History

95 years since the General Strike: lessons for the struggle today

June 21, 2021

Sofia Wiking
Shrewsbury pickets: At last found innocent

March 26, 2021

Cormac Kelly, West Yorkshire Socialist Alternative
Marxism and Evolution: 150 years since publication of Darwin’s “The Descent of Man”

February 23, 2021

Andy Ford, Merseyside Socialist Alternative
Review: Should socialists claim ‘A Christmas Carol’ as our own?

December 24, 2020

James Kerr
New pamphlet review: Marxism in our Time

December 10, 2020

Connor Rosoman
The relevance of the Russian revolution today for women’s liberation and public health – part one

December 9, 2020

Jackie Grunsell

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95 years since the General Strike: lessons for the struggle today

The General Strike of 1926 is arguably the closest Britain has ever got to a socialist revolution. Its defeat was one of the greatest setbacks the working class has ever seen in this country. During the nine days the strike lasted the British economy ground to a halt as millions joined the strike, which was still going strong when the leadership of the Trades Union Council called it off – failing to win even the basic demand of a guarantee that there would be no victimisation of strikers.

Background/The role of the miners

The conditions for the strike had been ripening over the preceding decades, with the situation coming near to general strikes in 1919, 1921 and 1925. The British economy was on its knees following the first world war, with the capitalists making the workers pay for it. At the same time, workers had been radicalised by the Russian Revolution of 1917 – which saw workers, led by the socialist Bolshevik party, take power – as well as the wave of revolutions in Europe which followed it. Class tensions were high, with the miners playing a central role in the years leading up to the strike, as well as in the strike itself. They were at the heart of British industry, producing the raw materials upon which the economy was built, and they were also a substantial part of the overall workforce, being the only industry to employ over a million workers at the time.

The miners were also one of the most militant groups of workers – some 1.2 million were members of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) at the time of the general strike. By 1921, as the post-war boom burst and coal prices fell, pressure on the government to re-nationalise the mining industry was mounting, and the new mine owners were planning drastic cuts to wages (ranging from 10% to 49%!) as well as revoking the national agreement which kept wages consistent across the country. In response, the ‘Triple Alliance’ (the miners in conjunction with the railway workers and dockers) called a national rail and transport strike in support of the miners, meaning more than two million men would stop work. The leaders of the alliance, however, called off the strike before it even started, leaving the miners to conduct the fight on their own. After two months of struggle they finally gave in and accepted the pay and conditions offered by the new owners.

Emboldened by this victory, other parts of the capitalist class forced through wage cuts in many other industries, including cotton, engineering, construction and merchant navy. The following period also saw a steep decline in trade union membership (from 8.3 million in 1920 to 5.6 million in 1922). This was driven partly by the rise in unemployment but also disillusionment of the workers. The betrayal of the right wing trade union leaders would also live on in the workers’ memories, with the positive side-effect of pushing many to draw more radical conclusions, including about the need for strong rank-and-file organisation.

Following this defeat, left militants started organising independently within the unions as the National Minority Movement, heavily influenced by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). They scored a victory with the election of the militant trade unionist Arthur Cook – a self-proclaimed follower of Lenin – as the leader of the MFGB.

This was the backdrop against which the general strike would happen: the mine workers constituted a crucial part of the British economy. At the same time, being the most organised and radical meant they remained the main target of ruling class attacks who saw defeating the miners as a means of ‘breaking the back’ of the workers’ movements and avoiding working-class gains. . The right-wing trade union leaders had shown themselves as unreliable, and the idea that the miners formed the first line of defence for the wider working class was confirmed.

War Preparations

In May 1925 further pay cuts for the miners, along with longer working hours, were back on the table. It was clear the time was ripe for a reckoning between bosses and workers – at the 1925 TUC congress a clear majority of delegates voted in favour of a motion that called for the “overthrow of capitalism” and for the formation of workers’ councils (soviets).

The then Tory prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, made it clear that indeed this was only the first blow, and that “All the workers of this country have to take reductions”. With the Triple Alliance out of action at this point, the MFGB turned to the TUC for support. While the TUC leadership was dominated by right-wingers such as the National Union of Railwaymen’s Jimmy Thomas, they represented over 4.5 million workers and, after negotiations, the government agreed to subsidise the coal industry for 9 months while undertaking a Royal Commission, under the direction of Home Secretary Herbert Samuel, to recommend what course of action was to be taken.

