we now see the results of the abandonment of that struggle. The Tories have continued with their attacks, replacing Harris with his former finance minister and a more conciliatory image for electoral purposes, while changing nothing of substance. Meanwhile, the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) brings together working groups of union representatives and "social partners" to draft a "Peoples' Charter" -- a wish list of proposals for a socially just Ontario. Their notion is to take this into the next election and present it to all three parties. The Tories and Liberals will reject it as "unrealistic" and the New Democratic Party (NDP) will endorse it si nce its demands will be deliberately tame enough for this to happen. The NDP, of course, will not be elected and, even if it was, would no more implement this Charter than it did the "Agenda for People" on which it ran in 1990. What we really have, then, is a set of demands being drawn up with no plan whatsoever to fight for its adoption and a free hand given to the Eves regime to do what it likes in the period leading up to the next election. The abandonment of the Days of Action was a tragedy; the Peoples' Charter is the farce that flows from it.

Clearly, the dismal procession of events I have just set out speaks to a crisis, and not one that is unique to Ontario. In international terms, we have seen well over two decades of neo-liberal attacks. The main working-class organizations have yet to fashion a winning reply. Indeed, as the attacks intensify, the passivity of the trade unions worsens. At a certain point, the retreat will become a rout unless the crisis of effective opposition is addressed. I am not trying to suggest that the retreat I speak of has meant workers and others under attack have not fought back, and from time to time shaken the regimes they have challenged. But, still, the consistent and generalized resistance to the global agenda of capital that is called for has not been taken up. That it has not been embraced by the OFL or its affiliated unions is beyond question.

I do not think we can understand much if we pay only scant attention to the question of the labour bureaucracy. On that basis, I want to suggest that the trade unions, for all the vast power they embody, are hamstrung by a leadership that is as unwilling as it is incapable of unleashing decisive social mobilization. The analysis of how such a leadership emerged is well established. The wave of union organizing in the 1930s and 40s forced a tactical retreat upon employers and the state and led to the recognition of the new workers' organizations. A process of limited and uneven concession granting was put in place in return for a truce in the class war. The class struggle became state regulated, compartmentalized, and held below the level of fundamental disruption. A new breed of union leader emerged to broker this deal. Certainly this leadership wanted to placate memberships with measured contract gains but, at the same time, was more than ready to deliver to the employers that which was their due under this arrangement. While regulated skirmishes were permitted, union leaders were under an obligation to police the truce and move in to restore order in the ranks of their organizations if necessary. As might be expected, this new bureaucracy accrued privileges, created centralized structures, and developed methods of control and manipulation that befitted its role and function.

There is no denying that within this context a lot of working people saw dramatic gains in their living standards and huge improvements in their working conditions over several decades. It is one thing, however, to have a conservative bureaucracy keep the struggle within bounds while the system is making gradual concessions to the working class. It is quite another thing to have that constraint placed on resistance initiatives when employers and governments are systematically taking back the gains of an earlier period and working to weaken and destroy the unions themselves. In such a context, the labour bureaucracy is now brokering a dead deal. The very thing that was given up in return for concessions -- explosive and serious social mobilization -- is precisely what the union leaderships were developed to prevent. They do not welcome the neo-liberal offensive, of course, but an energized, democratized workers' movement that breaks the bounds of the post-war settlement would surely sweep them away. So they b luster their way through, perfecting angry but empty rhetoric for their disgruntled members and alternating between attempts to bluff their way out and the most slavish capitulation. Their more left-leaning elements are more ready to give limited resistance a shot while their right wing sees open collaboration as the best option. In the end, however, union officialdom can not pass beyond the function it developed around, and its continued stranglehold on the movement must be fatal.

Whenever you start to insist that the question of the labour bureaucracy must be a central consideration, someone always calls this a "hard left" oversimplification and points out that there are other factors that have to be considered. Not the least of these, you will be told, are the problems that exist in the working class itself. For my part, I have never suggested that all workers have revolution on the tips of their tongues but are kept back by a few hundred class traitors who hold office in the unions. Nor would I deny that the attacks of the last decade have taken a very serious toll. What I would suggest, however, is that the union bureaucracy imposes a dead weight of conservatism on the labour movement that prevents the emergence of the very struggles that could lead to new political developments and a leap in thought.

