The International Department report claims to uphold the NEC Advice Note No. 7 (February 1983): it “should continue as policy.”
At the same time it makes the astounding claim that SALEP’s policy regarding direct links is somehow entirely different:
SALEP’s new call for [undefined] direct links ‘at all levels’ is fraught with problems… No trade union Federation in South Africa, or the ANC, or the UDF, or Sactu, has called for direct links of the type SALEP suggests and has just organised.
But what is “new” or “undefined” about SALEP’s policy on direct links.
The idea is complete nonsense.
SALEP has, since its formation, not only consistently supported, but actively campaigned and fought for, the policy on direct links advocated by the democratic trade unions within South Africa themselves.
In fact, well before the formation of SALEP, several of its founders – including David Hemson, a banned and exiled organiser of the democratic trade unions in South Africa – had campaigned for this policy within the British labour movement.
Martin Legassick, another founder of SALEP, sat on the Africa Sub-Committee of the Labour Party NEC when it was investigating the question of direct links – and also fought for the position taken by the democratic trade unions inside South Africa.
In reality, the arguments used by the NEC to sustain its “Charge” are an attempt to smuggle in once again, through the back door, a policy of opposition to all genuine direct links.
Disguised Opposition
Why are we told that “the inexperience and indiscretion of participants in such ‘links’ may lay SA unionists open to immense security risks.”?
This argument, as we have explained, was laid to rest long ago – the only guarantees needed against this are that visits should be organised by the invitation of the democratic trade unions in South Africa and subject to their vigilance and control.
Why are we told that direct links “diverts resources” which could be “put to good use by campaigning at home.”?
The whole point of direct links is that they provide the opportunity for South African trade unionists to campaign directly for their case within the international labour movement – and for trade unionists from other countries, through visiting South Africa, to be better equipped to campaign for the case of the oppressed black workers in South Africa. It is on the basis of this direct exchange of understanding – rather than everything being filtered through a few official persons abroad who claim to speak for the South African workers – that common strategies and understandings to advance the cause of workers everywhere can be worked-out.
It is hardly coincidental that the leadership of the National Organisation of Labour Students should, at the same time that this report was being written, also attempt to resurrect the same old arguments.
In a newsletter circulated at their 1985 conference they assert:
…direct links in particular with trade unionists for example the NUM … is extremely dangerous bringing into risk trade unions in SA due to the repressive environment in which they operate and potentially playing into the hands of the right who also hardly surprisingly advocate direct links. Any such contacts should only be made through Sactu.
Miner Roy Jones’s Visit to SA NUM
What appears to have particularly upset the SA leaders in exile and their British supporters who are behind this report is the visit made in November-December 1984 by striking British miner Roy Jones to South Africa, at the invitation of the South African NUM, and with assistance from SALEP.
Roy Jones’s visit was warmly welcomed in South Africa by the workers, youth and women in struggle whom he was able to meet. It has been enthusiastically applauded by the rank-and-file British miners, Young Socialists, and trade unionists generally who have heard or read about it since Roy’s return.
The visit is recognised as a remarkable, and in some ways historic, success.
Why else should Roy have been able to bring back from impoverished black mineworkers the first-ever donation from a South African trade union to a strike fund in an advanced capitalist country?
Why else should Roy have been made the first white member of the South African NUM?
Why else should he be received so enthusiastically whenever he speaks at a labour movement meeting in Britain about the conditions and struggles of the black SA mineworkers? At a rally at which he spoke at this year’s LPYS conference alone, nearly £4,000 was pledged to build further links with the SA movement.
The International Department report takes an astonishing approach to this visit.
First of all, it falsely states that “SALEP can produce no evidence to show that Roy Jones was invited personally by the NUM SA.”
Yet the SALEP bulletin, in the hands of the International Department, contains quite clear evidence that Roy Jones was invited by the SA NUM.
Firstly, it reproduces a letter, signed by the President and General Secretary of the SA NUM, addressed to the President of the North Staffordshire NUM (Roy Jones’s area) which reads as follows:
We write to thank you for having given us a rare opportunity of being with Roy. It has been a real privilege and an honour for us to have him amongst our midst.
In our view Roy’s presence has helped to forge much stronger links between your union’s area and our union. We hope that eventually links will be formed between the entire British National Union of Mine Workers and a shining example of the British working class…
We look forward to your victory in your fight against pit closures.
Kindly accept our humble donation to your strike fund.
You are not alone!
