Back to Politics
and Theology
WORKING CLASS POLITICS
(as it was, and as
it might have been)
REVIEW: Nina Fishman: Arthur Horner, a political
biography, 2 volumes, Lawrence and Wishart, 2010.
The politics of the Communist Party of Great
Britain
Horner in Prison- Marx, Clausewitz and
George Knox
Ernest Bevin and the development
of a national working class perspective
Horner's national perspective
Silicosis and miners'
welfare
Loyalty to the Communist
party and attitude to the post-war Labour Government
Responsibilities of the
working class as a ruling class in waiting
THE POLITICS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN
Nina Fishman's biography of Arthur Horner can be read as a continuation
of her earlier book - The British Communist Party and the
Trade Unions, 1933-45. Her argument there was that the contribution
of the Communist Party of Great Britain to the development of
trade union power in the difficult years of the 1930s and of
the war had been broadly positive, largely because, under the
leadership of Harry Pollitt, the party rejected, or moderated,
the policy of all-out class war in favour of what she calls 'revolutionary
pragmatism'. Broadly speaking this meant loyalty to the existing
trade union structure despite its 'reformist' leadership, justified
theoretically with the notion that should a revolutionary situation
arise the existing leadership could be ousted as the Bolsheviks
had ousted the reformists who initially established and dominated
the soviets in Russia.
She says of Pollitt:
'Throughout his tenure at the Party centre, Harry Pollitt laboured
under a keen sense of his own intellectual inferiority. He was
unfailing in acknowledging a personal debt to Palme Dutt for
keeping him from straying from the Marxist straight and narrow.
But Pollitt actually had no need to become fluent in Marxism.
Indeed, by remaining regretfully inured to theory, his excellent
political pragmatic reflexes could operate unimpeded. His supposed
mental block clearly had great practical utility. One wonders
when he recognized that he was often the one who discovered the
'correct' answer to a difficult problem, and that solutions rarely
originated from the Party intellectuals who were adept at manipulating
the Marxist-Leninist canon.' (British Communist Party, p.5).
Since Pollitt did not formulate his political philosophy, however,
much of what she says about him is speculation, albeit convincing
speculation, based on her assessment of the results. The word
'probably' appears frequently in the book and in the Horner biography,
very often associated with the name of Harry Pollitt.
Horner is a key figure in the development of her argument. As
President of the South Wales Miners Federation from 1936 onwards,
then Secretary General of the newly formed National Union of
Mineworkers from 1946, Horner was the most prominent Communist
in the trade union movement. Fishman (Horner, p.969) quotes a
review of Horner's autobiography Incorrigible Rebel comparing
him to Ernest Bevin. They 'shared an almost mesmeric power to
persuade others to follow them, and both shared an absolute mastery
of administrative detail. Both earned immense respect from the
employers against whom they fought.'
As a young man, after developing some fame as a 'boy preacher'
in the Churches of Christ, a small Baptist denomination, he had
been blacklisted by the South Wales coal-owners because of his
militancy, securing some employment by using false names. To
avoid conscription in the Imperialist war he had gone to Ireland
where he joined the Irish Citizen Army in the wake of the 1916
rising. He was arrested and imprisoned on his return. One of
the first members of the newly formed Communist Party of Great
Britain, he was elected by the miners in the South Wales village
of Mardy as 'checkweighman' - paid by the miners themselves to
check the coal-owners' assessment of the amount of coal dug up,
the basis on which the miners' pay was calculated. He played
a leading role in the 1926 strike, travelling the country to
inspire the different unions that made up the Miners' Federation
of Great Britain to keep it going. In 1929, however, he opposed
the policy of splitting from the existing unions to form
new revolutionary unions - a deviation from the official Comintern
policy of the time that was labelled 'hornerism' by younger party
militants, led by Bill Rust, editor (from 1930) of the Daily
Worker. Fishman argues that Pollitt supported him, albeit
discreetly, effectively proposing that he make a formal recantation
of his errors and continue as before, which is what he eventually
did.
HORNER IN PRISON - MARX, CLAUSEWITZ AND GEORGE KNOX
Soon afterwards, in 1932, Horner was imprisoned again, this time
for incitement to riot in an incident in Mardy in which, according
to his own account, he actually prevented a riot. In prison,
after a very rough regime at the start, he was given the job
of prison librarian and Fishman, following to some extent his
own account, regards the opportunity this provided as the 'watershed'
in his life, helping him to develop a coherent strategic view
of the class struggle largely inspired by reading Clausewitz.