Let me give a small but instructive example. A couple of years ago, when the Tories were preparing to gut the province's employment standards legislation and return it to the level of the 1940s Master and Servant Act, the OFL convened a series of meetings for rank-and-file activists in a number of communities. I attended the gathering in Toronto, which was held in the inevitable and grossly inappropriate plush hotel. Like the other meetings, it was much larger than anticipated and the mood in the room was electric. OFL President Wayne Samuelson had got only a few words into his lacklustre presentation when an older worker near the back of the hall got up and yelled, "Shut the flicking province down!" The rest of the meeting took up this chant (without the obscenity). Now, I do not suggest that a few hundred workers in a hotel calling for a general strike means that any leadership, however militant, would be advised to set a date for the following week. What I would say, though, is that this development was n o small thing. Samuelson, of course, looked like a deer in the headlights and you could almost hear the cogs in his head turning as he struggled for a way to diffuse such a dreadful development as an outbreak of working-class anger. But what if we had people in positions like his that saw such a thing as an opportunity to move forward? How about an OFL president that, at such a moment, wanted to discuss how that force of rank-and-file leaders could take a message of defiance and resistance into their workplaces and communities and build on it? I would dare to say that, in such an event, the gutting of the basic protections for working people in Ontario would not have been the sure thing it proved to be, and that, more than this, we could by now be living in a very different situation than we are today.

Whatever their imperfections, the struggles of OCAP and, on a much larger scale, the anti- globalization actions that have awakened young activists are proof that social resistance can not be indefinitely anaesthetised. OCAP and the Ontario Common Front that emerged from its campaign against the Tories last year seek to rekindle a generalized movement against an especially reactionary provincial government. The anti-globalization protests represent a movement of challenge and disruption against precisely the international agenda of capital that the union leaders have abdicated responsibility for fighting against. In the present situation, however, those who are taking militant action are mainly organized outside of the workplace. The employed workers, whose collective power is the vital ingredient, are, as yet, somewhat hesitant to join in. This is not an uncommon problem, historically speaking, but the union leaders in this situation, rather than looking for ways to overcome hesitation and strengthen the mo vement, start to see those taking up a fight as a threat that should be stopped or, at least, isolated. The danger that arises is that the union leaders will stand aside if state repression is directed at groups like OCAP or, even worse, encourage or collaborate with such developments.

Last June, OCAP organized an eviction of the Tory finance minister from his constituency office in retaliation for the thousands being put on the streets by his government. His office equipment was damaged and, mistakenly, our press release on the action suggested that some CAW members who were present had been there in an official capacity. Seizing on this, CAW President Buzz Hargrove sent a letter to James Flaherty, the finance minister, expressing condolences for what had taken place at his office. Some of us were arrested shortly after and a few were detained in Whitby jail. While I was there, in an eight-by-ten cell with three other men, I read in the Toronto Star that Hargrove was meeting with the Tory labour minister to assure him that his organization would be withdrawing all financial support for OCAP. Now, as conservative as the man is in his thinking, I do not believe for a moment that he cares so much for Flaherty's office furniture that he would so openly jettison any semblance of working-class solidarity if that was the only issue. The real motive was that OCAP was calling for an autumn campaign of economic disruption against the Tories and CAW flying squads and locals were starting to sign on to participate in significant numbers. The CAW bureaucracy, especially in the Windsor area, was determined to prevent this from taking place and the issue of our so called "violence" at Flaherty's office was simply utilized to justify an attack that would have occurred in any case.

Even more shocking, however, were the actions of the OFL leadership at the Tory Convention in Toronto last March. The Common Front planned two actions to challenge the Tory gathering. On Friday the 22nd, we held an evening march through the streets that culminated in the takeover of an empty building slated for commercial redevelopment. Then, the next day, we marched to the actual convention site. We had planned our actions for months in advance but, with only a couple of weeks to go, the OFL announced its own rally to be held at exactly the same time of our second march. Having made mass arrests and used both tear gas and tasers at the Friday takeover action, a massive force of riot police attacked our Saturday march with staggering ferocity. Police spokespersons openly told the media that the labour rally was respectable and put only token forces in front of it. Our march was held back from proceeding to the convention site until the last OFL speech had ended. Even before the speeches were over, the OFL ma rshalls were urging people to get on the buses and leave. Pleas by trade union members to the OFL organizers to make an announcement calling for assistance to be given to the Common Front marchers under attack were rebuffed. It was an unprecedented act of collusion. The event was called to draw off any trade union support from our actions and was then organized in such a way that the cops would be able to attack us with impunity.

