Over the past decade or so, the already-weakened state of British industry and infrastructure has declined even further.

　　Major closures and accompanying job losses are taking place in every sector: from steel and transport to car-manufacturing. Infrastructure–such as rails, roads, water supplies, and the National Grid–is being left to rot.In each case, the costs to modernise and remain competitive are more than the capitalists are willing to pay.Whenever a new important project is announced, meanwhile, either costs and delays inevitably spiral, as contractors and outsourcers grab a healthy slice, or the whole thing fails to get off the ground altogether.

　　The job of the trade union leaders in these circumstances is precisely to organise workers against such attacks by the employers. Yet they have been found wanting– twiddling their thumbs and dragging their feet; fiddling while members’ livelihoods burn.

　　All the while, the closures and job cuts keep coming. And the pressure heaped upon workers is mounting.

　　Crumbling mess

　　Take the example of Alstom, a leading train manufacturer based in Derbyshire. At the start of April, the company’s owners declared that they would potentially be slashing almost 3000 jobs.

　　This was blamed on a lack of orders, both from the recently-cancelled HS2, but also from train operating companies generally.

　　A similar situation unfolded back in 2019 in Bridgend, Wales, when Ford Motors decided to close the engine factory located here, bringing an end to forty years of production in the area.

　　And of course, there is the case of the Port Talbot steelworks. Like Alstom, the job losses here are so large that a shutdown of the blast furnaces would almost certainly spell the end of the town itself.

　　In one sector after another, the crisis of British capitalism is making itself felt. Decades of underinvestment have reduced the former ‘workshop of the world’ to a crumbling mess.

　　While these closures are leaving masses of workers adrift, parasitic shareholders are enjoying ever-larger dividends.

　　‘New Realism’

　　A serious gap has opened up between the objective situation that workers find themselves facing, and the ability of these reformist leaders to pick up the gauntlet that is being thrown down by the bosses and their political representatives.

　　For many years, the union leaders have followed the approach of ‘new realism’ –or class collaboration, as it’s properly called.

　　This has involved them trying to manage the decline, rather than opposing it. At the same time, they justify their passivity with claims that militant action doesn’t work.

　　At a grassroots level, however, the mood is far sharper.

　　This explains the swings to the left that have been seen in the trade union movement in recent years, as reflected in the election of Mick Lynch and Sharon Graham at the head of the RMT and Unite, respectively.

　　Left leaders’ limits

　　But even these left leaders are beginning to show their limits. The case of the jobs massacre at P&O Ferries highlighted this glaringly.

　　When, in 2022, these gangsters moved to illegally sack 800 staff from their ferry services, so as to lower their wage costs, the RMT moved to protest. But they chose not to occupy the boats and prevent the entry of the bosses’ hired goons, which could have actually prevented this mass sacking.

　　The union leaders’ shortcomings are even more evident on the political front, where they’ve been blindsided by Labour’s recent rowbacks on workers’ rights, whilst calling on activists to “grow up” and vote for Starmer.

　　And of course, Unite’s mealy-mouthed position on Palestine has been brought up by many members, who are angry at their union’s refusal to organise against the Israeli war machine.

　　Put to the test

　　As the 2022-23 strike wave demonstrated, workers will be spurred into action by the bosses’ attacks. In the process, those leaders who cannot offer a way forward for workers’ struggles will be swept aside, and replaced by those with greater determination and tenacity.

　　The next wave of industrial action is already brewing. Crucially, this will not take place under a Tory government, but with an avowedly big business Labour administration in Downing Street.

　　This will force union leaders to either mount opposition to ‘their’ government as it carries out Tory policies, or to expose themselves. Under these circumstances, workers will learn very quickly.

　　The task for communists is to reach those in the workplaces and the unions who are already drawing militant conclusions, and to organise these layers around a clear, fighting programme–in order to provide the working class with the bold leadership that it needs and deserves.

　　Editor: Zhong Yao  LiuTingting

　　From:https://communist.red/the-crisis-in-british-industry-and-the-need-for-fighting-leadership/（2024-5-14）