Thenceforth she refers frequently, and a little irritatingly,
to his 'clausewitzian' approach, though all we learn about Clausewitz's
philosophy of war (and its also all we learn from Horner's own
account) is that the principle of war is to inflict maximum harm
on the enemy with minimum harm to oneself. One feels there must
have been a bit more to it than that.
Horner was also able for the first time to get down to reading
Marx and Fishman, speaking in her own voice, rather movingly
evokes the impact this might have had on him:
'Readers who have encountered Volume I of Capital at a
comparatively early age may recall their own mounting excitement
and awe at recognising, one by one, the features of their own
everyday lives. The underlying connections and tensions of a
capitalist economy are suddenly illuminated by the dual nature
of all commodities. The reader muses again and again on the conflicting
facets of use-value and exchange-value, and finds countless examples
from their own experience which verify Marx's points. The other
inspiration is the succinct, vivid account of the response of
British factory operatives to their increasing rate of exploitation
by self-organisation. Far from being martyrology, Volume I tells
a story as gripping as the ripping yarns Horner devoured in cowboy
magazines. The formation of trade unions, the organisation of
Short Time Committees, and their ad hoc alliances with sympathetic
Tory activists was a complex story which Marx relished telling.
Horner probably also found the tone of Volume I vastly appealing.
It is upbeat, brimming with confidence and also, paradoxically,
gradualist.' (p.240).
But Horner's Incorrigible Rebel mentions another encounter
in prison which doesn't appear in Fishman's account but which
may have been important. He says: 'During my stay in prison,
too, Professor Knox, a lecturer on mining and one of the leading
authorities in the country, used to come in every week to talk
to me. I learned a lot about mining from him.' (Rebel, p.120)
Professor George Knox had himself been
a miner from childhood but had become a mining engineer going
on to become Principal and Director of Mining Studies at the
South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mining at Treforest,
Pontypridd, a college opened in 1913, owned and funded by the
coal-owners. That Knox should have thought of visiting Horner
in prison is itself interesting. Horner at the time would have
been known mainly as a particularly energetic Communist agitator.
Following Fishman's example I shall indulge in a little speculation
of my own.
ERNEST BEVIN AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL WORKING CLASS
PERSPECTIVE
What characterised the British trade union movement at its best
and enabled it to carry through and, at least for twenty years
or so, maintain the post war reform of British industry, was
an ability to see the needs of the industry as a whole and to
propose practical and immediately realisable improvements, in
contrast to the militant determination to push any industrial
confrontation as far as it could go with a view to bringing down
the system; or indeed the 'right wing' policy of gaining maximum
advantage for a particular section of the workforce without regard
to any wider social or political aims.
Nine Fishman's articles in The Communist in the early
seventies (accessible in the 'Politics and Theology' section
of my own website - www.peterbrooke.org.uk) took this approach
as the principle characteristic of the advance of working class
power in Britain. It was by showing that the class could solve
problems that ever greater areas of economic life came under
its control. Such a perspective did not rule out militancy -
it presupposed that the class, the 'movement', could bring things
to a halt if its interests were ignored and its solutions were
not accepted. If this view of things seems rather fanciful now
it only shows how far we have regressed. It was a perfectly credible
view of things in the 1970s.
The key figure in this view of British working class history
is of course Ernest Bevin. Put crudely, the welfare state was
constructed on the basis of Bevin's achievement in solving the
problems of manpower and production that were posed by the war
(we can only imagine what a mess Churchill would have made of
it!). A key moment in Bevin's own development was the 1926 strike.
Horner's account of the 1926 strike is conventional. The miners
were betrayed by the mainstream trade union movement. Though
he does make the interesting point that even if the continuing
strike by the miners failed, it did give many men their first
opportunity to spend a summer in the sun. And since something
like twelve hundred men were killed every year in the pits it
probably saved around seven hundred lives (the same argument
could, however, be used in defence of unemployment).
Summarising very crudely (and basing myself on Alan Bullock's
account in his biography of Bevin) the dispute between the miners
who continued the strike and the TUC who called it off turned
on their attitude toward the report of the Royal Commission on
the Coal Industry prepared by a small committee under the chairmanship
of Sir Herbert Samuel (and including among its members William
Beveridge). Its recommendations included, in Bullock's words
'detailed recommendations for the reorganisation of the industry
on a more efficient basis, including nationalisation of the mineral
(though not of the mines); the amalgamation of many of the smaller
pits; the application of scientific research to the use of coal
and its by-products; improvements in methods of sale and transport;
a national wages board and a series of reforms to improve the
working conditions and welfare of the miners.'
