File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2000/anarchy-list.0008, message 216


From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda-AT-eircom.net>
Subject: Striking Irish Train Dirvers In Ireland
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2000 13:11:30 +0100


Laputa
Karl Carlile


The following is a critical response to Fintan O Toole's populist piece "Train Drivers
Mystique No Longer Makes Sense"  published in the Irish Times on August 15, 2000.

Fintan O Toole as host on Today FM  assisted in whipping up further hysteria against
the courageous ILDA workers who are entering their ninth week on strike. In a piece
published in the Irish Times, which is the subject of this response, he continues his
attack on this small relatively isolated group. He achieves this by means of false
claims, a dearth of evidence, and empty rhetoric. Doubtlessly Iarnrod Eireann will be
quite pleased with him.

Fintan's interwoven network of rhetoric, claims, conceptions and analyses is based on
an idealist misconception that capitalist society is an inherently progressive society
in which reason prevails. What he does not understand it that capitalism is an
inherently contradictory society, a historically limited society, that is class based
and exploitative. Consequently there can never exist a society in which the needs of
the proletariat are met. The ILDA workers, with afterbirth and all, constitute a
concentrated heroic expression of this fact. They are the unrecognized heroes of the
struggle against the increasingly dehumanized Irish society. In a way they express all
that is best about Irish society. They are perfection in an imperfect form: the only
way perfection can exist under capitalism. In a contradictory sense they are the
romantic heroes that Fintan, perhaps in his own way, may be seeking. He cannot find
them. His  eyes are not open.

Fintan O Toole: Forty years ago, if you asked any 10 year-old boy what he wanted to be
when he grew up, "train driver" would have been up there with "cowboy" and "astronaut"
as likely responses. Even now, ageing corporate executives play with fabulously
expensive train sets, fantasising they are in the cab of a mighty locomotive hurtling
down the tracks at 90 m.p.h.  No other group of workers retained an aura of romance,
adventure and power for as long as train drivers. Airline pilots may have prestige,
but who writes ballads about them? Ship captains somehow faded from the popular
imagination as figures of glamour. Yet somewhere in the dream life of men over 40, the
locomotive driver forever rides the rails.  Casey Jones, the Irish-American train
driver killed in a crash in 1906 became one of America's first indigenous folk heroes.
John Ax, the English train driver who sacrificed his own life to save others in the
1950s, was immortalised by Ewan McColl in songs and a radio documentary. When he
wanted an image of urban romance for Cypress Avenue, Van Morrison chose "the railway
station/ Where the lonesome engine drivers pine". The notion of the man controlling
the mighty iron horse and delivering his passengers safely and on time lingered long
after the romantic age of steam had ended.

This image encouraged a kind of noblesse oblige among the drivers, who regarded their
membership of an elite as conferring responsibilities as well as rights. The public
benefited from a strong safety culture among the drivers, and the cost of undercutting
that culture by crushing the rail unions, as Margaret Thatcher did in Britain, has
become painfully obvious.

But the image of train drivers as an aristocratic elite within the labour movement has
its drawbacks, and many of them have become apparent in the dispute between Irish Rail
and the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association which has played havoc with public
transport over the last month.

Karl Carlile: The above purple passage constitutes the empty musings of an author in
search of an argument. Neat rhetoric, devoid of any theoretical or analytical
substance,  does not constitute an argument nor add to  argument.

Fintan: At the heart of that dispute is an attempt by ILDA and its leader Brendan Ogle
to reestablish the special status of the train driver in a context where the old
mystique no longer makes much sense.

Karl: The above claim is an abstract assertion that amounts to no more than rhetoric.
No evidence is furnished in support of the claim.  ILDA has made its demands
categorically clear. None of them have anything to do with train drivers being "an
aristocratic elite within the labour movement". Fintan's Leninist theory of the
aristocracy of labour assumes the form of caricature here. He attacks the action of
the rail drivers by idealistically attributing to them a false programme. This
distracts attention from the reality of the situation creating an abstract universe
that has little concretely to do with the strike.

One could just as easily attribute a thousand and one different reasons for the many
strikes that have taken place in the world since the emergence of industrial
capitalism. Indeed among  the  fictitious reasons that have been often offered for
many strikes has been the infamous one of "the communist plot". In Fintan's case, it
has to be said, the cause of the ILDA strike is not the commie plot but "special
status". Special status now assumes the mystical qualities of the communist plot.
Fintan's politics are the politics of idealism. Fintan reverses the causal relation by
presenting abstractions  as the source of concrete material reality rather than the
reverse. As he does not understand why the ILDA workers are on strike he invents one.
But, not unfortuitously, his causal image is one that serves the interests of
capitalism and undermines the interests of the working class. But, then, this
ultimately is the way of contemporary forms of idealism.

Fintan: ILDA claims the new arrangements agreed with the two main unions in Irish
Rail, SIPTU and the NBRU, will be detrimental to the safe operation of the railways.
Yet it is not easy for any objective observer to see how a shorter working week and
more time off will undermine the ability of drivers to work safely. And if rail safety
really was the nub of the matter, ILDA members would hardly have engaged in the kind
of encroachments on level crossings we saw last week.

