STRIKE STRATEGY
in the organization of its picketing, to beware of employing professional gangsters. The right wing leadership has thoroly discredited this system. The gangsters not only tend to move in and capture the unions after the strike is over, but they poison it to the heart with their very presence. They are a constant source of corruption.
The legal committee is also essential, but the left wing must always be careful to hold the lawyers in check. They have a rather fatal habit, once they are engaged, of trying to run the whole strike as well as their legal department. If they succeed in this they soon strip it of all militancy and reduce it to a state of impotent legalism. They are also notoriously poor fighters at the conference table.
The publicity committee is very vital. To give out the news of the strike is fundamentally important, not only for the information of the workers at large, whose support is wanted, but also for the strikers themselves, whose solidarity must be maintained. Yet in almost every strike, whether conducted by rights or lefts, the publicity arrangements are primitive and inadequate in the extreme.
6—Discipline.
Good discipline is as necessary in a strike as in a battle. It is the task of the strike committee to maintain this discipline. To do this it must carry on its work in a spirit of firmness, decision, and resolution. It must give careful attention to detail work as well as general policies. Violations of instructions and failures in duty must be swiftly punished. Incompetent corruptionists and weaklings must be eliminated from official positions.
The whole strike organization must be shot through with a spirit of determination and seriousness. Bosses, strikers, scabs, and all others connected with the strike directly or indirectly must be given to understand unequivocally that they have to deal with a body of real fighters.
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