Nothing to Lose but Our Chains
by Jane Hardy
Pluto Press £19.99

THE key strength of Jane Hardy’s book is charting ‘new terrains of struggle’, some of it successful, among precarious, zero-hours workers, many of whom are migrants and women.

She focuses on “microcosms of struggle” and provides a useful record of some recent strikes, for instance by university lecturers, Birmingham care workers, outsourced cleaners in government departments and universities, McDonalds, Sports Direct and the games industry. Some have featured the new unionism of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) and the United Voices of the World (UVW), but many feature old unions, the Bakers, Unite, PCS and GMB, so belying the accusations against them of ignoring “marginalised” workers.

The earlier sections are rather unsatisfactory, however. There is a lack of objectivity when Hardy sets the historical scene for, following a mainstream narrative, she tends to ignore or write off the role of the Communist Party (CPGB). Thus she considers that “In the post-war period and until the 1980s the Communist Party was an important left-wing influence in some sectors and trade unions.”

Until the 1980s communists were central to decisive working-class struggles — such as Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, the 1972 dockers’ dispute, Saltley Gate and the miners’ strikes in 1972 and 1974 — whose outcomes influenced all trade unions. Meanwhile the Morning Star and Daily Worker have been effectively the paper of record for labour disputes for nigh on 100 years, co-ordinating and informing a myriad of struggles.

The “rank-and-file” movements initiated by the CPGB, especially the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions (LCDTU) 1966-1979 (itself growing out of the joint shop stewards’ committees), go unmentioned. LCDTU was crucial in mobilising workers against anti-trade unions laws, a campaign urgently needed today.

Hardy’s presentation of present struggles is thus marred by a rather partial account of the past.