Karl: Now here Fintan really gets enveloped in the fog of abstractions. He now
purports to be claiming that the ILDA workers are striking against "a shorter working
week and more time off". So, for Fintan, the corollary is that ILDA are on strike for
a longer working week and less time off in the interests of rail safety. What
idealism!

Fintan: The trend within the trade union movement for decades has been for
consolidation, with the old guild-like craft associations being submerged in large
general organisations.  SIPTU and NBRU are, in different ways, prime examples of the
trend. SIPTU resulted from a merger between two big general unions. The NBRU, once
regarded as a breakaway union as ILDA is now seen, illustrates another aspect of this
same consolidation process.  Under Peter Bunting it has moved ever closer to the rest
of the trade union movement and will probably be fully integrated into the Irish
Congress of Trade Unions.

Karl: Significantly the above narrative fails to inform the reader that trade union
mergers were encouraged by the capitalist state. The state has provided financial
assistance to encourage  trade unions to merge together: the merging of the ITGWU and
the FWUI into SIPTU  is a case in point.

The issue is not whether the "trend within the trade union movement for decades has
been for consolidation". The issue is the basis on which that trend has been taking
place. The issue is whether that trend has taken place in the interests of the working
class or the capitalist class. Consolidation, as Fintan calls it, has been taking
place in the interests of capital and not in the interests of the working class. The
"consolidation" of the trade union movement is the form by which  capitalism can more
effectively constrain the class struggle. It is the institutional form by which it can
control and regulate the struggle of the working class within limits that prevent
struggle from threatening the capitalist economic system. The trade union leadership
has been a decisive force in effecting this process. ILDA constitutes a form of
organised resistance to this process. For that reason alone it must be supported in
its struggle. Without the services of the petty bourgeois trade union leadership it is
highly unlikely that the bourgeoisie could have effected such a development. It needs
this kind of trade union leadership to sustain the existence of capital as a social
relation of production.

Evidence of the growing deterioration in the conditions of work and wages of the
working class abounds. More and more labour power is non-unionised. More and more
labour power is casualised. More and more labour power is unorganized in relation to
resistance to the bosses. For this, and other reasons, the value of labour power has
been steadily declining. This condition is forms part of the basis for the existence
of what is dubbed the Celtic Tiger. The Irish economy has been experiencing high
growth rates because the value of Irish labour power has been declining on such a
scale as to render it a more attractive location for foreign capital.

The convergence of SIPTU and the NBRU is a reflection of the growing passivity of the
Irish working class rather than a reflection of a growing unity. The emergence of the
NBRU was an expression of the combativity of sections of the Irish working class and
their awareness of the failure of the trade union movement, as it stood then, to
satisfy its class needs.

Fintan: In the negotiation of the deal for train drivers, SIPTU and the NBRU
co-operated with remarkably little friction.

Karl: This co-operation is an expression of the quiescent and passive nature of the
working class. It is because working class passivity that these leaderships can relate
to each other in a more frictionless way. It is because of the lack of class
consciousness among workers that these union leaderships can jointly co-operate in the
betrayal of the interests of the class.

Fintan:  On the ground within Irish Rail, this process of consolidation has manifested
itself in deals that tend to treat the workforce as a single unit, albeit with various
particular concerns. Since this has resulted in concrete improvements for all, most
workers have been happy to go along.

Karl: Deals that tend to treat the workforce as a single unit are, as I have already
intimated, based on the current docility of the working class. Such developments
rather than being a expression of positive developments within the working class
movement  are a reactionary reflection of its deterioration.

There is no evidence to suggest that "consolidation" has resulted in concrete
improvements that the working class have been happy to go along with. The  industrial
unrest recently experienced in the area of public transport would suggest otherwise.

Fintan: For some train drivers, however, the whole process threatens their self-image
as a special group. Hence ILDA, a body whose very title ("locomotive drivers" rather
than "train drivers") stresses the elevation and nobility of its members' calling.
While the rest of the Irish trade union movement has become subtle, sophisticated and,
in the broadest sense, political, Brendan Ogle has driven his campaign with an
old-fashioned tunnel vision. He has done what very few union leaders would now dream
of doing - lead an industrial dispute as if it was only about the workers and the
bosses.

Karl: Fintan's criticism of  ILDA's use of the adjective "locomotive" is hardly an
argument -a trivial criticism of no significance.

Fintan: From long and bitter experience, union leaders like Des Geraghty of SIPTU and
Peter Bunting of the NBRU know that an industrial dispute, especially in the public
sector, is also a battle for the hearts and minds of the public.

Karl: What Des Geraghty and Peter Bunting know is anybody's guess and of little, if
any, political significance. It is the political character of the actions of prominent
figures within the leadership of the labour movement that is of significance. To use
the psychological and epistemological state of mind of prominent figures within the
labour movement as an argument is to clutch despairingly at straws.

