The Times & rail strikes: time to read the Making of the English Working Class
According to a Times Editorial (2nd June) current rail disputes from members of ASLEF and the RMT are led by ‘militant Marxists’ who have organised ‘Luddite campaigns’ to prevent job cuts and improvements to productivity. In case you were wondering that is code for cutting back on safety and shutting ticket offices.
The Times Editorial writers live firmly in the industrial world of the 1970s (which had a lot to be said for it) while the rail unions are very much in 2023. The current strikes have to be agreed by ballot, with some of the most restrictive conditions in Europe. Further they only work because union members not only vote for them but actively support them.
The problem lies with the Government and its abject failure to properly fund a public transport system.
Whether the union leaders in question are or are not Marxists is not centrally relevant, since they are above all union leaders within the industrial framework which promotes and ends workplace struggles. They are certainly not Luddites. They are not seeking to destroy the railways but rather to keep them going.
The Times would do well to read E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class which looks at how a world of collective action developed after Luddism.
Thompson himself would have enjoyed the Editorial, he was amused by the perpetual reaction to be found in them.(see, Sir, Writing by Candlelight)
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