VIEWS OF THE WEEK
Kissing Cousins Goodbye?
MR. FRANK CoUsINS has had much to put up with. Instead of a position of command- ing influence, overseeing the industrial scene
in fact if not in name while the Prime Minister looked after the political scene, he has found himself about number eighteen in the Cabinet, on a level with Mrs. Barbara Castle and Mr. Anthony Greenwood. He has had no better luck with his policies. The causes for which he trudged from Aldermaston to London and for which he suffered humiliation in television studios remain as firmly lost as ever they were when he was denouncing the Tories.
Having sacrificed so much, Mr. Cousins may feel that constitutional purists should leave him alone and say with the American politician (and evidently with Mr. Wilson, too), 'Hell, what's the Constitution among friends?' Unfortunately, it is the one matter on which Mr. Cousins, the general secretary, and Mr. Cousins, the Cabinet Minister, have been consistent both in and out of office —their opposition to an incomes policy—that, above all, makes Mr. Cousins's continuance in the Cabinet constitutionally unacceptable.
At the Labour party conference in 1961, Mr. Cousins said, 'We are not willing to accept in any form, shape or disguise, wage restraint. . . A fortnight later, asked on television whether he would accept wage restraint from a Labour government, he replied. 'No.' At the Trades Union Congress in September 1963, Mr. Cousins ended a cloudy pronopncement with the cate- gorical statement: 'We will not have wage re- straint whoever brings it and wraps it up.' Shortly afterwards he made some attempt to qualify this remark; but he gave no commitment that he would co-operate with a Labour govern- ment on a wages policy and he attacked 'the sloppy thinking which has become so obsessed with the catch-phrases of wage restraint that this has led to really urgent tasks being ignored.'
Since the election, the union has followed the policy laid down by Mr. Cousins. Six weeks ago it voted against Mr. George Brown's incomes policy. This month it decided, firstly, to refuse to give evidence if a wage claim with which it is concerned is referred to the National Board for Prices and Incomes; and, secondly, not to allow any settlement which it negotiated to be overturned by the Board. In other words, its attitude to Labour's Board is strikingly similar to its attitude to the Conservatives' National In- comes Commission. Mr. Cousins has done nothing to help the Government secure its wages policy, and he has done nothing to dissociate himself from the position of his union. Indeed, he has endorsed the union's opposition to the wages policy. 'The union,' he commented, 'have always been realistic about their approach to the whole question of wages policy. To find them voting this way,' he added with complete truth, 'really is following an established pattern.' There is also, however, another 'established pattern,' of Cabinet responsibility, which Mr. Cousins is not following.
Admittedly, the Government's incomes policy has been pathetically unsuccessful. But the col- lective responsibility of the Cabinet does not apply only to successful policies. If it did, it would so far as this Government is concerned be at an end. Admittedly, too, Mr. Cousins is
in difficulties with his union, and there is a movement to remove him from his post at their conference in July. Yet Mr. Cousins can hardly use his union troubles as a defence of his con- duct, since they merely confirm that there is a conflict of interest between being a Cabinet minister and being the general secretary of the largest trade union in the country.
The conflict of interest would be plain even without Mr. Brown's incomes policy. The Trans- port and General Workers' Union has a dominat- ing position at both the TUC and the Labour party conferences. It has a wide spread of in- terests, and it has been involved in a large number of industrial disputes. It has members in key, strategic interests, such as the docks, road transport, petrol lorries, and oil refineries. It is therefore involved in just those industries where, in the event of a serious stoppage or strike, the Government might have to send in troops. It is ridiculous to pretend that there would be no conflict of interest between a Minister consider- ing whether troops should be used to enable an industry to carry on and the general secretary of the union whose strike had brought it to a stop.
The rules relating to conflict of interest are strict. They lay down that even directorships or offices held in connection with philanthropic undertakings should be resigned if there is any risk of a conflict arising between the interests of the undertaking and the Government. Yet Mr. Wilson and Mr. Cousins apparently believe that what applies even to a philanthropic undertaking need not apply to Britain's largest trade union.
When this matter was raised in the House, the Government spokesman attempted to defend the indefensible by saying that Mr. Cousins was not receiving any money from the union—nobody had ever suggested that he was—and by pointing out that Mr. Cousins was not 'a dishonourable man who would allow his unpaid position to in- fluence his views as a Minister and a Privy Coun- cillor.' In so far as this is an argument, it is an argument for having no conflict of interest rules at all. We are all honourable men, the argument runs, devoted to the public interest, and we would not dream of letting our judgment be affected in any way by our private interests. This is not an attitude which Mr. Wilson has in the past been conspicuously willing to adopt, and it ignores the obvious truth that the rules are in- tended just as much to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest as of an actual conflict. It is therefore tqtally irrelevant in this context to say that Mr. Cousins is an honourable man.
When he accepted office last October, Mr. Cousins perhaps reassured himself with the thought that Mr. Wilson would not ask him to do something that was at variance with the constitution. That thought can be a consolation no longer. Mr. Cousins has seen Mr. Gunter and Mr. Padley properly resign their trade union jobs on taking office. He has seen the Trades Union Congress insist that he should resign from its general council. Mr. Cousins is an honourable man. His only honourable course is to tesirti from the Government.
Previous page
