The Institute for Workers' Control: Alternative Models of Workplace Organization

1. Institute for workers’ control Alan Tuckman Alternative Models of Workplace Organisation , BUIRA, University of Middlesex 29th June 2018

2. What is the IWC? • From around 1964 to 1984 … • The IWC as organisation and as ideas … • Coates, Topham, Barratt-Brown, et al … • Early meetings and founding of the IWC • Initially broad political alliance • Link to adult education • Shop steward organisation • Position of politicians and trade union leaders • The IWC and the political and industrial turbulence of the 1970s • Industrial disputes and workers’ occupation • Benn and the workers’ co-operatives • Fate of the IWC “The massive number of IWC publications during more than 20 years – the regular Workers’ Control Bulletins, more than 90 pamphlets, dozens of books, the three annual issues of the 300 page Trade Union Register, with reports from several industries of strikes, sit-ins and other demonstrations of workers’ solidarity, plus a diary of events and current employment and unemployment statistics – the annual conferences and innumerable seminars in different industries, all attest a vibrant organisation reflecting a deeply felt need that will not disappear.” • Barratt Brown, Michael. "The Institute for Workers’ Control." The Spokesman: Resist Much, Obey Little 2012, 47-53.

3. Some political and industrial background 1960’s 1970’s • Slowdown of post-war growth • ‘Thirteen wasted years’ of Tory Govt • Growth of trade unions, and particularly the emergence of the ‘second shop stewards’ movement • Discussion of ‘Industrial Democracy’ in Labour Party • Inflation • Redundancies and growing unemployment • Incomes policies from Tory and Labour • Fracturing of the ‘post-war consensus’ • EEC membership

4. Coates, Topham, Barratt-Brown, et al … • ‘New Left’ • Link to earlier radicalism, particularly GDH Cole • Tito and Yugoslavia • Disarmament and the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation • Adult Education • “Our commitment is, … basically an educational one, in that it leaves workers to develop their own theoretical apparatus, from what they have learned of past experience; and from what they reject, as well as what they assimilate, from accumulated socialist theory, …” • Barratt Brown, Michael, Ken Coates, and Tony Topham. "Workers' Control Versus "Revolutionary" Theory ." In Socialist register, edited by Ralph Miliband and John Saville, 293-307: Merlin, 1975. • Vietnam and internationalism

5. The IWC was Kilkenny cats - there was a plethora of positions. “there met an extraordinary variety of peoples shop stewards and painters, union leaders and writers, colliers and dons, fabians, anarchists, co-operators, marxists, solid Labour councillors and candidates; and the editors of the widest cross-section of socialist newspapers and magazines ever to gather together in one room for some considerable time.” Robin Blackburn, The Voice, April 1964 “the conference, composed as it was mainly of reluctant and disillusioned Labour voters, felt that it was best to proceed on two legs- the industrial and the political—rather than on one. All seemed to be agreed -even Stan Orme who brought fraternal greetings from the left in the PLP—that industrial democracy must come from the bottom and cannot be imposed from above. It was also generally agreed that workers’ control, however pursued, is a political matter— which, of course, it most definitely is if one defines politics as concerned with the shaping and sharing of power. “ Geoffrey Ostergaard, Anarchy, 1967

6. Nature of workers’ control ‘Workers’ control’ emphasizes that the purpose of the policy and strategy should he to establish control, by workers, over the hitherto unfettered decisions of the ruling party in industry, namely the employers and their managers. In this sense (which is not to be confused with the full industrial democracy possible in a socialized society, where ‘self-management’ is the more appropriate term) the germs of workers’ control exist, in greater or lesser degree, wherever strong independent trade-union and shop-floor powers act to restrain employers in the exercise of their so-called ‘prerogatives ’. When shop stewards operate their own overtime roster, or when they regulate, however informally, the speed of work, or when shop-floor strength and action prevent the carrying out of an arbitrary dismissal, then workers’ control is being exercised. In this sense workers’ control always exists in a conflict situation. ‘ Ken Coates and Tony Topham, The New Unionism: The Case for Workers' Control (Penguin Books, 1972), p. 60

7. IWC and factory occupations of 1970s • GEC/AEI/EE Merseyside • Failure of occupation 1969 • UCS • Social audit • Benn Co-operatives • Imperial Typewriters • Tony Topham and the survival plan • Lucas shop stewards combine committee, alternative plan • "obviously the traditional position of the Labour movement, concerning the rights of the workers, is that this right of property has been established by the workers themselves, workers whether by hand or by brain, who have built up this property by applying the Labour power and therefore have as much right to its direction as the shareholders." • Scanlon, Hugh. Workers' Control and the Transnational Company, Pamphlet Series No 22. Nottingham: Institute for Workers' Control, .

8. IWC and the Left: Some critics • IWC as a political organisation? • Workers’ control and/or nationalisation • IWC and the trade unions • IWC and the Benn cooperatives I always thought that the workers' co-ops were a bit starry eyed, but I was very pleased that somebody had done it because it got everybody raising their sights and, having said that, it was very obvious that most of them were not going to survive in the marketplace and you couldn’t reinvent marketplaces to suit so that many of these were going under. Coates, Ken. "A Political Life." By George Lambie. Resist Much, Obey Little, no. 116 (2012): 19-45.

9. Fate of the IWC • Thatcherism and the attack on Trade Unions • Break up of Yugoslavia and end of self-management • MI5 and an internal crisis

10. The last of the iwc? If the British left needs new ancestors, the little remembered but once influential Institute for Workers’ Control (IWC) makes a compelling candidate. Joe Guinan, “Ownership and Control: Bring Back the Institute for Workers’ Control.” Renewal: a Journal of Labour Politics 23, no. 4 (2015).