Although dubbed ‘Red Friday’ by the papers, this ‘victory’ was shallow and temporary. The situation was comparable to the tactical retreat made by Thatcher in 1981, when facing the threat of a miners’ strike in response to pit closures. She proceeded to build up coal stocks and prepare for the struggle she knew was coming. Similarly, the government in 1925 used the time it had bought itself to immediately start preparing for the battle ahead. It set up the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) to organise an army of strike-breaking volunteers (a notoriously right-wing crowd, including many fascists) as well as coordinating food and fuel supplies, recruiting 240,000 special police and putting the army on standby. It also oversaw a crackdown on the left, most notably the arrest of Communist Party leaders, which sparked mass protests across the country.

The TUC, meanwhile, did absolutely nothing to prepare for the showdown that was clearly going to happen. They waited for the subsidies to run out and for the Samuel commission to report. When the report was published on 10 March 1926 it recommended a pay reduction of 13.5% for the miners and for the subsidies not to be extended. In response to this, the mine owners announced wage cuts and longer work days and the miners, upon not accepting these conditions, were locked out of the mines. Rallying around the slogan of ‘not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’ the miners went back to the TUC for support. The TUC Special Committee’s response was to support wage reductions and recommend further talks.

Having done little since Red Friday the TUC did now enter negotiations with the government, but still failed to make any attempts to rally their forces. It was only six days before the negotiation deadline that they first called a meeting of their general strike committee and it was obvious from the start they did not want a general strike. Right-winger Jimmy Thomas was heading the negotiations with the government and explained that “every sane miners’ leader wants, as every employer wants – peace”. But it was very clear that the ruling class did not “want peace” – not only did the attacks on the pay and conditions of workers warrant a fight-back, but the evident preparation for an all-out battle should have made it clear that the government and bosses had other plans.

Whether trade union officials and leaders like Thomas actually believed peace was an option, or were wilfully turning their eyes away, the problem stemmed from the same attitudes: an unwillingness to see a break with capitalism, and even more so an unwillingness to lead the workers in the struggle towards such a goal. Even if the TUC leaders did not understand or acknowledge what was at stake, it seems the ruling class did. Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer as part of Baldwin’s government, summed up the situation saying “It is a conflict which, if it is fought to a conclusion, can only end in the overthrow of parliamentary government or in its decisive victory, there is no middle course open”. The options were revolution or the brutal defeat of the working class, and the actions of the TUC made it clear their preference was ultimately the latter.

It should be emphasised that it was not just the trade union leaders who failed to do anything to prepare for the strike and engaged in self-sabotage: the Communist Party had substantial support and influence amongst the workers, including through their work as part of the National Minority Movement, but under the influence of the increasingly Stalinised Communist International their slogan was to be “All Power to the General Council [of the TUC]”, thus leaving the TUC free reign to carry out its strategy unopposed. (For more on the destructive role of the Communist Party during the general strike, see part three in our series on the history of the CPGB in issue 8 of Socialist Alternative).

Giving in to pressure from below, on 1 May the TUC held a special conference to announce plans for a strike to begin on 3 May – an announcement endorsed by delegates representing an overwhelming 3.5 million (99.9%) of the members. Meanwhile, the leaders were growing increasingly desperate in their efforts to secure a deal with the government, who were not conceding any ground. In fact it seems Baldwin was only waiting for an excuse to call them off. This excuse came a couple of days later when the printers who printed the Daily Mail refused to print an editorial condemning the strike plans. The editorial did in fact make a valid point, saying that “A general strike is not an industrial dispute” (which the TUC doggedly claimed) and that “It is a revolutionary move which can only succeed by destroying the government”. Further on, however, its ideology became more clear as it went on to say that it was “subverting the rights and liberties of the people”. Workers and socialists back then, just as today, would point out that it is the capitalist system that is in fact “subverting” those “rights and liberties”!

General Strike!

The strike began on 3 May and it became instantly clear that the attitude of the masses was different to that of the trade union tops – millions responded to the call, with hundreds of thousands more demanding to be called out. Many non-union workers would also join in.

