Sadly we didn't turn a corner in 1918 - The struggle is still here and now!

This year is the 100th anniversary of the Manx General Strike generally described as being a success. I should be a cheerleader for the event. My political party Mec Vannin is extolling its virtues and of course I am a creature of the Manx Trade Union movement so what’s not to like about it?

The story goes working people with their backs to the wall rebelled and thereafter the Isle of Man was a better place for workers. Well the first bit is correct but the last is way off beam.

In 1918 working people didn’t have much they lived hand to mouth but they did have one thing going for them and that was the right to withdraw their labour and be pretty raucous about it. Fast forward seventy years to the mid 1980s and when TGWU Brewery workers and others went on strike folk were still pretty much living hand to mouth but we had the added curse of Trade Union legislation.

Indeed you could say things went downhill from 1936 when the Trade Dispute Act was introduced - now don’t argue with me because I have had the dubious honour of being served with writs under said Act twice.

It wasn’t just that legislation - by 1985 we had another equally useless Trade Disputes Act as well - by the mid eighties the cops were getting kitted up as well. During the Brewery Strike as desperate workers aided by members of other Unions (something else that's banned now) tried to halt imports at the sea terminal around the corner in Walpole Avenue there were two cop vans loaded to the gunnels with what looked like a group of the CRS about to go on their holidays. Two decades later they were still throwing their big flat feet around when bus workers were on strike. Of course cops are not allowed to go on strike - so what are they a uniformed branch of the Chamber of Commerce?

During the 1918 General Strike all kinds of workers could undertake sympathy action these days members of your own Union can’t come out in support of you if they are from another workplace. If they do the Union faces legal challenge not to mention the Employer whining and the bloody Industrial Relations Service creating.

No sadly we didn’t turn a corner in 1918 not that I decry the efforts of working people to take it stand at anytime. The workers of 1918 had freedoms denied to workers today the main one being freedom of action.

There has been a raft of legislation since 1936 (most of it in the 1985-2000 period) designed to curb the ability of workers to use the one weapon that really puts them streets ahead of those smarmy bastards at the Chamber of Commerce the ability to effectively withdraw their labour.

The Manx State and its institutions have not marked time since 1918 they have been creating mechanisms and controls to curb the rights of working people. Rather than look back to 1918 I would prefer to look forward to a future for workers where the right to strike and support other workers in struggle is a given. I would like the Police to realise they are workers themselves not a ‘falange’ to control working people. I would like to see workers have the rights here - as they do have now in many countries - to not only join a Union but have it recognised for bargaining purposes.

I’ll finish where I started. Twelve months after the 1918 Manx General strike one of the most important and globally significant events occurred - the International Labour Organisation was created. In the 1990s the ILO was petitioned successfully about Manx Employment Law on a number of occasions and that law was found wanting. That's the reality for Manx working people a century later - they are still in struggle!

Well after that tirade we’ve got to have a song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmPX9cJHXyI

Bernard Moffatt