Such a 'restructuring' process was not possible, however, through economic adjustments alone. It was deeply 'enmeshed' with the problem of the strength and combattivity of the labour movement whose living standards - gained in the post - war years - stood as a major obstacle to ruling class plans. It was only by driving down these living standards that it was possible to raise the rate of profit sufficiently to finance such a 'modernisThe strategic aim of the ruling class - from as early as Wilson's 'white-hot technological revolution' in 1964 - has been precisely to raise the rate of profit by a combination of:
a) depressing wage levels (either through compulsory or voluntary wage deals extending up to the Social Contract);
b) promoting 'productivity deals' and 'mergers' (creating, in the process, growing structural unemployment);
c) slowly eroding the social services (from the elimination of 'free school milk! under the first Wilson government to the slashing cuts recently proposed by Callaghan) in order to divert funds into private enterprise to accelerate the rationalPursuing this assault on the living standards & job prospects of working people - particularly in declining industries - has brought the ruling class, through successive governments, into head - on conflict with the unions as the basic organisations defending working class interests. The attempt to drive down living standards makes the strategy of the ruling class increasingly incompatible with the continued independence of such organisations.
The 'integrationist' or 'confrontationist' tactics employed by various governments over the past decades are not - in this sense - counterposed. They are merely different sides of the same coin dependent, of course, on the Ibalancel of class forces at any specific time. Whether by attempts to legally curb the right to strike (as in the Industrial Relations Act) the union bureaucracy in policing its own membership (as in the Social Contract), independence has become a central concern.
Such a trend confirms Trotsky's prognosis that "there is one common feature in the development, or more correctly degeneration, of modern trade union organisations throughout the world; it is their drawing closely to and growing together with the state power".
The attack upon the autonomy of the unions has been the central thrust in a general erosion of democratic rights as the ruling class has sought to strengthen the authority of its traditional organisations (notably the state) in the battles opened up by its long-term offensive.
Playing on the 'ideological' weaknesses of the labour movement, it has been complemented by the passing of ever-more racist Immigration controls, the use of the crisis in Northern Ireland to undermine 'free speech! (as in the Prevention of Terrorism Act) & assaults on womens' rights won under the 1967 Abortion Act.
Despite the slow erosion of living standards & democratic rights over the past decades, the offensive launched by the ruling class against the labour movement has not led to the shift in the tance of its aims.
The inability of successive governments - most notably the Heath government - to impose their solution on the developing crisis has meant that a virtual stalemate situationhas arisen that has taken the form of a near-paralysis in regard to long-term economic planning. The truth of this can be seen most graphically from the fact that the tasks of the present Wilson/Callaghan government are almost identical to those of the Wilson government... ten years ago.
The inability of the ruling class to 'impose! a solution, despite the use of varying tactics, is not accidental. It has its roots in the balance of class torces whichhas emerged during Britain's long-term decline which, for two inter-related reasons, are historically unfavourable for the ruling class.
1. The Nationalist Upsurge Of all the major capitalist powers, Great Britain was the most modelled and conditioned - in terms of its inner social structure - by its role as a foremost Imperialist power. The erosion of this role has torn deep rents inthe social fabric as not only the relations between ciasses but those between the constituent nations that make up the 'United Kingdom' have been inflamed. This has shown itself in a dramatic upsurge of nationalist feeling which - as in the case of Northern Ireland - can assume explosive dimensions.
The roots of this new upsurge, which has created a major dilemma for the ruling class, complex. They lie in the fact that Britain's long term decline is not reflected uniformly in the United Kingdom but 'exacerbates' and 'deepens! regional inequalities of development which coincide with historically-defined 'national groups'. Such a decline has fallen particularly sharply, over the past decades, on Northern Ireland and Scotland - which were, ironically enough, the backbone of Britain's earlier industrial prowess - creating disproportionately greater urban povunemployment and heavy migration to the more 'affluent! South.
Such localised economic deprivation, playing on a long-felt sense of social or political discrimination, can re-awaken a nationalist consciousness as those nations (long since thought assimilated into the 'Union') begin to re-assert their rights. This can be seen most forcefully in N. Ireland in the growth of the Civil Rights Movement of the late 'sixties where a combination of economic deprivation and political repression was mediated particularly sharply through the statelet of The entry of the Catholic minority into struggle for democratic rights brought it inevitably into a head-on conflict with the Stormont regime - & its British backers - convincing ever - wider layers that such a struggle could only be won by the creation of a United Ireland free of British The importance of the Irish freedom fight was not only that it rekindled, in a new and unexpected way, the age-old struggle of the Irish people for self-determination but that it began to feed and inter-relate with new nationalist currents in Wales and Scotland, It was, in this sense, first indication that Britain's long-term decline was sparking off an internal 'disintegration' as those national minorities (long since considered 'integrated') began to challenge the oppression they suffer.
SOCIALIST ACTION
Undoubtedly the form these struggles have assumed in both Wales and Scotland is radically different from that in Northern Ireland, being primarily limited to a parliamentary opposition which, as in the case of the meteoric rise of the SNP, has made deep inroads into the two -party system. The reasons for this 'difference' are historical, being conditioned by their particular relation to the new Imperialist power establish -ed as a product of 'Union' and their evolution within that framework ever since, While these struggles may take on different forms - and proceed at different rates - they create a major dilemma for the ruling class not least because the high proletarian composition of these national minorities constantly poses the threat of the fight for democratic rights being integrated into that for socialist revolution.