In addition to the one million locked-out miners, some two million workers across transport, printing and production (metal, chemicals, heavy construction, electricity and gas) were initially brought out, with another 500,000 joining as the strike went on.

The scope and intensity of the response seems to have surprised both the government and the TUC – it was immediately clear that the TUC’s fear of losing control had come true. As one union official complained:

“Every day that the strike proceeded the control and the authority of that dispute [were] passing out of the hands of responsible executives into the hands of men who had no authority, no control, and [were] wrecking the movement from one end to the other.”

The TUC would spend the duration of the strike trying to control and subdue the movement. They had an additional one million members that were never called on to strike; they published a strike bulletin called the British Worker, which discouraged picketing; they advised strikers to maintain friendly relations with the police.

Most of this ‘advice’ went unheeded as strikers confronted strike-breakers and police across the country. There were riots in Plymouth, Swansea, Southsea and Nottingham; clashes with police across London, Leeds, Cardiff, Ipswich, Manchester, Stoke, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh; in Preston 5,000 stormed a police station to free an imprisoned striker.

Across the country between 100 and 147 ‘Councils of Action’ were formed in order to organise picketing, food distribution, dissemination of information, and tasks like issuing passes to vehicles moving essential goods. In Edinburgh a football pitch was used to impound vehicles that did not have trade union passes.

An account from a Clydeside striker states that:

“The central strike committees and the councils of action were twenty-four hours a day in session. They had their own transport; they stopped all other forms of transport but they had their own courier system to carry messages because there was no such thing as postal services, no such thing as the press. The press had turned in 100 percent and stopped all the papers, and so the council of action had to carry out its work by getting bicycles, old and new, motorcycles, old vans—anything that could run on wheels was used by the couriers and also to take leaders in the strike to certain fronts in the strike.”

The organisational structures that these councils formed is similar to what happened in Russia in 1917 – they represented the early stages of ‘dual power’ in which the workers simply started taking over the running of society themselves, with official power structures becoming increasingly impotent. The next step would have been to link these councils up nationally, forming a workers’ government placed to take over state power and be at the helm of the socialist transformation of British society.

What was missing was a consistent revolutionary socialist leadership to put forward these ideas, and direct the energy of the revolting people. While the CPGB were very actively intervening and building the Councils of Action, and overall playing very positive roles on a local level, their instructions were that “ the councils of action were under no circumstances to take over the work of the trade unions… The councils of action were to see that all the decisions of the General Council and the union executives were carried out.” (George Hardy, Organising Secretary of the NMM)

Despite this lack of leadership the strike was growing in strength and determination day by day – by the second week key industries were closing down through lack of supplies and there were indications of the armed forces starting to mutiny, with soldiers in the Welsh Guards and the Bedfordshire and East Lancashire regiments refusing to enter mining areas. Despite all this, on 12 May the TUC General Council went to the prime minister with the disgraceful proposal that they would call off the strike on the paltry conditions that the proposals of the Samuel Commission be adhered to and that there would be no victimisation of strikers. The government called their bluff and refused both these proposals. The TUC called off the strike anyway, justifying it by claiming that the strikers were giving up and returning to work and that the strike funds were empty.

While it seems there was some truth to the fact that there was a small number of people going back to work, according to a report by the TUC’s own intelligence committee, this was in “some outlying areas” and due to the lack of information by the TUC, and moreover it was “easily offset by those joining the strike and industries closed by it.”

As for them being out of funds it is worth mentioning that, although the official Soviet advice to the CPGB was destructive, in Soviet Russia, the working class were told that the British TUC were waging a great class struggle, and in order to support the cause of international socialism they collected the equivalent of over £1m in roubles from ordinary Russian workers showing solidarity (the equivalent of over £60m today) which they presented to the TUC at the height of the strike. The TUC refused the money.

The news that the strike was called off, and in particular of the conditions of the surrender, was met first with scepticism and then with anger. Few workers actually went back to work on the following day. In fact, as they found out about the betrayal and of colleagues losing their jobs due to striker victimisation, 100,000 new workers joined the strike. This meant that 13 May, the day after the strike had officially ended, more workers were out on strike than any day of the official strike.

