Struggle for Collective Bargaining

Dimitrov referred to the great sacrifices made by the British working class before it secured the right to strike, a legal status for its trade unions, the right of assembly and freedom of the press, extension of the franchise, and other rights, and he quoted Lenin to the effect that "the proletariat will be unable to prepare for victory over the bourgeoisie unless it wages a many-sided consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy".

What does "struggle for democracy" mean in the context of the Industrial Relations Bill? I see the key issue in the provisions relating to direct, collective bargaining or, more correctly, in the provisions which seek to restrict such bargaining and replace it once again with compulsory conciliation and arbitration.

Throughout the present century at least, the Arbitration Act has acted as a bridle (as "Labour's leg-iron", in the words of Harry Holland) on active, militant unions, which could have gained better wages and conditions in direct confrontation with the employers. Whenever these unions tried to get out from under, as they did during the "Red Fed" offensive of 1908-13, they were forced back into the arbitration system, by the batons of "Massey's Cossacks" as much as by new laws such as the Labour Disputes Investigation Act. During the depression of the thirties, however, it was the employers who found the arbitration machinery irksome because it did not allow them to cut wages fast enough, and this time a compliant Government, in 1932, abolished compulsory arbitration.