Bullock continues however: 'At the same time the Commission said
plainly that, as an immediate measure, a reduction in the wages
fixed in 1924 at a time of temporary prosperity, was inevitable.
If the Government's subsidy was excluded, three quarters of the
nation's coal was being produced at a loss ... if the subsidy
were withdrawn and nothing done to reduce costs, then many mines
would have to close. The only way to save the situation temporarily
and so give a chance for permanent improvement by reorganisation
was to cut wages.' (Bullock pp.292-3)
Incorrigible Rebel focusses on this last point, regarding
the rest of the report as so much flim flam. Bevin's view was
quite different. Bullock quotes him as saying after the strike:
'I must confess that the Report had a distinct fascination for
me; I felt that if minds were applied with the right determination
to give effect to it, what with reconstruction, regrouping and
the introduction of a new element in the management of the industry,
there would in the end be produced a higher wage standard. It
may have meant some adjustments in varying forms, but this is
nothing new; everyone of us has had to face these problems in
other industries across the table and met and overcome similar
conditions over and over again.'
I have not studied the Samuel Report myself but clearly it was
analysing the industry as a single entity serving a social purpose,
not as what it was, a multitude of small private concerns, and
it was arguing that the problems of this single nationwide industry
should be addressed in consultation with the government at a
national level. For Bevin, acceptance of that principle would
have been a huge step forward both for the miners and for the
working class as a whole.
HORNER'S NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
I am suggesting that Horner may have developed a similar perspective
in his conversations with Knox and that this may have been more
important than his encounters with Clausewitz or Marx. In the
1930s Horner made himself still more unpopular within sections
of the Communist Party by insisting on a much more disciplined
use of the strike weapon, opposing unofficial or 'wildcat' strikes
and insisting on loyalty to the mainstream unions. At the same
time he attracted admiration for the skill and panache with which
he defeated the 'company' or 'industrial' unions formed with
support from the coal owners in South Wales and Nottinghamshire.
He set himself the long term goal of 100% union membership in
unions affiliated to the MFGB eventually to be amalgamated into
a single union capable of bargaining single nationwide deals.
In conjunction with Bevin he ensured the efficient production
of coal for the war effort. To quote Fishman:
'After the establishment of the coalition government in May 1940,
Horner played the principal role in directing the MFGB's participation
in the total war economy. As the successful head of one of the
largest district coalfield unions (the South Wales Fed - PB)
he wielded significant influence on the MFGB executive. Because
Horner and Evan Williams (negotiator for the coal-owners' association,
the Mining Association of Great Britain - PB) had taken each
other's measure in South Wales, the leading civil servants at
the Department of Mines were able to broker
national agreements between the MAGB and MFGB with comparative
ease. Horner's assistance was also indispensable in managing
the complex vested interests inside the MFGB executive; and he
proved adept at manoeuvring inside the inter-relationships between
different Whitehall departments and the war cabinet.' (Horner,
p.959). Like Pollitt, it should be mentioned, Horner supported
the war from the start, prior to the German invasion of the Soviet
Union.
SILICOSIS AND MINERS' WELFARE
All this is described in detail in Fishman's book. But Incorrigible
Rebel mentions another aspect of his activities which he
regarded with great pride but which goes surprisingly unremarked
in her account. This was the struggle to obtain recognition of
and compensation for 'silicosis' - in particular the struggle
to establish that the disease, now renamed 'pneumoconiosis',
was a result of breathing coal dust, not just dust from anthracite
coalfields were the mineral silica was present. Since compensation
was only given where it could be shown silica was present, Horner
tells us:
'We carried out a subterfuge and I'm not ashamed to say I took
part in it. Lodge committees would carry down pieces of the rocks
named in the Order and scatter them anywhere in the mines where
we knew that men suffering from lung disease had been working.
Some of the collieries' officials knew that this was being done
and they took no action to stop it because they were equally
in danger from the disease.' (Rebel, p.142)
Compensation would also only be given where it could be shown
the miner was completely disabled from the disease. As a result
those who were beginning to suffer the symptoms were reluctant
to draw attention to themselves by seeking treatment, particularly
from doctors employed by the company, since they would then be
liable to be sacked so that the coal-owners would not have to
pay compensation later on. Fishman is usually anxious to stress
the eirenic aspect of Horner's relations, the mutual respect
between himself and the class enemy. She perhaps understates
the real loathing and contempt he felt for the coal-owners in
general.