Without the support of the unions, however, strikers did gradually return to work and soon only the locked-out miners remained. They held out for another three months before they were ultimately forced to return to work with wages and conditions diminished.

Blowback and legacy

As predicted the defeat was a huge setback for the working class, and paved the way for a period of repression and rolling back of workers’ rights. While the the consequences of the defeat was not quite as severe as those of the defeat of the German Revolution some years earlier, which helped pave the way for the Nazi party taking power, the effects were profound. Trade union membership declined; in 1927 the Trade Dispute and Trade Union Act was passed which entailed a number of attacks on workers’ ability to organise. These included making sympathy strikes and mass picketing illegal. 1928 saw the advent of Mondism and ‘social partnership’ models – the idea that trade unions should cooperate with bosses in order to achieve their goals. This was followed by the Hungry Thirties, characterised by mass unemployment and poverty.

No defeats for the working class are ever final. The 1930s themselves saw a huge resurgence of industrial struggle and workers’ militancy. These were characterised by bitterly fought industrial battles, mass movements of unemployed workers and huge revolutionary possibilities across much of the continent of Europe.

Although the 1926 general strike, because of misleadership, never got to the point of an actual insurrection and a de facto takeover of the state might mean it is easier for some to dismiss its significance, this in some ways misses the point. A revolution is not a single event, for an insurrection to succeed and a workers’ government be established workers must have in fact already taken power – both on the streets, and through holding the society’s economic levers through democratic control of the workplaces. In the accounts of the general strike we can see that in only nine days things did move remarkably fast in this direction, and although the process was cut short it does disprove the common belief that a revolution ‘could never happen in Britain’ because of the ‘British temperament’. It was never the British determination or radicalism of the British workers which fell short!

While there are important differences between the situation today and that of 1926 there are many important lessons to be drawn from the general strike. Obvious comparisons can be drawn between the reluctance of the TUC leadership of 1926 not to ruffle any establishment feathers and doing its best to put a lid on any popular momentum and approach of trade union leaders and TUC today! Statements like that of TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady last year that we need trade unions, bosses, and the Tory government to ‘come together’ in order to overcome the covid crisis leaves little room for optimism that the role of the TUC has improved much since 1926.

The current situation also follows decades of neoliberal dominance where the ‘social model’ which first rose to prominence following the general strike has been the standard framework for many of the trade union tops.

Trade unions have been relegated to a service provider, offering advice alongside life insurance deals to its ‘customers’ rather than a means of struggle and social change. Membership and activity levels have been at historic lows, but we are beginning to see a change, and with the economic crisis developing the attacks on workers which have already begun will push these developments forward.

The history of the general strike is rich in lessons for all workers and trade unionists who are engaged in the struggle for decent wages and conditions and against government attacks today. Then, as now, a crucial task for our movement is to remove the ‘block at the top’ by replacing with working-class fighters (and where necessary circumventing) the right-wing trade union leaderships. As socialists, we put forward demands we consider necessary to take the struggle forward – seeking support for them not simply ‘at the top’ but most crucially among rank-and-file union members. After all it is ordinary workers who are ultimately able to push union leaderships into action or to expose them when they fail to do so.

This is an equally important lesson of the strike: workers need a revolutionary party with a clear socialist programme and the correct approach to linking the everyday struggles of workers with the necessity to change society fundamentally. It is only by breaking with capitalism that the victories won by workers can be consolidated and built upon – without any threat of them being reversed at a later stage. This is the kind of organisation we are seeking to build today in Socialist Alternative. While we are not immediately facing a pre-revolutionary situation in Britain, we are witnessing a remarkable radicalisation of young people, and the extensive disruption caused by the Covid pandemic and its fallout is not a world away from the disruption caused by the first world war.

Studying events like the general strike can not only teach us how not to repeat past mistakes, but importantly they can remind us that this mass struggle will take place – Britain is no exception! While it is hard to know when or exactly what shape the next showdown will take, many of the same underlying conditions that brought the general strike about are still around – because capitalism is still around – and at some point we will see things come to a crunch point again. As socialists it is our job to prepare for these events and ultimately do everything we can to ensure the workers’ movement is successful.
Shrewsbury pickets: At last found innocent

The recent Court of Appeals judgement that all of the Shrewsbury pickets’ criminal convictions of 1974 was based on inadequate evidence and should be overturned must be welcome. After 47 years, it is a stunning exoneration of trade unionists who suffered imprisonment and criminal convictions as a result of a vindictive and systematic campaign by the state.