Such a dilemma can already be seen as the logic of the national struggle a) begins to undermine the unity of the bourgeois state as a product of 'Union'; b) erodes, particularly in the case of N. Ireland, the ability of the ruling class to rule through parliamentary democracy; and c) creates a 'fragmentation' within the ranks of the ruling class as different sectors, manoeuvering among themselves for more advantageous positions, split and divide. The latter can be seen most clearly within the 'ranks! of the Tory Party - unique among all the European bourgeois parties in its ability to unify the sectoral interests of the ruling class - as it has seen the split - off by the Ulster Unionists and the drain of support to the Such a weakening of the bourgeois state and it's institutions has meant that, over the past decade, the ruling class has been forced to launch offensive against the working class with increasingly 'inadequate instruments' and with growing lack of internal cohesion. The long-term decline of Britain has begun to erode those very institutions the ruling class needs to 'bolstert in its attempt to alter the balance of class forces in its 2. Working Class, Strength The inability of the ruling class to ramhome its offensive resides not only in its internal crisis but in the strength and combattivity of the organised labour movement which has suffered no serious defeat since the early 'thirties. While able to marginally erode living standards, the ruling class has proved itself incapable of inflicting any major set - back on a movement which has grown in both size and confidence since the last This was dramatically revealed in the defeat of the Heath government in 1974 under the impact of the miners' strike. Heath was returned to power in a situation where the previous Wilson government - in spite of its links with the trade union bureaucracy - had shown itself unable to impose wage controls and legal sanctions against the Beginning with the seamens' strike of 1966, Wilson's policies had resulted merely in the unleashing of ever-wider confrontations which culminated, in 1968, with the 150, 000 strong rally against In Place of Strife which forced Castle to retreat. Such a process, creating deepening strains within the reformist apparatus, meant that the value of the Wilson government was, in ruling class eyes, soon exhausted.
The main thrust of the Heath government was, mainly through new 'legal curbs' on the unions combined, later, with pay restraint, to confror:
and check this growing militancy within tre atour movement. Holding the unions in check, and defeating them in a decisive 'trial of streng:-', was seen as vital in implementing severe cuts :the standard of living made all the more Inecessary! by the opening of international recession.
In this approach, the Heath government severely miscalculated. The undefeated strength of the class, expressed in the growth of trade unionism in the previous decades and shift 'left' in major unions such as the T&GWU and AUEW leading to the election of a Scanlon or Jones meant that workers were not prepared to !toleratel legal curbs on their right to strike. The fact that they were not prepared to accept them from a Labour government (which had been forced to 'retreat!)
meant that they were even less willing to accept them from the Tories. This mood could be judged at the time the Industrial Relations Act was introduced when the AUEW called two consecutive mobilisations numbering 1,500, 000 each time.
Miners reject Heath's 'pay code'.
After the law had been put on the statute books, confrontations reached unprecedented proport -ions threatening - as in the first miners! strike or the movement to 'free the fivel dockers imprisoned in Pentonville under the Act - to erupt The mass actions involved in the miners! strike at Saltley or the 'snowballing' effect of the free the fivel campaign indicated the growing awareness of the class of the need to concentrate its efforts againThis growth in combattivity of the class, as it began to move from the 'local' fragmented militancy of the early sixties into wide - scale confrontations with the government, was reflected in strike statistics. For 1970, these figures stood at 1,793, 000. In 1971, they dropped to 1,171, 00( only to rise again in 1972 and 1973 to 1,772, 000 and 1,513, 000 respectively.
It was this rise in militancy - and political awareness - which prepared the ground for the major defeat of the government in the second miners! strike of 1974 which not only drove a bus through its incomes policy but which also 'toppled' it from power.
The conflict with the miners was an obvious attempt by the government to defeat a key sector of labour in which all the resources of the capitalist state were brought to bear on a 'Who Rules! basis. The defeat of the government in that conflict - despite abortive attempts to use the ballot
box to whip up middle-class support against the strike - sharply revealed the powerlessness of the ruling class in a clear 'trial of strength!.
Such a defeat represented not only a set-back for Heath who was soon to be 'ousted' from the leadership of the Tory Party. It represented a set-back for the entire strategy of the ruling class who were forced, yet again, to rely upon a Labour government to 'contain! the situation while they sought to resolve the internal crisis that burst forth within their own 'ranks' as a result of the miners' victory.
It has been these two factors - the structural crisis of the ruling class provoked by the nationalist upsurge and the strength of the organised working class - which has presented the major obstacle to the former in its attempts to shift accounts for the growing pessimism in ruling Inability to achieve this task over the past decade means that the long-term problems facing the British economy have been aggravated and deepened by the sharper competition for increasingly saturated world markets. Despite the policies of successive governments, investment has continued to decline resulting in a growing productivity gap between British capitalism and its main international rivals. Between 1970 and 1975, for example Britain's rate of productivity was a mere 3.1% compared with 3.4% for France & 5.4% for West Germany and Japan., Declining productivity leads not only to 'stagnation! as British industry finds it ever more difficult to 'survivel both in world markets and the protected markets of the EEC (which has become a liability rather than the benefit hoped for). It also indirectly fuels inflation since successive governments have been forced to protect lailing' firms by the injection of massive credit facilities.
Between the same period (1970 and 1975), government 'hand-outs' to private industry soared from a mere £21 millions to just over 28. 30G billions. This trend, combined with the rise in the price of raw materials & arms expenditure, has pushed inflation up to an annual rate of 18%.
The twin evils of inflation and stagnation, while international trends, are reflected particularly sharply in Britain due to the inability of the ruling class to solve the problems endemic to its long-term historical decline.
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C) Obstacles to Ruling Class Strategy