To claim, as Fintan purports to, "that an industrial dispute, especially in the public
sector, is also a battle for the hearts and minds of the public" is to entirely
misconceive the nature of industrial disputes and the nature of capitalist society.
The "public" as a category is a conception that includes members from all social
classes. It includes individuals that are working class, petty bourgeois and
bourgeois. To claim that a strike is "a battle for the hearts and minds of" people who
are working class, petty bourgeois and bourgeois is to fail to understand that a
strike in defence of living standards and working conditions  constitutes a form of
resistance to the very  classes that stand in opposition to it. Consequently
influential constituents of the public, capitalists and much of the petty
bourgeoisie,by virtue of their class position, seek to smash such strikes rather than
lend them support. The concept "public" is an abstract fuzzy notion that transcends
the class character of contemporary society. It is for this reason that it is often
put to ideological use in the struggle to maintain the working class in an oppressed
condition. However as an authentic explanatory concept it is of little, if any, use.

Fintan: Now and then, some groups of very powerful workers can afford to rely on pure
muscle and ignore public opinion.  But ILDA is not one of them. If it was to win a
struggle that is as much against SIPTU, the NBRU and its fellow train drivers as it is
against Irish Rail, ILDA needed sympathy from the Government. And this would only
result from the obvious presence of a sympathetic public. The bus drivers led by the
NBRU showed how to do this a few months ago.

Karl: The above remarks are further evidence of Fintan's reluctance to face reality.
To claim that the ILDA struggle constitutes a struggle against its "fellow train
drivers" is to absurdly falsify the nature of the ILDA strike. It is to misrepresent
it as an anti-working class strike -a scab strike. It is to present it as the very
opposite of what it is. It is to interchange  opposites by presenting the SIPTU/NBRU
leadership as serving the class interests of the workers and ILDA as serving the
interests of the capitalist class. Again Fintan's idealism runs like Ariadne's thread
through all these constructs of his.

The central point that Fintan fails to draw attention to is the absence of democracy
in the decision making process entailed in the implementation of the Iarnrod Eireann
proposals. The train drivers, as a totality, have been denied the democratic right to
vote on the issue of the new proposals. SIPTU, NBRU and the state, in the form of
Iarnrod Eireann, participated in the denial of these rights to the train drivers. The
train drivers were never offered the opportunity to vote as a locomotive grade within
Iarnrod Eireann on the issue. ILDA was the subject of discrimination by being
deliberately excluded from  the entire decision making process. ILDA's struggle is a
struggle against the denial of  the democratic right of all train drivers to vote on
the proposals that are being currently implemented by Iarnrod Eireann. Consequently
Fintan's suggestion that the ILDA strike is a struggle against "fellow train drivers"
is malevolently misleading. Had these democratic rights been observed there would have
been no strike. When workers in China struggle for democratic rights Fintan applauds
them. When workers in Ireland struggle for democratic rights Fintan, a la Caliban,
joins in with the Black Hundreds to attack them.

Fintan suggests that "ILDA needed sympathy from the Government" and, purportedly, the
sympathy of the public. But if state and public sympathy is the necessary ingredient
required to win a struggle then it follows that the best way to win sympathy,
"especially in the public sector", is by eschewing industrial action altogether. But
the very reason workers take industrial action is because no amount of sympathy is a
substitute for direct action. There was great public sympathy  for the plight of the
nurses with regard to their inadequate income levels. Yet this  sympathy, after many
years, made little, if any, difference. The nurses were consequently forced to take
strike action only to be betrayed by the union leadership.

Fintan: ILDA has provided an object lesson in how not to do it. With the weeks without
pay having their effect on morale, ILDA's members struck out in desperation at the
nearest available target - the travelling public. It raised the profile of the
dispute, certainly, but at the cost of alienating most of the public and undermining
the union's credibility on the very issue it claims to be most concerned about - rail
safety.

Karl: By this logic any strike action  by public transport workers, including bus
drivers, are striking out "at the nearest available target -the travelling public."
Then all such strikes must, for Fintan, logically entail "the cost of alienating most
of the public and undermining the union's credibility".  Given this public sector
strikes are, for Fintan, a false means by which public workers struggle to defend
their living standards and working conditions.

Fintan: It was also to kill off whatever remains of the Casey Jones mystique. It is
doubtful that very many 10-year-olds, slogging home on foot or waiting for a train
that never came, would have answered the question of what they wanted to be when they
grow up with "a train driver".

Karl: Well this should please Fintan given that he does not wish to see train drivers
re-establish their "special status" and the mystique that "no longer makes  sense".
The ILDA actions have played a progressive role for Fintan since, according to him,
they have assisted in ensuring that the train drivers do not succeed in
re-establishing themselves as an "aristocratic elite" -after all we cannot have
workers getting notions about themselves!

The chances are that the intrepid ILDA workers are going to be "starved" back to work.
It looks like the bourgeoisie are going to use the ILDA workers as a warning to other
workers. When all is said and done Fintan has done a good day's work, as agitator and
propagandist, for capitalism. He will have assisted in the crushing of the ILDA
workers by his modest contribution to the ferocious and sustained attack on ILDA by
the forces of capitalism.

Karl Carlile

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