She also fails to develop what was clearly one of of Horner's
most important considerations - concern for the physical wellbeing
of the men in the pits. As well as the struggle over 'silicosis',
Horner evoked his pride in the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation,
the successful negotiations to remove escape clauses built into
the Conservative Government's Safety in Mines bill of 1954, and
the fight with rubber manufacturers to replace the rubber belting
for conveyors which he claims was responsible for the disasters
at Cresswell (1950. Eighty lives lost) and Auchengeich in Scotland
in 1959 (forty seven lives lost).
LOYALTY TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND ATTITUDE TO THE POST WAR
LABOUR GOVERNMENT
Fishman describes her book as 'a political biography', and it
is mainly the politics that interests her - in particular the
tension between what she calls Horner's conception of 'social
democratic responsibility' and his commitment to the Communist
Party. Logically one might conclude that, especially after the
war, his natural home would have been the Labour Party, especially
since loyalty to the Communist Party closed off to him the possibility
of membership of the General Council of the TUC and therefore
involvement in trade union work beyond the level of the mining
industry. In Incorrigible Rebel he mentions that he had
been offered membership of the National Coal Board and that he
had toyed with the idea. He shrugs it off lightly but Fishman
thinks he was quite seriously tempted by it. He was certainly
very anxious that nationalisation should work and he expresses
pride in the fact that there were no strikes during his time
as General Secretary of the NUM.
Fishman argues that it was largely his personal loyalty to Pollitt
and to his own wife Ethel that kept him in the Communist Party
but that the tension this produced played an important part in
his growing drink problem. She quotes extensively and most interestingly
from Horner's MI5 files which include transcripts of telephone
conversations between Pollitt and Ethel Horner trying to keep
him on the rails both with regard to drink and with regard to
politics.
Incorrigible Rebel, published in 1960, does, however,
end with a strong reassertion of Horner's commitment to Communism
and what seems to me to be a serious attempt to come to terms
with the aftermath of Krushchev's speech to the Twentieth Congress
and with the execution of Imre Nagy in Hungary in 1958. The book
was 'ghosted' by Gordon Schaffer, an industrial journalist, not
a member of the Communist Party but nonetheless as Fishman says,
a supporter of 'the party-sponsored peace movement and friendship
organisations with East Germany and China.' Fishman quotes at
some length a letter to Horner from the Durham miners' leader
Sam Watson complaining:
'nowhere in the book, except on rare occasions, do I come across
the staccato quick thinking clarity which was so march a part
of your mental equipment. Nor does the general picture which
emerges do justice to you. Small incidents are exaggerated out
of all proportion and big events, especially those which involved
real issue of principle and adjustments are slurred over ...
I hate to write this but I have too much respect for your intelligence
to withold it, that to me ... certain passages are simply nonsense
and seem to have been written to justify the possession of important
political principles, surrounded by a strong aura of "holier
than thou" cum working class struggles that cannot be justified
in a personal contribution to the events of the passing years'
(Horner, p.949. Elisions as in Fishman's text).
That might be taken as Nina's justification for not engaging
more with Incorrigible Rebel, especially with its closing
pages which I would assume Horner intended as a political testament.
But Watson, though a friend and normally close ally of Horner's,
was very much on the labour side of the tension Horner felt -
NUM representative on the NEC of the Labour Party, strongly anticommunist
and a friend of Sam Berger, Labour attaché at the American
embassy. Horner, while certainly admiring the Labour Party's
domestic reforms, was horrified by the growth of cold war politics,
NATO, the Marshall plan, the Korean war, the Malayan war:
'I disagreed with the policy of the Labour Government in international
affairs and I believe that their failure in that field was the
reason for the defeat of 1950 and the failure to win a return
to power in subsequent elections. But I believe that within their
limited programme, they did a magnificent job for the miners
and in the field of human progress. Shinwell was the best Minister
of Fuel and Power we have ever had. Ernest Bevin, as Minister
of Labour in the Coalition Government, did a magnificent job.
If he had understood the problems of international affairs as
well as he understood the problems of trade unionism and industry
in his own country he would have made a magnificent foreign secretary.
Jim Griffiths was equally effective in the field of Social Insurance,
and I found after he had left the Ministry that the humanity
and courtesy which he introduced into his department still obtained.
George Buchanan, in charge of Public Assistance, did wonders
in humanizing an administration which had earned the hatred of
the workers during the pre-war period of unemployment. Nye Bevan
fought like a lion for the National Health Service, and the country
can still be grateful to him for the work he did when he was
Minister of Health.
