Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk McIlroy, John (2018) Bob Crow and the politics of Trade Unionism. Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 46 (1) . pp. 131-161. ISSN 0301-7605 [Article] (doi:10.1080/03017605.2017.1412627) Final accepted version (with author’s formatting) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/23503/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. 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See also repository copyright: re-use policy: http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/policies.html#copy 1 REVIEW ARTICLE Bob Crow and the Politics of Trade Unionism John McIlroy Gregor Gall: Bob Crow, Socialist, Leader, Fighter: A Political Biography Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017 Bob Crow was an outstanding leader of British trade unionism in the early 21st century. As general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union, Crow championed industrial militancy. He maximised his position as a public figure to proselytise for public ownership of the railways and criticise the Conservatives, New Labour and the European Union. He opposed austerity and fostered initiatives to regroup the left and create an alternative to the Labour Party. This article develops a critique of a recent biography of Crow written from a Marxist perspective to appraise his career through the prism of Marxist approaches to trade unionism. It analyses Crow’s role as a union leader and explores his political projects such as No2EU and the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition. His contribution is assessed in relation to contemporary issues such as Brexit and the resurgence of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. The article concludes that measured against a Marxist template, Crow was closer to Lenin’s ‘trade union leader’ than his ‘tribune of the people’. Despite his industrial achievements, he remained within the framework of the militant trade unionism and left reformism he absorbed during his formative years, rather than an advocate of class politics and revolutionary socialism. Keywords: Bob Crow; Trade Unions; Rail, Maritime and Transport Union; Labour Party; Communist Party; Socialist Party; No2EU; Trade Union and Socialist Coalition Introducing Bob Crow Few Marxists have attained high office in British trade unions and fewer have successfully utilised their positions to contribute to the advance of revolutionary socialism. Constrained by their role as managers of sectional, economic interest groups, bargaining over the sale of labour power with consequent pressures from capital and the state, most came to internalise and live by the market logic of haggling over the price of exploitation with its inevitable compromises. The divide between the industrial and political spheres, and the primacy of the former was accepted in practice. Foundation members of the Communist Party (CPGB), 2 Robert Williams of the Transport Workers and Alf Purcell of the Furnishing Trades parted company with it rather than observe its policy in their unions. Tom Mann remained a loyal Communist until his death, although his trade union triumphs were behind him when he became general secretary of the Engineers’ Union in 1920.1 A. J. Cook, who left the CPGB in 1921, continued to pursue industrial militancy and socialist agitation outside the party, until retreat was forced upon him during the 1926 General Strike. Jack Tanner, who defected around the same time, followed a similar path before moving to the right after his election as president of Engineers in 1939.2 During the 1930s, the party changed: the CPGB followed former members in conciliating economism, privileging trade unionism and gravitating towards officialdom.3 Arthur Horner, a model revolutionary socialist trade unionist in the 1920s, pioneered this path through the ensuing decade. His election as general secretary of the Mineworkers’ Union saw him champion collaboration with the National Coal Board, crusade against strikes as betraying the national interest and demand increased productivity. His itinerary was emulated 1 For Williams, Purcell and the Communist Party (CPGB) see James Klugmann, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Vol. I, Formation and Early Years, 1919-1924 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1969), pp.40-41, 83-84, 95, 109. For Mann, see, Joe White, Tom Mann (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991). 2 Paul Davies, A. J. Cook (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), is an excellent biography which conveys a vivid sense of the situational and personal stress socialist trade union leaders experienced in the 1920s. For Tanner, see Nina Fishman, ‘Tanner, Frederick John Shirley (Jack) (1889-1865)’ in Keith Gildart, David Howell and Neville Kirk (eds) Dictionary of Labour Biography Volume XI (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.274-283. For general reflections on these problems, see Stephen McBride, ‘Trade Union Leadership in Capitalist Society’, Studies in History and Politics, 5 (1986), pp.10-12. 3 For different views on this, see, Noreen Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1927-1941 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), particularly pp.110-129, 172-187; Nina Fishman, The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions, 1933-45 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995); John McIlroy, ‘Restoring Stalinism to Communist History’, Critique 41: 4 (2003), pp.599-622. 3 by his successor and fellow party member, Will Paynter.4 During the post-war era, Communists were frequently at the forefront of the trade union struggle. They included the Civil Servants’ leader, Len White; John Horner of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU); Jim Gardner of the Foundry Workers; George Guy of the Sheet Metal Workers’ Union; and Ken Gill from the Engineering Union’s Technical and Supervisory Section.5 Miners’ leaders such as Arthur Scargill and Mick McGahey reflected a spirit of intransigent resistance to capitalism and determination to confront the state. Like their comrades, they were unable to go beyond left reformism.6 These officials operated in a mixture of favourable and unfavourable economic and political circumstances, in a variety of industrial contexts and oscillating power balances between capital and labour. None of them encountered a pre- revolutionary situation or a mass movement developing in that direction. But they only sporadically bent their efforts to augment the forces convinced of its necessity. Most lacked the guidance of a revolutionary party – still less one rooted in the unions, Parliament and civil society. None made its creation their priority. None transcended the role of a ‘trade union 4 Nina Fishman, Arthur Horner: A Political Biography, 2 vols (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2010); McIlroy, ‘Restoring Stalinism to Communist History’, op cit., particularly pp.613-622; John McIlroy and Alan Campbell, ‘Coalfield Leaders, Trade Unionism and Communist Politics: Exploring Arthur Horner and Abe Moffat’ in Stefan Berger, Andy Croll and Norman Laporte (eds), Towards a Comparative History of Coalfield Societies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp.267-283. 5 Richard Stevens, ‘Cold War Politics: Communism and Anti-Communism’ in Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman and John McIlroy (eds) The Post-War Compromise: British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, 1945-64 (2nd ed, Monmouth, Merlin Press, 2007), pp.168-191; John McIlroy, ‘Notes on the Communist Party and Industrial Politics’ in John McIlroy, Nina Fishman and Alan Campbell (eds) The High Tide of British Trade Unionism: Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, 1964-79 (2nd ed, Monmouth, Merlin Press, 2007), pp.216-258. 6 See, for example, Michael Crick, Scargill and the Miners (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985); Seamus Milne, The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners (London: Verso, 1994); John McIlroy and Alan Campbell, ‘McGahey, Michael (Mick) (1925-1999)’ in Keith Gildart and David Howell (eds) Dictionary of Labour Biography vol. XIII (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp.242-251. 4 leader’; none became in Lenin’s terms a ‘tribune of the people’.7 Bob Crow, who was general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) from 2002 until his death in 2014, was only among the most recent in a line of trade union leaders who aspired to represent workers within capitalism and secure their emancipation through its supercession. One of the purposes of this essay is to inquire whether Crow was any more successful than his predecessors. Crow was born in 1961 in East London and raised in Hainault, Essex, the son of a docker who was a staunch trade unionist, and a housewife who became a part-time cleaner. He left school at 16 in 1979 – the year Margaret Thatcher unleashed the neoliberal counter- reformation in Britain – to work on the London Underground and join the National Union of Railwaymen (subsequently the RMT).