Trade Unions

Reds on the mantelpiece

Edward Pearce

• We have two crises. One concerns the future of the whole country and is too transcendentally awful to be dealt with in a single article. The other concerns the Labour Party, which I shall try to face up to here. This crisis is about a democratic party of systematic social reform, rooted in the most tolerant working class in the most instinctively liberal and stable country in the world, being in danger of tempering its policy in response to a camerilla of unforgiving Leninists within the trade union movement.

Between them, the Transport and General Workers Union, the AUEW and a number of smaller unions have what a capitalist would call a majority holding in the Labour Party — one exercised by votes cast and motions carried at that Party's conference. Within those unions, in turn, the influence of Communist Party members, and former members who still proclaim themselves to be Marxists, and of other representatives of the hard left, is so near to control that only a little bullying of the flaccid and conforming middle is needed to provide a majority on most issues whether they be prospective strikes or mandated bloc votes for a Labour Party conference.

In the present industrial storm, the two levers of influence — industrial and party political — can be seen working together. On rather small polls, twenty-seven area representatives sit on the executive of the NUM. Six, headed by McGahey, are members of the Communist Party, another seven are now giving McGahey's group sustained support, another four constitute the meek and acquiescent middle.

Our problem, then, relates to three things. There is an economic crisis for which only correct measures will do. We have an opposition party and alternative government upon which a 'shell'-type operation is being attempted by a cabal of totalitarians. Thirdly, there is a trade union movement whose real grievances, which partly stem from the paralytic economic orthodoxy of the last government, have been skilfully exploited by the Communists and their allies. In consequence, realistic negotiations which might have enabled miners to beat the index have been ousted in favour of 65 per cent capacity, three days work a week, rota power cuts and the option of hyper-inflation or two million unemployed.

We should respect the men who have achieved so much, but we should not be overawed by them. They are, with one or two exceptions, undistinguished — except for their sedulous devotion to detail. They have flourished by working hard, looking after their mates, being model trade unionists and above all concentrating on the pyramid of tedious and garrulous committees which are the cellular structure of the trade union movement. If you can endure a snowscape of procedural tedium and private enmities, and undertake the skivvying and drudgery, it is not hard to rise in a small committee and then swamp it.

It must be said out loud that to be against the influence of totalitarians within the unions, and indirectly over the Labour Party, is the duty of people who want courts bound by law, free elections and those common or garden liberties sometimes spoken of nostalgically in Czechoslovakia. Nothing is more naive or childish than to be besotted by a notion of sophistication that regards common prudence about left-wing enemies as somehow unsmart, for it is possible after all, to cry 'Sheep!' once too often. There are indeed no.reds under the bed. They are on the mantelpiece for all to see.

hqually, we can now drop the twentyyear-old feelings of gentlemanly guilt induced by the short, feeble and shoddy little iniquities of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, who has been a lightning conductor long enough. That

man has been the universal alibi of real totalitarians, croyant et pratiquant, who can still rely on the shocked cluckings of dim liberals in the media if anyone suggests that hard party men are hard party men. '

The facts are that the Communist Party Britain — which has only ever elected three MPs and which since 1955 has never retained

a single deposit in any general election or by-election — now has a substantial slice of the T&G, the AUEW, ASLEF and, as surely as, God created rotten apples, has an influentia' voice within the Labour Party itself. In a recent council be-election, Durham workers' including miners, gave the Communist less than a ninth of the vote. Yet on the 1•11-J14'! executive, nearly a quarter of the seats at

held by Communists! , ,

The incredible imbalance between the CPs comprehensive and repeated failure la parliamentary contests and immense success in the trade unions is grotesque; it becornes even more so when one recalls that the Communist Party's registered membership i5 around 30,000. Of course, downright corrur tion helps, as for years in the ETU 101 Frank Haxall and Frank Foulkes stuffer ballots under the passive gaze of the 11-/' until the laborious job of proving the,r dishonesty was completed in the Queen s Bench Division by Les Cannon. This apart, minuscule polls in union ele,c; tions can ensure that a candidate accepta,13'; to the CP, by enduring the grey and wearY'114 work at the grass roots, can make his way "I the top. Mr Scanlon, for example, who shill:1il'3re describes himself as a Marxist, having left tt CP twenty years ago, is so acceptable to that party that the Morning Star helped concinc., his campaign. He won his election to union's presidency on a ballot of under 10 Pe cent, with what consequences we now see' Ii It should not take any democratic P° tician, with any higher polity than VichY 0, Prague in mind, to see that no union leader a,:t acceptable as that to the Morning Star to be acceptable in any way to the Lab ye Party. In 1969 Mr Wilson seems to hyo, I thought so. "Get your tanks off my laHughie,,, he is said to have told Mr Scan the Alas, Mr Wilson has long since become, at most charitable estimate, a demilitarised zo,"011

It is infinitely depressing to find a

party once in search of social justice, n"t5 wedded to social revenge. The rise of lie Chilean-style Marxist coalition within the unions has happened partly because of tfa last Labour Government's inability to firlu,,e successful incomes policy and because of orthodox financial policies carried out bY t" government in fear of central bankers.

Miners, engineers and members ofASI,ra

for the most part require what shopkeePeoy speculators and pensioners want — narli„ch more money, understandably without rut regard for the consequences and Wit of caring a damn for ideology. If the militancYl.„, the CP's hard men can get more for the un,le rank and file, social democratic tra",,, unionists will have to do the same in order 1.2's survive. And 12 per cent to Tom Jackson is Pei inflationary as 12 per cent to Michaof McGahey, and the only possible consequencec such competition, if unrestrained, is a curren. with all the utility of watermarked confetti.of At this point in the spiral, only the defeat4 militancy will do. Social democrats must sh,"d, that militancy destroys wages in the ei'as They must point out that the Communist,%1 Harry Pollitt himself admitted in 1926, "u'ory give a damn for the miners." Only a victfeat for Parliament over the militants, and a de are for the Marxists within the Labour partYsil acceptable solutions for those of us who or to be governed neither by Senor Allende riot

to Pinochet.