'I deeply regret that Shinwell, after doing so well at the Ministry
of Fuel and Power, agreed to go to the War Office, and then to
the Ministry of Defence where he had to take responsibility for
the organisation of the cold war, that Jim Griffiths agreed to
go to the colonies, where he was responsible for the attacks
on the Liberation Movement in Malaya and Kenya.
'John Strachey, who had been closely associated with the miners'
struggle, as Minister of Food always showed an understanding
of our needs ... Strachey went to the War Office where he was
responsible for the Colonial wars that were being waged and for
the build-up of armaments for the cold war.
'These were the factors which led, after the resignation of Nye
Bevan and Harold Wilson, to the break-up of the spirit behind
the Labour Government and their subsequent defeat.' (Rebel, pp.190-191)
Fishman may regard all that as simply an expression of CP piety
but I think a biography in which the main player is politics
should have paid more attention to it. it seems to me that Horner
believed the Labour Party, to be effective,
needed a strong Communist movement with a clear sense of Communism
as the end to be attained, to the left of it. The formula, however,
presupposed a socially responsible and flexible leadership of
the type that had been provided by Harry Pollitt, if we accept
Fishman's argument, at least until 1947. Under the pressure of
the Cold War and the Cominform, however, she argues that Pollitt
and his close ally Johnny Campbell had lost their 'social democratic'
orientation and turned to blind oppositionism. In this context
she believes strongly that Horner should have left the CPGB.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE WORKING CLASS AS A RULING CLASS IN
WAITING
In arguing this case, in the last chapter of her book, she reconnects
with the central argument she had advanced in the articles published
in The Communist in the early 1970s, in opposition to the fetish
of 'free collective bargaining' and in favour of the organisation
of industrial life on the basis of tripartite negotiations between
government, employers and unions at a national level. This dense
passage could perhaps be described as Fishman's own political
testament and we can only regret that the argument it contains
about the subsequent development of British trade union politics
wasn't unpacked, expanded and presented as her own political
perspective rather than as what Horner might have done, if only
...
'Horner's decision to remain in the CPGB had profoundly negative
consequences for British political history. If he had broken
with the CPGB he would probably have been elected to the General
Council where he might have exercised a decisive influence on
TUC policy. Unlike most union leaders on the General Council,
he had a clear strategic approach to union-employer-state relations,
underpinned by Marxism, Clausewitzianism and social democratic
responsibility. When Aneurin Bevan, as Minister of Labour, took
the first steps towards constructing a tripartite corporate framework
to regulate industrial conflict in 1951, Horner's presence on
the general Council could have tipped the balance in Bevan's
favour ... Instead, the General Council succumbed to hubris and
short-termism after Bevan's resignation from the government in
April 1951. Alf Robens, his successor, was content to pander
to Tewson's (Vincent Tewson, General Secretary of the TUC from
1946 to 1960 - PB) and Deakin's (Arthur Deakin, Bevin's protégé
and successor as General Secretary of the TGWU - PB) fear of
being outflanked by communist militants. The wartime arrangements
for settling industrial disputes through arbitration and conciliation
were rescinded in great haste, and no heed was paid to the long
term consequences of a return to "free, collective bargaining."
'Horner's standing as a union leader rose steadily during the
years of Conservative government. If he had resigned from the
CPGB and been elected to the General Council, he might have persuaded
other union leaders to participate in Eden's and Macmillan's
initiatives to establish tripartite institutions to administer
an incomes policy and promote economic growth. Instead, Tewson
led the General Council in espousing conspicuous public anti-Toryism
whilst making regular visits to No. 10 Downing Street via the
back door. It is very unlikely that Horner would have tolerated
such an unrealistic and disadvantageous bargaining position.'
In sum, Horner was probably, after Ernest Bevin (quite a long
way after Ernest Bevin), the most important figure in the advance
of trade union power in Britain in the first half of the twentieth
century. Exceptionally, like Bevin, he seems to have been able
to think of the working class as a ruling class in waiting, able
to take responsibility for and to resolve problems. Fishman's
biography raises a host of interesting issues both to do with
British working class history and with international communism.
Throughout the book she is advancing a political argument which
could be characterised as, in the best sense of the word, 'corporatist'.
There is a wealth of detailed, well researched information. For
myself, however, I think the book could have benefited from less
detailed information and more development of the general argument
and of the wider political context. Less presumption of knowledge
on the part of the reader. And for an easier and pleasanter 'read',
I recommend Incorrigible Rebel.
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