Nearly five decades of persistent campaigning has led to these sentences being put to one side. It is chilling to see the lengths to which bosses in the building industry, a Tory government and the deep state went to, in attacking these working men in the first place.

Edward Heath and his Conservative government had been elected in 1970 with a mandate to take on the unions. However, by 1972, the Tories were smashed by a victorious miners strike in a struggle for higher wages. Heath, humiliated and licking his wounds, decided again to take on the miners – the elite of the trade union movement. At the beginning of 1974, over half a million workers were laid off as unemployment rose. A victory for the government would put the working class in its place, reducing resistance. But the trade union movement stood by the miners, despite Heath openly publicising the training of the army and police in intimidation and riot control techniques. The miners triumphed over the Tories in a second strike in 1974; Heath and his government fell.

Building workers were perhaps an easier target. Sites in the UK had appalling conditions for workers. Often there would be a single toilet for many men and no shelter or drying facilities. In 1972, building workers were on their first national strike to increase wages and abolish the ‘Lump’, a casual employment system similar to that used in the gig economy now. Further construction sites were notorious for a high number of injuries and deaths. One person was killed or seriously injured every day in the 1970s. In the Shrewsbury area, militants Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson were the leaders of 24 building workers determined to spread the strike.

They already had some success in their campaign through the use of flying pickets. Coaches were hired to go from site to site to persuade workers to take action. Although they were accompanied by police, none were arrested at the time and the picketing was peaceful, as Ricky and Des simply spoke to workers to persuade them to join the strike.

Out of the blue, five month later, they were charged with conspiring to intimidate workers, tried and found guilty. So what was behind this notorious court case? Heath had faced more problems. His Industrial Relations Act, which was designed to shackle the unions had been shredded when five dock workers’ leaders were jailed. With the threat of a general strike, the government backed off.

A secret government unit – the Information Research Department, which was run by the Foreign Office was established. Its job was to disseminate anti-socialist and anti-trade union propaganda. It provided intelligence about trade unionists to an ITV television production team who went on to make Red Under the Bed, a hostile attack on the union movement. This was broadcast during one of the trials and undoubtedly influenced some of the jurors. This kind of tactic is similar to the notorious BBC Panorama programme attacking Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite a few years ago.

After three trials, 22 trade unionists were convicted of unlawful assembly, conspiracy to intimidate and affray. Two were cleared. As Des Warren said while facing sentence, there was no conspiracy by the pickets but there was one “between the home secretary, the employers and the police.”

Ricky Tomlinson got a two year sentence and was held in solitary confinement after refusing to work or wear clothes; he was released after 18 months. Des Warren got three years and, because he would not cooperate with the prison authorities, was forced to drink a cocktail of tranquillisers. Despite being released after 30 months, his health was broken, leading to Parkinson disease and he never worked again, dying in 2004. All convicted pickets then faced blacklisting. No boss in the building industry would employ them.

In 1974, a new Labour government came to power and precisely nothing was done to get the imprisoned trade unionists released, in spite of huge protests. Their appeal was also turned down. Glasgow shipyard workers, construction workers and others marched to the building workers union offices in Glasgow, Liverpool, Edinburgh and elsewhere with no success.

Roy Jenkins, the Labour Home Secretary refused to look at the case. Trade unionists made the point that it was they who got this government elected and in return the convictions should be overturned. Jenkins was later to jointly found the ‘scab’ Social Democratic Party, whose sole aim was to stop a Labour government coming to power in the 1980s. The imprisoned Shrewsbury picketers were left to rot as Labour and the Trades Union Congress abandoned them.

Six of the 14 who have now had their convictions overturned are dead; their relatives carried on for years with the battle for justice. Eventually, Eileen Turnbull, the researcher for the campaign found in the Public Records Office a document in the prosecution’s paperwork that proved the police had maliciously destroyed some of the original witness statements which would have helped the pickets case, had they been known about. The Appeal judge decided that this was unfair and overturned the sentences. Even at the time of the original trial the available evidence against the pickets was so unconvincing that two of the jurors stormed out of the courtroom in protest at Ricky Tomlinson’s guilty verdict.