If this was not sufficient to convince the International Department, they could hardly have overlooked the press clipping from the SA capitalist newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail,[1] also reproduced in the SALEP bulletin. “Mr Jones visited South Africa at the invitation of the local black National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)”, it states.
The main thrust of this article in the RDM, no friend of the South African workers’ movement, was to publicise the Chamber of Mines’ repudiation of Roy Jones’s views on black mineworkers’ conditions. Jones had “no credibility” they reported. Had Roy not been invited by the SA NUM, they would undoubtedly have seized the opportunity to say so.
The attack on Roy’s visit by the International Department and those on the NEC who endorsed this report plays right into the hands of the South African Chamber of Mines. But what is it about this visit that is found so offensive?
Let us look at the quotations from Roy’s account which the NEC report chooses to highlight as proof that the visit should not have taken place.
Roy said:
The message that I bring back from South Africa to the British NUM is that our struggle against pit closures must be carried on. We must keep on fighting until we’ve won. The black mineworkers in South Africa know that otherwise, their bosses in SA will feel their hand strengthened.
What finer message of international solidarity could have been transmitted by oppressed black mineworkers in South Africa to their brothers and sisters on the picket lines in Britain who – despite the failure of the right-wing leaders in the British labour movement to mobilise effective support for them – had already stuck-out the bitter strike for nine hard months?
Roy said:
It was a joy to stand and watch a pure worker-controlled union. No action by a leading member of the union would be possible without the full backing of the union membership first.
What worker in Britain, or anywhere else, will not be inspired by the determination with which black mineworkers in South Africa are seeking to build their union on the basis of the fullest democratic control by the membership?
Yet the Labour Party International Department, and the right-wing majority on the NEC, hate the ideas brought to the forefront by worker-to-worker direct links. It is not difficult to see why.
The report quotes a passage from an interview given by Roy to Izwilethu (which it describes simply as a “South African newspaper”, totally suppressing the fact that it is the official organ of the Council of Unions of South Africa, claiming a membership of 250,000 workers).
“He is not at all impressed with the role of the British Labour Party in the strike too, – ‘Their role is to work with capitalism’, he says bluntly. ‘Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock keeps his eyes on the opinion polls all the time and constantly panders to the right-wing of the establishment.’”
Of course Roy is partially misquoted: he was referring not to the role of the Labour Party as a whole, but to its right-wing leaders.
The International Department and the right-wing on the NEC oppose direct links like the Roy Jones visit not because this ‘endangers’ black workers in SA, but because it threatens to expose their own lame and class-collaborationist role before the SA workers; because it shows the distance between the right-wing ‘leaders’ and the fighting rank-and-file; because it arouses a sense of profound revolutionary solidarity between the black workers of SA and the militant activists of the labour movement in Britain.
Roy’s views quoted here are shared not only by thousands of British miners as a result of the strike, but by hundreds of thousands of other Labour Party members and trade unionists who were prepared to make real sacrifices in support of that strike.
For black workers in South Africa, British capitalism is the former conqueror and coloniser, and still the largest foreign investor in the country. It is a vital necessity for the black workers’ movement to work out its own views on who in Britain are and are not struggling against British capitalism, who are and are not their friends, on the basis of the views of all with whom they come in contact.
British NUM Attitude
The International Department report claims that Roy Jones’s visit was conducted “without the approval of the National (British) NUM Executive. Indeed, the NUM have ‘expressed disquiet’ about the organization of the visit and its objectives.”
Every striking member of the British NUM – let alone every member of the SA NUM – will be staggered at this statement.
What on earth could the leadership of the British NUM object to about this visit?
Not only did it serve to strengthen the links between British and South African mineworkers at a vital point in the history of mineworkers’ struggle in both countries – it actually led to the historic step of a financial donation from mineworkers in South Africa to the strike funds of the British miners.
Does the NUM Executive object to the message of solidarity – for victory in the struggle – which came back from the oppressed black mineworkers in South Africa?
Does the NUM Executive object to the criticisms of the right-wing of the British labour movement which were voiced by Roy during his visit – and which, incidentally, were raised on their own account in far stronger terms by the black South African mineworkers themselves?
Or is the “disquiet” of the NUM leadership confined to the bureaucratic argument that Roy did not have prior “permission” from the NUM Executive?
In fact Roy Jones had prior approval of the visit from his Area President. Moreover many striking miners from different areas went abroad from Britain during the strike to muster support – with great success – without obtaining prior approval from the NUM National Executive. Surely, particularly in the heat of a strike, such initiatives are only to be applauded.
