Trade Union Government (3.10.2014)

Lenin once wrote in 1919 that Soviet Power equalled trade union government and the electrification of the Soviet Union.

The Workers and Peasants Inspectorate began slowly, was planned to progress to between 350 and 500 ‘specialists, well paid’ (Lenin) but it evolved ignominiously into a brutal revanchist, nationalist-socialist dictatorship, best forgotten. It was a network of factory committees known after 'internal reform',the ascendancy of Stalin's cult known as the Central Control Commission,a tripartite type of arrangement whose inspiration was the Works Public Administration of the United States,part of the New Deal.

Some of the lessons of trade union government have refused to go away unlike Lenin and his like.

In the 1970s, the English adopted the National Economic Development Council to bolster nationalised industries and stimulate investment under Tony Benn. This was removed and then swept away by Thatcher in 1981.

What do Social Democrats say today?

Irish Labour and Social Democracy means trade union participation at all levels in society and the reconstruction and electrification of the railways to link up town and country, as that lost ideal of long ago, the electrification of the Soviet Union, was intended to do but failed.

Joseph Mc Carroll