Ricky went on to be an actor and appeared in some memorable Ken Loach films, along with Brookside and the Royle Family. He also made a TV documentary about the Shrewsbury 24 and was the public face of the campaign for justice.

In the years after, working people were shackled by draconian anti-trade union laws. Secondary picketing is illegal, with huge ballot thresholds required to be crossed before industrial action can be taken. More legislation to ban strikes in certain industries is coming down the line.

The police have been ordered to be far more aggressive in dealing with protestors in future. The latest proposed Tory Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill, if passed, would give the police the power to arrest demonstrators, based on the opinion of an officer of whether a person is causing a ‘serious annoyance’. A nurse in a demonstration for decent wages shouting ‘Give Boris the clap and give us the cash’ could get ten years!

The new ‘mood’ is summed up by the recent violent attack at Clapham Common on mainly female protestors remembering Sarah Everard. The police expect women to hide in their homes and if they have the audacity to go out and protest they are kettled, forced to the ground, handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police van.

The war on protest goes on. Examples include Extinction Rebellion activists who organised a small socially distanced protest being arrested, a nurse fined £10,000 for organising a demonstration against poor pay, four legal observers arrested in a demonstration against the policing bill and recently the attacks on ‘Kill the Bill’ campaigners in Bristol. Police were still spitting heads open in Bristol a few days later.

The original ‘Kill the Bill’ campaign was against Heath government, when he introduced the Industrial Relations Bill. He came to power to break strikes and render impotent the trade union movement. A campaign by trade unionists and the TUC was launched against the bill, including agitation and vast demonstrations across the country. With industrial battles being fought everywhere, a heightened atmosphere of class consciousness and combativity permeated the advanced working class, who gained tremendous confidence in taking on the Tories and the rich. In the end the Bill was ‘killed’.

Nothing has changed since the early 70’s: brutality, arrests, intimidation, the use of the media to spread lies, dodgy courts, tampering with evidence are all tools designed by the ruling class to maintain their power. We must fight again to defeat another Conservative government, hell bent on stopping any kind of protest to improve our lives and create socialism.

Join our fight for a better future with Socialist Alternative!
Marxism and Evolution: 150 years since publication of Darwin’s “The Descent of Man”

February 24th is the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s ground-breaking 1871 book, “The Descent of Man”, which situated humanity firmly within the natural world and not as some kind of special divine creation.

Marx and Engels greeted Darwin’s work enthusiastically as confirmation of their materialist outlook, even though Darwin’s version of evolution, one of countless incremental steps to produce a gradual evolution, was not fully dialectical or dynamic.

After the publication of “Origin of Species” Engels wrote to Marx “Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done. Never before has so grandiose an attempt been made to demonstrate historical evolution in Nature, and certainly never to such good effect.”

Marx was just as enthusiastic, calling it “The book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.”

In a letter to the German socialist Ferdinand Lasalle, Marx wrote “Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle”

Wilhelm Liebknecht, a friend and comrade who often visited the Marx family in London, later recalled: “When Darwin drew the conclusions from his research work and brought them to the knowledge of the public, we spoke of nothing else for months but Darwin and the enormous significance of his scientific discoveries.”

Stephen Jay Gould: Stability and revolutionary change

Despite the conservatism of most mainstream biologists who preferred to see gradual evolution in both the natural world, and in society as a whole, there were always scientists who pointed out that the fossil record was best explained by long periods of stability with occasional rapid changes and the emergence of new forms.

Stephen Jay Gould, who was at least influenced by the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism, set down the idea of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ in his key 1972 paper “Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to gradualism” and he did it so well that it has more or less become mainstream. He laid the groundwork for perhaps the best application of Marxist ideas to Darwinism, by the British biologist John Maynard Smith.

John Maynard Smith

The book “Major Transitions in Evolution” (1997) by Maynard Smith and Hungarian biochemist Eors Szathmary gives a startling confirmation of the theories of development outlined by Marx and Engels, and set down in outline by Engels in his “Dialectics of Nature”, published in 1883.