As the union bureaucracy moves towards passivity and outright collaboration, there are a couple of conclusions that I believe we must draw and act upon. First of all, the organizations outside of the labour movement that are taking up militant resistance to capital's agenda must continue to build their struggles. To demobilize would simply leave the field to those who want to prove to the workers that surrender is the best policy. The resistance we are organizing is an ongoing pole of attraction the bureaucracy can not shut down or even control. We will, of course, have to go down a hard road and take some lumps along the way, but the struggle must be kept alive if the mass of workers are to be inspired and influenced.

My second point flows from the first. If the pole of attraction I speak of is to have the effect it can, every effort must be made to encourage rank-and-file opposition inside the unions. The model that has been used to influence the direction of unions is that of the "left caucus." This method is based on left unionists forming themselves into a kind of ginger group that seeks to modify union policy. The caucus usually does most of its work at conventions when it organizes around resolutions. I want to suggest that we are now well past the point where this form of organizing offers very much. What is now needed are workplace-based committees that openly name and criticize the bureaucracy and work to challenge it. A few years ago in Toronto, there was a strike by bakery workers who were members of the United Food and Commercial Workers. Their union bureaucracy denied the mainly immigrant workers any democratic control over decision making and tried to force them back to work. Militants responded to this by m arching to the union headquarters and occupying it. The Toronto left was not very supportive of this initiative to say the least, but I believe it was an action that should have been promoted as an example of rank-and-file resistance to bureaucratic betrayal.

This small example gives a glimpse of how a real workers' opposition might start to form. In the Detroit of the 1970s, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (whatever its massive errors) offered a larger model of a challenge at the base that raised the level of resistance to the employer but had no hesitation in disrupting the bureaucracy. The shop stewards' movement in post-World War I Britain reached such a position of strength that, when the Clyde shipbuilders went on strike in Glasgow, the prime minister had no choice but to negotiate with the rank and-file organization and ignore the official union leaders. It is quite possible to argue that, in the context of the c10 organizing of the 1930s and 1940s, left union activists were far too ready to operate within boundaries set by John Lewis. Once his desired level of bargaining power with the employers' state was attained, Lewis is supposed to have said to other labour bureaucrats, who were critical of his use of communist organizers, that "there are lots of differences between the hunter and the dog but the main one is that the hunter gets the bird." In fact, situations where the bureaucrats call on the services of left militants when some muscle flexing is to their tactical advantage, only to ditch or purge them when things have gone as far as they feel appropriate, are disconcertingly frequent.

During the Ontario Days of Action, the dithering agenda of the bureaucracy was allowed to throttle the whole campaign. No plan to escalate the strikes was developed. Each event was concluded with no sense of what came next. No clear articulation of the basic purpose and goal of the struggle was ever provided. Left activists, however, loyally threw themselves into getting people on the buses and, beyond chanting "city by city is way too slow, let's shut down Ontario" at some of the rallies, they left the union bureaucracy to vacillate and bungle things as it saw fit. No one even considered organizing workers to demand that the scale, area, and frequency of the strike action be extended. A powerful rank-and-file movement in that situation might well have been in a position to take such action over the objections of the bureaucracy. Of course, tactics in such matters are determined by the balance of forces and lam not unmindful of the dangers of isolating militant workers and setting them up for defeat. Certain ly, lam not suggesting that a call by a few isolated leftists to extend the walkouts during the Days of Action would have been sensible. All lam trying to suggest is that we have to build in the unions a forthright opposition to the bureaucracy that challenges it and works to break its grip by way of a rank-and-file rebellion.

I do not suggest that the building of a grass roots movement in the unions will be anything other than desperately hard. But, if we are ready to look at the fundamentally collaborationist nature of the labour bureaucracy and how it can only disarm the labour movement at a time of mounting and fundamental attack, then it is time to rethink oppositional practices within the unions. The most vital issue, in my view, is for militant activists to stop accepting their place as tolerated left critics, to reject the terms of a dead social truce, to openly challenge those who still enforce it, and to fight to win.

John Clarke came to Canada in 1976 from London, England where he had been active in school student organizing and trade union struggles. He took a job at the Westinghouse Plant in London, Ontario and became a shop steward and Executive Board member with Local 546 of the United Electrical Workers. Laid off in 1982, he helped to found the London Union of Unemployed Workers (LUUW), staying with that organization until 1990 when he moved to Toronto to become an organizer with the newly formed Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).