But perhaps the NUM Executive “expressed disquiet” out of a sense of guilt that, unfortunately, they have not as yet given official recognition or adequate support to the South African National Union of Mineworkers.
The membership of the NUM will be surprised at this, and will call for the speediest reversal of this policy – but this is what is presently the case.
Once again, unfortunately, it is the underhand influence of the SACP leadership and Sactu-in-exile that lies behind this failure of the NUM Executive on a question of basic internationalist duty. For years the SA Stalinists have been persuading trade union leaders abroad to recognise and support none but themselves as the true representatives of all oppressed SA workers. Now that policy has come unstuck.
SALEP has campaigned, and will continue to campaign, for the maximum solidarity between the British and South African NUM’s.
“White European Experience”
The NEC report further criticises Roy Jones as follows:
Jones also gave an NUM SA Conference the benefit of his white European experience concerning the future evolution of the South African trade union movement:
‘I spoke about the strike in Britain and about the future role of South Africa’s NUM in the new trade union federation.’
Elsewhere they add:
The patronising and Euro-centric offer of ‘help’ may be totally inappropriate to South Africa’s black union circumstances.
“White European experience”. “Patronising and Euro-centric” offers of help?!
These mind-boggling remarks are a shameless insult to the experience stored-up within the international labour movement during its fighting history; an insult to the experience gained by every British miner in the course of the last strike; an insult to the striving of black workers in South Africa to break the bonds of apartheid and share in that international experience.
The remarks are filled with patronising disrespect for the frank and open manner in which workers, nationally and internationally, share experiences when they are unhindered by considerations of ‘prestige’ or bureaucratic gamesmanship.
They stand in stark contrast to the response of the President and General Secretary of the SA NUM, in the same letter to Roy’s Area President:
We learnt a lot from him and imparted not only our experiences but our lives as well to him.
The remarks suggest that those who compiled this report did not have the respect to understand the message of the Fosatu International Policy Statement (June 1984) – despite their selective quotations from it:
The worker struggle in South Africa can benefit greatly from the hard lessons learnt overseas… here in South Africa we must make use of this rather than try and learn it all again.
They insult also Roy Jones himself, who openly proclaimed the lessons he had learned from the SA workers, and whose report is filled with humility at the warmth and generosity with which he was welcomed, not only by the black mineworkers, but by workers, youth, and women in the black townships.
But, unfortunately, the International Department report takes this “point” even further.
SALEP has totally ignored the experiences of the trade union movements across Africa and none of its documents encourage ‘direct links’ with or acclaim the record of African trade unionists. Instead, the SALEP emphasis is on bringing a European influence to bear.
What is the ‘record’ and ‘experience’ of trade unions in Africa? Despite many heroic trade unionists, past and present, the trade unions in almost every African country have been brought forcibly under the control of the state. The majority of African trade union leaders are, unfortunately, little more than corrupt apologists for the shortcomings of one-party or military governments which, despite the aspirations of their people, cling to upholding the capitalist system.
The detention and torture by the Zimbabwe government of trade unionists campaigning against state-controlled unionism and for trade union democracy – which went totally uncriticised by the Zimbabwe trade union leadership – is only a recent example of what African governments will “permit” so far as trade unions are concerned.
Are these the ‘lessons’ which those who endorse this report wish to foist on the workers’ movement in South Africa: that it should fall under the control of the state?
In fact, SALEP, within the limits of its resources, has encouraged and assisted the building of genuine direct links among workers in different Southern African and African countries, and will continue to do so.
As the crisis in Africa deepens, more and more workers will turn to the task of building democratic trade unions under workers’ control, and rebuilding mass political organisations to struggle for democracy and socialism – and they will turn to each other in different countries to share the lessons of how to go forward.
Danger of Right-Wing Control
In reality, the “dangers” of “European experience”, of “Eurocentrism”, of “European influence” lie not in building genuine links among workers, but only in the influence that Western imperialism and capitalism and its representatives and supporters try to exert to divide and hold back the workers’ movement – particularly in the “Third World”.
In this connection there is one omission from the NEC report’s discussion of direct links – an omission which, when one thinks about it, is not surprising.
No mention whatever is made of the dangers of direct links becoming a ‘trap’ through which the right-wing of the labour movement can exert its influence. The only guarantee against this, as we have explained, is the vigilance and control of the organised workers within South Africa themselves. Nevertheless the issue is important to raise.
The manner in which the NEC report wants to limit the kind of direct links which are built leaves the door precisely open to the control of such links by the right-wing of the movement.
