Feather's Weight
Clive Jenkins
Victor Feather TUC Eric Silver (Gollancz £3.50) Victor Feather is the last of the barefoot TUC General Secretaries. There is not going to be another who had to go out and work as a small boy because the family needed the money. His successor — Len Murray — will have an incredibly long fourteen years in the top elected job and will be dealing with a new and rapidly evolving political and industrial situation. Victor Feather's brief four years as the onions' spokesman can be summed up in his 1964 dictum from The Essence of Trade Unionism:
The job of a trade union leader is to look after the interests of his members, not to serve the purposes cif other groups of individuals who see in the unions a pathway to political power. . . . Every Political situation should be judged on its merits,
and only from the standpoint of the members' interest.
This biography is clearly meant to have its astringent patches but the effect is probably too admiring. The classic tale of the emergence of the union officer from Bradford (also he birthplace of the Independent Labour ;arty) the 'first taste of union work at the "ge of eight" and the electioneering at ten with the first job at the Co-op is a classic tale .aP11 Eric Silver's constant references to him as the archetypical " fixer " seem meant as throwaways. Silver is obviously deeply IMPressed by the boundless energy, capacity and ability to work out deals and settlements between the oowerful forces in industrialised society. Victor Feather was certainly capable Of all Pas. But his term of office (as opposed to _w. hat he might do in his retirement) was enlelY defensive. He was the moving force in stile defeat of Barbara Castle's 'in Place of aitirife (1 have never really forgiven her for egihg it was based upon a book The Kind of `•_olos the Unions Ought to Want which I co_d_uthored). He proved the conservative s..toPidity of the Industrial Relations Act which th n'as based upon the Inns of Court concept
if a Judge said "do it this way" it would ?e.done promptly in the workshop. He has ;ea guarded and spoken for the ' uneasy tigers w in the trade union movement at a time
_hoen an unwritten, unseen but detectable at sPhere of radical discontent is eating away 41 all institutions.
The truth is that the British trade union movement has been deformed by its fear of legal and constitutional rights and duties. As a result it has never sought those kind of advantages for its members so clearly seen in Scandinavia where the employer's capacity radically to reshape his operation without involving or protecting his workforce has virtually disappeared. Even now, the stimuli towards worker participation, worker ownership and worker security are almost all foreign based. But because the British trade unions are passive it does not mean they lack power and paradoxically at a time of exceptional real passivity, when they have been reacting against hostile legislation, their memberships have been growing and British unionism is now developing into the most comprehensive of its kind (and certainly of its size) in the world.
If the current trends continue the United Kingdom will have the highest degree of organisation from the landworker through to the managerial executive and be the most ettective in the world. As a result we are more representative, more knowledgeable and more economically weighty than any parliamentary-orientated political party.
The legacy that Victor Feather leaves to his successor is that this energy, dynamism and search for expression has to be harnessed. This brings us to the structure and composition of British trade unionism which the retiring General Secretary knows well. But he, too, has been trapped in the working of a union system which, in its governing bodies, reflects the nineteen thirties and elevates craft and regional unionism in a genuflection to past struggle. This biography hints that he has been too shrewd, too sensitive to the manoeuvrings of the big block votes and, unhappily, too interested in the problems of opposing left wing politicking. Of course, there have been witches of the right and left — and fraction meetings have been generally unhelpful because of the suspicions they breed. There was also the problem Of the vote stealing in the ETU. As Assistant General Secretary he was heavily involved in helping to remove the old leadership.
He was right in this and I say this because I was wrong and even helped to be a trustee of some of the funds for defending a group of people, three of whom turned out to be guilty and two innocent (although they were politically destroyed alongside the conspirators). But trade union movements are difficult, awkward bodies. Union leaderships rely upon maintaining and expanding membership and the hardest and most intractable struggles take place in industries where the market and changing technology combine to decimate ancient and honourable organisations. At the time of the argument over whom should represent most of the white collar workers in the newly nationalised steel industry, I remember going to see Frank Cousins and asking for his help on the principle of people being in the union of their choice. He said he was sympathetic but when it came to membership "we are all villains." It is still true that the hardest and sharpest arguments in the TUC are between unions. This is because union members identify their union with their security of employment and because every union leadership constitutes a priesthood very properly dedicated to defending and establishing new rights and standards for the paying member.
Victor Feather always knew this — perhaps too well — but it would be a travesty to consider him as an agile compromising apparatchik. The sight of his office with the walls lavishly stacked with paintings and handsome friezeon an easel bangs hard against such a simplistic view. Most of us have been grateful 63 Feather for the fact that he. was such an enormous improvement over George Woodcock. You could always talk to Victor Feather whereas this was exceptionally difficult with his predecessor who can only charitably be described as an incoherent intellectual seldom bothering to raise his voice even to make himself audible.
The retiring General Secretary always understood that the British trade union movement has never disdained the view that you can put your conscience alongside your pocket book.
Previous page
