“Sit-down strikes,” wrote the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky not long after huge waves of factory occupations in France and the US (1930s), “go beyond the limits of ‘normal’ capitalist procedure. Independently of the demands of the strikers, the temporary seizure of factories deals a blow to the idol, capitalist property. Every sit-down strike poses in a practical manner the question of who is the boss in the factory: the capitalist or the workers?”
The occupations of car parts factories belonging to multinational giant Visteon in Belfast, Basildon and Enfield are not strictly sit-down strikes, but occupations to stop closures and save jobs. Nonetheless, they have the same significance.
Faced with being thrown on the scrap heap, like tens and hundreds of thousands of others across the UK, the Visteon workers have refused to go along. They have challenged the bosses’ “sacred” right to do whatever they like to workers in order to turn a profit. And in doing so they have given inspiration to the whole labour movement.
There is every chance that the tactic of workplace occupations will catch on. High profile occupations at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, Waterford Crystal in Ireland and Prisme Packaging in Dundee form the background to the Visteon workers’ action — and now parents in Glasgow have occupied primary schools to stop them closing. A form of struggle long limited to students is now once again being used by the working class, in workplaces, where it can have real impact.
We need a debate in the labour movement and on the left about how to take such struggles forward; about how they can be used as a lever to challenge our unions’ failure to fight on jobs and defend workers’ interests in the capitalist crisis. At the same time, though, we need to mobilise huge solidarity for the comrades at Visteon, who are showing workers how to fight and can show them how to win.