John Maynard Smith in interviews even referred to his ideas as a theory of “revolutionary development” in evolution as opposed to a gradual evolution purely by the accumulation of small changes. The authors see the evolution of life proceeding by periods of gradual change, adaptation and variation, punctuated by huge transformations giving rise to new and more complex forms.

Smith and Szathmary identify nine major transitions, or, in the language of dialectics, qualitative changes that have taken place in the evolution of life. None of these changes can be explained by gradual evolution from one state to another – a new level of biological organisation had to come through a dramatic re-organisation of living material and of the information required to transmit and reproduce life.

Nine key transitions in evolution of life on earth

In order, these transitions are:

(1) the origin of life itself as self-replicating chemicals, (2) the grouping of single replicating molecules or genes into chromosomes which contain many self-replicators, (3) the transition from life coded by RNA as an enzyme to DNA as purely an information-storing molecule; then (4) the origin of bacteria as cells containing chromosomes, (5) the transition from bacteria to single-celled organisms and then (6) the transition from single-celled organisms to multi-cellular animals, plans and fungi. Once these groups had evolved, many species, though not all, moved from reproduction by asexual budding or cloning to (7) reproduction by sex. He also sees two further transitions within the animal kingdom – (8) the rise of social insects; and (9) the development of human societies. None of these qualitative changes can be explained by a simple evolution from what went before.

1) The origin of life

The first transition, from chemicals to self replicators, is one of the knottiest problems in biology. The simple organic compounds which are the building blocks of life – amino acids, aldehydes and fatty acids and even sugars – were shown in the 1950s to be a likely outcome of the interaction of lightning and methane, ammonia and nitrogen in the atmosphere of the early earth.

Some of these compounds have also been found in comets, asteroids and other planets. However, it is still unclear how or where the resulting organic chemicals first became able to reproduce themselves – most scientists favour deep sea vents, but alternatives include volcanic mud pools or metallic surfaces. This mystery remains unsolved.
Nevertheless, we are here, so it must have been solved.

2) Chromosomes as templates

The next step was for the self-replicating chemicals to be able to organise themselves into templates ready for use in protein replication, what we see today as chromosomes. This step is constrained by what is termed ‘Eigen’s Paradox’ – that for effective replication enzymes are required and yet the genetic code required to make enzymes is too long to be made without enzymes. Another mystery for science to solve.

3) RNA to DNA

The third transition is from an ‘RNA world’ where RNA carries out both the functions of enzyme activity and that of storing genetic information, to a ‘DNA world’ where DNA stores the genetic code and RNA is confined to translating the genetic code to sequences of amino acids which then form to form proteins. RNA can work as both code and enzyme, although it does each inadequately, whereas DNA is a much better information store, being more resistant to mutation and damage.

We can see the traces of this early division of labour when we examine a modern cell – DNA in genes binds to RNA molecules in the cell nucleus and the RNA then moves off into the cytoplasm where it binds to amino acids in the order originally coded by the DNA.

The resulting sequences of amino acids form proteins which fold into particular shapes to form enzymes and structural proteins. It is these enzymes which create and destroy chemicals for cell metabolism, which pump harmful ions out of the cell and useful ones in, and which build cell structures and even repair the DNA itself. They are very basis of life.

4) The origin of the cell

Once this step had been accomplished the stage was set for the first forms of life observable today – the bacteria. A bacterium has a DNA chromosome which synthesises the proteins with help of RNA, and a cell membrane and wall to keep the living material separate from the environment. The cell wall and membrane have to be created and maintained by proteins coded for by DNA.

By some criteria, bacteria are the most successful life forms on the planet, inhabiting almost all known environments from the edge of space, to the Antarctic, volcanic pools, the deep sea, and as confirmed recently, the deep earth, kilometres below the surface. Fossils of bacterial colonies first appear in the record just less than 4 billion years ago. They were the dominant life form for the next 2 billion years.

5) Emergence of animals, plants and fungi

The next stage, around 2 billion years ago, was the emergence of more complex, but still single celled, organisms such as amoebae, algae and yeasts. It is now accepted that this happened through the co-operation and interpenetration of different forms of bacteria. The idea was first put forward by American biologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s, based on earlier Russian work.

