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Tom Mann on CF
Mann on the Civilian Force
The growing strength and influence of the CF eventually began to worry even the traditionalists at the head of the Trades Unions. It is true that they were worried as much for their position as anything, but faced with the risk of widespread defections from the craft unions and the growth of industrially based competitors even they had to rouse themselves and respond. As a response it left a great deal to be desired. At the peak of the unrest in the NE, they issued a statement professing their patriotism at great length and calling on 'the authorities' to step in and prevent attacks on loyal trade unionists going about their lawful business. That was it.

Of course Mann seized the opportunity offered with both hands. Still in prison, he managed to smuggle out a long article for the Syndicalist in which he set out his revolutionary position, denounced the Trade Union officials and their 'vacuous statement' and argued in strong terms for the workers to seize their opportunity and to self organise both at work and in the wider world.

Today the major force for social transformation is found in the labour movement. It is through the organisations set up for the defence of their interests that the workers have developed an understanding of the oppression they suffer and the antagonism against them on the part of the bosses. As a result they become accustomed to collective struggle and solidarity and are enabled to win those improvements that are possible within the capitalist and state regime​
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However, it would be a great and a fatal mistake to believe, as many do, that the labour movement can and should, of its own volition, and by its very nature, be in the vanguard of the revolution. The union officials often have more to lose by supporting the workers they supposedly represent than by taking the Bosses' side against the workers. Their desire to protect their material gains lead them inevitably to conservatism since they have more to gain from upholding and consolidating the system they should be seeking to bring down.​
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To win power, whether legally or illegally, one needs qualities that are not exactly those that are needed to ensure that justice and well-being will triumph in the world. And then, once in power, the big problem is how to stay there. One needs to leave by the roadside a large part of one’s ideological baggage and to have got rid of all one’s moral scruples. One needs to create a joint interest in the new state of affairs and attach to those in government a new privileged class, and suppressing any kind of opposition by all possible means. Nor can they even claim to be acting for the “majority”, since in reality the so-called democratic system is a lie, a lie which serves to deceive the mass of the people, keeping them docile with an outward show of sovereignty, while consolidating the rule of the privileged and dominant class. This is the truth of democracy as it always has been in a capitalist structure, whatever form it takes, from constitutional monarchy to so-called direct rule.​

To be in Government means the right to make the law and to impose it on everyone by force: without a police force there is no government. By aligning themselves with the boss class, Union Officials become themselves government policemen and a part of the system of oppression.​

Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the ‘Cause’ is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal.​
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Nothing demonstrates these facts so clearly as the recent vacuous outpourings from the so-called leaders of the main unions, clinging as they do to the rapidly eroding trappings of power and influence. ​

To say that the Trades Union leadership is failing their membership is not to deny the need to organise. Organisation, which after all only means cooperation and solidarity in practice, is a natural condition, necessary to the running of society; and it is an unavoidable fact which involves everyone, whether in human society in general or in any grouping of people joined by a common aim. It is the true form of that organisation that matters. It must be founded on true freedom of association. In order to achieve their ends, worker' organisations must, in their constitution and operation, remain in harmony with the principles of mutual aid underpinning syndicalism. They must allow full autonomy and full independence and therefore full responsibility of individuals and groups. They must allow free accord between those who believe it useful to unite in cooperating for a common aim. Members must however accept the moral duty to see through commitments undertaken and to do nothing that would contradict the accepted programme. It is on these bases that the practical structures, and the right tools to give life to the organisation should be built and designed. Then the groups, the federations of groups, the federations of federations, the meetings, the congresses, the correspondence committees and so forth. But all this must be done freely, in such a way that the thought and initiative of individuals is not obstructed, and with the sole view of giving greater effect to efforts which, in isolation, would be either impossible or ineffective. ​

Thus congresses of a syndicalist organisation, though suffering as representative bodies from all the inevitable imperfections inherent in them, are free from any kind of authoritarianism, because they do not lay down the law; they do not impose their own resolutions on others and their decisions are not obligatory rules but suggestions, recommendations, proposals to be submitted to all involved, and do not become binding and enforceable except on those who accept them, and for as long as they accept them.​
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What does that mean? It means we have to prove our determination to win this long and terrible battle against the employing classes and the state. It means an end to craft unions and their replacement by industry based unions organised on syndicalist principles. Now though, faced with the combined efforts of Government, of Police and the Army, of the Union boss class and now by the private armies of Lord de Broke and Mr Carson, all united in their goal of breaking the working men and women once and for all, it means we must prepare ourselves to fight back. Our message always has been peaceful – let us be, let us look after ourselves without interference. The response has been brutality – Mr Carson's gangs have broken the heads or even killed workers and their families in Ireland. Now Lord de Broke is preparing to do the same in England. We saw the beginnings at Tilbury. We can be sure that was nothing to what we might expect in the future. We see the so-called Civilian Force walking our streets daily, posturing in their fancy uniforms, bludgeoning working men and their families. We know that at their head is a former policeman fresh from the oppression and murder of Spanish comrades and a former soldier, cashiered because his methods were too brutal even for the Bosses to publicly endorse. We know that what they have already done in the name of the 'Law' they will do again tenfold. The time has come to stop them. STOP them. If we do not then we may as well take to our beds, turn our heads to the wall and expire. ​

In practice a lot of this is derived from the writings of Errico Malatesta
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Errico Malatesta - Wikipedia

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