INDUSTRIAL COMMENTARY ERIC JACOBS

Blackpool Can it really be ten years since the TUC Congress to which George Woodcock put his famous question — "What are we here for?" I suppose it must be. The question recurs every September as I step off the train at a seaside station, though not, alas, In the spirit of profound philosophical enquiry Woodcock intended. What always puzzles me is what on earth I am here for. What good does it do? What difference does it make? Does Congress really happen, I sometimes wonder, or is the whole thing got up by newspapers as an appetiser for the main political feast, a one-act farce before the serious drama of the party conferences and the new session of Parliament?

Three-thousand people descend on Brighton or Blackpool. It has to be Brighton or Blackpool because there are so many of us. Nowhere else beside the sea can take us all, and it must for some reason be beside the sea. We divide into roughly three equal parts — delegates, their families, and sundry critics and observers. But what do we actually do when we get there?

The predominant sense is always of having been here before. Not just because we have been here before, but because we seem to have seen and heard it all before, word for word, the same old script. The impact is culminative, like switching on television or an old movie. After ten years you notice something familiar; gradually you realize you've seen it already; the plot slips into place; you remember the ending; you fall into a comfortable stupor.

Of course, there are always superficial

differences between one year and the next. This week, for example, there have been several days of sunshine. After five days in Blackpool I have not worn my new raincoat, bought deliberately for the occasion. There's been one change of special dishes in the Louis Seize dining room of the Imperial Hotel. The tram cars were on strike for one day. Two members of the TUC's forty-man General Council were caught in the act of being on the wagon. I discovered an excellent new source of fish and chips, the Cottage. Highly recommended. The Funeral Operatives expressed concern at the high cost of defending themselves against motoring charges, suggesting a bizarre picture of drunken undertakers driving their unprotesting passengers, pell-mell about the place.

But all this excitement is not enough to convince you that it's worthwhile. There must be something more to it. you ask, surely?

Consider, for instance, the main topic of controversy this week. What are the trade unions going to do about the Industrial Relations Bill now that it is finally an Act? And in particular what are they going to do about this business of registration? If they don't register they will lose tax concessions and become liable to immense damages for striking besides. But if they do register they will have taken the first step towards recognizing that the Act exists and is a consequence to be reckoned with. For a union to register now, after all the protests about the inequity of the new laws, would be rather like a Belfast catholic joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary. A sell out, a betrayal.

Now I have not for a long time doubttd that the unions would ultimately go along with the law, well, not since March, anyway. It came to me in the lobby of the Fairfield Hall, Croydon, as a matter of fact. Mr Jack Jones had just been saying how much more tax his Transport Workers Union would have to pay if it did not register. Wasn't this an admission that he would pay the extra taxes? A man who is ready to pay his taxes is at heart a lawabiding man, is he not? And so are they all, all law-abiding men.

The difficulty is how to get the process started without loss of face, without making someone look like Judas himself. Very few unions want to defy the law to the point of not registering at all, ever, not under any circumstances. Mr Hugh Scanlon, the Engineers' Secretary, who is nothing if not consistent is one such leader. But Mr Scanlon is in a minority, if not of one, then of two or three or four. He knows it and so does everybody else. But who is to. be first? The situation reminds me of that old radio catch-phrases "after you, Cecil," "No, no, after you, Claude."

It is this that explains the drama, such as it has been. Congress was faced with several major motions on the subject. One. from the Building Workers, said that the TUC should ' instruct ' member unions to stay off the new register. Another, from the Engineers was pitched in much the same sense. Instruction means, if it means anything at all, that any union that does register shall be cast forth from the TUC into the outer darkness — whereupon, no doubt, its body would be torn apart by rival unions gorging themselves on its members. If the motions were passed, then according to the present formbook unions representing perhaps a million workers might one day be struck from the TUC's new record membership of ten million. This was heady stuff.

Last week the Engineers' motion and the Building Workers' were merged into one and into that weird process of give and take, familiar elsewhere as compromise, but known to the Labour Movement as " compositing the motion." But wait a minute. That was not all that went into the new motion. It was enlarged to take in an amendment to the Builders' original motion from Mr Jack Jones' Transport Workers. The amendment added a phrase to the effect that non-registration would only work if the unions acted collectively. Now Mr Jones, I am sure, thought that his amendment strengthened the Builders' motion, that it added, so to speak, an admonitorily wagging finger to the Buiders' clenched fist. But is that what it really meant? Could it not equally be interpreted to mean the opposite, that if the unions did not act collectively then non-registration would not work and might just as well be abandoned? It couldn't be that Mr Jones' little phrase actually encouraged the unions to abandon their opposition to the Government. Banish the thought! But that is certainly how it was being interpreted on every side in Blackpool, to the relief of one and all, except Mr Scanlon and Mr Jones, too, presumably. On second thoughts, perhaps not Mr Jones too. Who knows what goes on behind 'hat inscrutable front?

Waen the issue finally reached Congress on Tuesday the assembled delegates could either choose the composited motion or an even more severe motion from the Paper Workers' which would have the TUC expel an offender without any chance of appeal or even a hearing. Or they could keep to the softer line argued by the TUC at the special conference back in March, under which the Unions would merely be "strongly advised not to register."

The delegates heard a splendid debate. Mr Scanlon told them ominously that a single scratch could lead to gangrene. Mr Flynn of the Paper Workers' said that Mr Heath's ambition was to save the nation from the people. Mr Walter Anderson warned that the TUC might not be able to fire his local Government officers, they might just quit. Mr Danny McGarvey referred in his inimitable style to weekkneed Willies. Mr Scanlon came back to say that even if his motion was passed it would not be necessary to expel any unions after all. They would somehow fall into line, it seemed.

In the end, the unions overwhelmingly rejected the hard Paper Workers' motion and accepted by a decent margin the middling tough composite. But they also went on to vote narrowly in favour of the relevant paragraphs in the TUC report. This seemed to imply that Congress had decided both to "strongly advise" and to instruct." But what did they mean? The Miners had voted both ways. Their leader, Mr Lawrence Daly, marched to the rostrum to insist that the harder line was the one that counted. Lord Cooper, this year's Chairman, declared cryptically that the TUC General Council, its Cabinet of forty, knew what the decision meant. There was then a short hulabaloo.

It was all, good, healthy, knock-about stuff. It purged the emotions. It discharged had blood. The result left the unions less than entirely clear about what they were supposed to do in the future, on what would happen if they did one thing rather than another. It was at least certain that nobody would be expelled before next September. The way was left open for compromise. This was what really mattered.

I expect I shall be on that sea-side train again next year.