Margulis’ Theory was that a large bacterial cell had formed a partnership with a small energy-producing bacterium, akin to modern Purple Non-Sulphur Bacteria, so that eventually neither could live without the other. Eventually the small cell took up residence in the larger cell, and we see the descendants of these small energy producing cells inside each cell of modern animals, plants and fungi in the form of mitochondria.

In the case of plants these two partners were joined by a third type of bacteria closely related to modern Blue-Green Algae which was capable of photosynthesis. Proof of this partnership or symbiosis is the fact that both mitochondria and the photosynthetic components, chloroplasts, of plant cells retain their own separate DNA. Also at the present time the lichens are composed of at least two organisms – a fungus and an alga – living together, interpenetrated, and each unable to survive without the other.

6) Multicelled animals and plants

For a further billion years life on earth was restricted to bacteria and single celled plants, animals and fungi. However at a certain stage the single celled organisms began to associate with each other into colonies and strands as we see in modern jellyfish, sponges and sea-weeds, and around 500 million years ago true multi-cellular animals and plants can be seen in the fossil record.

The exact mechanism is still obscure, but in what is termed the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ most of the modern families of plants and animals burst onto the scene. Darwin himself admitted that the Cambrian Explosion posed the greatest difficulty for his theory of gradual evolution – the theory simply does not fit with the facts. Smith and Szathmary speculate that the drastic change in earth’s atmosphere due to the production of oxygen by algae may have allowed larger animals to survive, or else the ‘division of labour’ by the different tissues of multi-cellular animals drove their explosive evolution.

Other scientists believe that a process of hybridisation between the different animal groups lay behind the sudden appearance of insects, worms, molluscs, crustaceans and vertebrates. One thing is certain – it was no gradual process.

7) Sexual reproduction

Once multi-celled organisms had evolved there was a further transition from reproduction by simple budding or cloning to reproduction by sexual means. This may have evolved once but more likely several times as not all animals, plants and fungi are sexual, and many can use either method. For instance, amongst aphids some species are asexual, some are sexual and some reproduce by cloning in summer when food is plentiful and turn to sexual reproduction as autumn approaches.

Turkeys can occasionally reproduce asexually and recently a lonely Komodo Dragon in Chester Zoo produced young with no male present. Asexual reproduction is seemingly the less complex and difficult process but the population will lack genetic diversity and be vulnerable to disease and less adaptable to changes in the habitat.

8) The social insects

Once multi-cellular life had evolved Smith and Szathmary trace two further major transitions. The first is that of the social insects which evolved separately on at least three occasions – termites, bees and wasps, and ants. In many ways the insect colony behaves like one super-organism with sterile workers dividing the work of gathering food, defence and care of the young for the benefit of a single queen.

9) Human society

The final transition they trace is the transition to human society. It is here I part company with their analysis. They see speech and language as the crucial development but I would see the development of a ‘mode of production’ as the unique characteristic of human society. The use of fire and cooking may have been the gateway to living through a mode of production rather than just existing in nature. In ‘The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man’ Engels describes animals as having a “mode of being” contrasting with the human “mode of production”. Of course speech will have been closely linked with the adoption of a mode of production but I think here Engels was closer to the reality than even Smith and Szathmary.

Rough timeline of life on earth

Dialectics confirmed in nature

It seems strange to think that for three quarters of earth’s history, billions of years, there was no life- form on the planet more advanced than slime. But even slime has cells with an amazing and interlinked cycle of metabolism and self-sustaining biochemical activity which is still only superficially understood by modern science.

“Major Transitions in Evolution” explains this very well and strikingly verifies the theoretical framework outlined by Frederick Engels in “Dialectics of Nature” over 140 years ago but on a much higher plane of facts and evidence. Each of the transitions is a dialectical transformation of “quality into quantity”; we see an “interdependence of opposites” in the derivation of single celled animals, plants and fungi from simpler bacteria; also the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” in the case of multi-cellular animals and plants, and in the social insects and human societies.

“Major Transitions” is well worth reading by any socialist with an interest in dialectics or biology. They also wrote a shorter book “The Origin of Life” which covers much of the same ground but in a more accessible format.

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