The report highlights, for criticism, Roy Jones’s call for further direct links to be built at rank-and-file level. Such a position, it claims, is at odds with Fosatu’s June 1984 International Policy Statement. That is untrue.
The report asserts further that SALEP, in its 1983-4 Annual Report, misuses this Statement because it “only partially quotes” it. Let us see who is really misusing the Statement!
What SALEP quoted was the following:
Fosatu accordingly believes that effective worker solidarity in the struggle against the MNCs depends on contacts at all levels [Our emphasis] – membership, shop stewards and the ITS [International Trade Secretariat].
Nothing could be clearer than this! Links at all levels! The rank-and-file level is one of those levels. Roy’s (and SALEP’s) call is perfectly consistent with the Fosatu position.
But, in another one of its brainteasers, the NEC report triumphantly proclaims:
What SALEP conveniently misses out is the following qualifying sentence:
‘Worker solidarity will not be built on the basis of contact at one or two of these levels only.’
Of course contact at all levels is needed. But what point is the NEC report making in labouring to set this sentence against the previous one?
The report tries to imply completely the opposite of what the Fosatu statement clearly intended – it implies that rank-and-file contacts are permissible only if they are bureaucratically controlled from the top.
The interests of ‘protocol’ are to take precedence over the interests of solidarity, according to the Labour Party NEC majority.
It is this which precisely opens the door to the regulation of direct links to serve the interests only of the right-wing of the labour movement.
Is the present leadership of the TUC – or of the ICFTU – to have a veto on what kind of direct links are built between British and South African workers – and on what forms of education are made accessible to oppressed black South African workers?
Isolate the regime!
The International Department’s report makes the further astonishing claim that:
The emphasis on ‘direct links’, to the exclusion of all other forms of activity agreed by Party Conference (even action against the import of South African coal) demonstrates SALEP’s disrespect … for the Party’s own decision-making body.
This is another completely false allegation, for which the report can provide no evidence.
In fact it completely ignores and suppresses SALEP’s actual position on these issues, spelled out for example in Profiteering from Cheap Labour.
It is, stated Profiteering:
…vital to build-up and strengthen the links between workers in different countries around their common interests.
Already there have been many excellent examples of such actions. British workers have blacked goods intended for South Africa in support of struggles by South African workers employed by the same company.
Such actions can become generalised by campaigning in the labour movement, in Britain and internationally, for effective economic sanctions against the South African regime. [Emphasis in original.]
In the course of such a campaign, it is vital that every group of workers taking action to isolate the apartheid regime should have the active support of the labour and trade union movement. In particular, victimisations and redundancies which might be attempted by employers in retaliation need to be resisted.
At the same time international links must be strengthened, which can most easily be done between workers employed by the same companies and struggling against the same bosses.
But the capitalist class internationally will refuse to abandon its interests in South Africa, and will use every means at its disposal to continue profiteering from the labour of the African workers. For this reason, in Britain and elsewhere, sanctions against the apartheid system can only be made absolute by the nationalisation, under workers’ control and management, of companies investing in South Africa.”
“SANCTIONS AGAINST CAPITAL! SOLIDARITY WITH LABOUR!” – this passage concluded.
SALEP stands by exactly the same position today.
Once again it must be pointed out that the NEC report claims to have been written on a mandate to “jointly determine the details of policy” with representatives of the ANC and Sactu.
Do these representatives oppose the visit made by Roy Jones to the SA NUM?
Do they – in the face of the SA NUM’s appreciation of that visit – denounce it as a “patronising and Eurocentric offer of ‘help’ … totally inappropriate to South Africa’s black union circumstances.”?
Do they oppose the decision of the SA NUM’s membership to make Roy the first white member of the union?
Do they oppose the donation given by the SA NUM membership to the strike funds of the British miners?
Did they support or oppose the call from black South African mineworkers to British miners on strike to “keep on fighting until we’ve won”?
What is their attitude to the shameful role – denounced by black SA mineworkers – played by the right-wing leaders of the British labour movement during the miners’ strike?
Do they believe it is more important for black South African workers to establish links with the state-controlled trade union officials in African states than with rank-and-file workers in Europe, Africa and elsewhere engaged in militant struggle?
Do they believe that direct links between workers in SA and overseas should be subject to the veto of right-wing leaders of the labour movement?
As with all the other questions raised by this report about the positions being put forward by exiled leaders in the name of the ANC and Sactu, the black South African masses and the labour movement internationally are entitled to an answer.
We call on the ANC and Sactu NECs to make clear statements on all these issues.
© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2020).
Continue to Part 6
[1] 19 December 1984
