The TUC Purge
By JOHN COLE
THE ninety-third Trades Union Congress at Portsmouth next week may well decide whether the centenary Congress in 1968 is to be an event of national and international in- terest or just a residual puff from a nearly extinct volcano. For the TUC, after many years of wandering, must soon make up its mind again about what is its mission.
No one should take too much notice of the proceedings on the first day, Monday, in decid- ing the historical significance of this Congress, however. It is an unhappy accident that the chairmanship of Mr. Ted Hill should coincide with the expulsion of the ETU. Mr. Hill's chair- man's address, frankly, could contain anything. There is just a chance that he will be slightly inhibited by the need to put it all down on paper in advance—for the benefit, among others, of `the serfs of Fleet Street,' to borrow his own happy phrase. Perhaps this will save him from the worst excesses of his extempore speaking. But perhaps he does not want to be saved. In either case, the prospects that Mr. Hill will pro- ject a forward-looking `image' of the TUC are thinner than thin.
Nor can the ETU expulsion be other than a ceremonial end to an inglorious achievement. The TUC's performance in the ETU affair has been the fault of machinery, rather than men. The fact that the governing body of the whole union movement should appear to be dragging ignominiously in the wake of the High Court Was perhaps inevitable from the start, however exasperating the friendly observer may find it. Mr. Hill and Mr. Foulkes are not the only staunch private enterprisers who would stand at the barricades in defence of the `sovereign rights of individual unions' against any interference by the TUC at, for example, the time when Mr. Leslie Cannon and his ex-Communist friends made their first complaints of electoral malprac- tice three and more years ago.
It should never be forgotten that the trade Unions were born in poverty and weaned in oppression, and many of their leaders retain a persecution mania. This is partly justified, be- cause they get a largely hostile press even when their actions are right. But if the unions are to consolidate their position as an important estate of the realm, they must somehow throw off this feeling and do what has to be done about clean- ing up their own house, however unpopular the source from which the first suggestions come. Specifically, in the case of ballots, there must be some form of effective central control within the trade union movement, or perhaps an easily invoked appeals machinery, which will enable a minority with a grievance to have it properly investigated without resort to the courts. If Mr. George Woodcock, in pronouncing the last sad rites on the ETU, concentrates on the prospects of that union's eventual re-admission and fails to rouse the conscience of the delegates on the more general issue, he will have missed a great opportunity.
Mr. Woodcock's general performance next Week, indeed, will be a main point to watch when considering the future of the TUC. He is a man of great intelligence and personal integrity, this will be his first Congress as general secretary and it is absolutely essential that he should make a decisive mark on his hitherto leaderless band. Unfortunately, Mr. Woodcock himself would almost certainly say, with characteristic Lan- cashire bluntness, that the last suggestion is a lot of nonsense. In the first place, this is the instinctive reaction of this argumentative man to any outside idea on trade unions; but, secondly, he is in danger of carrying his pragmatism to a point where it will be almost as great a danger to the TUC as the let-well-alone doctrine of Tewsonism.
Heaven knows, no one who has observed the TUC machine in operation expects Mr. Wood- cock to produce some Grand Plan for Moderni- sation and put it all into operation within a year, with Mr. Frank Cousins and Sir Thomas Williamson lying down together like the Lion and the Lamb. But does Mr. Woodcock realise that gradualness is not a bit inevitable in the TUC? Will he nudge the sleeping giant so often and painfully that it will find it less trouble to move than to stay still? The coming year will tell, and it would be a good start if Mr. Wood- cock found some excuse at Portsmouth for letting Congress know that he intends to get trade unionism on the move again or bust.
The two principal issues should be planning (with wages) and the Common Market. The General Council has produced a thoughtful re- port on the Common Market negotiations, wel- coming the Government's initiative and arguing in some detail the points that the unions must watch during the negotiations. Here the TUC is performing one of its essential jobs as the repository of trade union expertise and collec- tive wisdom, and it can only be hoped that the debate will reach half as high a level as the report. If it is to do so, a strong lead will be needed from the platform to let the Congress see that a categorical `yes' or 'no'—which wil: doubtless come stridently froM the floor—is not better than a mature and canny study of the details of the Rome Treaty and the coming negotiations. The antagonism of Lord Beaver- brook and Tribune and the sanctimonious satis- faction of the British Employers' Confederation and others have worked together—surely the oddest grouping in political history!—to give the TUC the worst possible background for a debate, and it will be remarkable and encourag- ing if the Congress rises above it.
Mr. Selwyn Lloyd has also done his worst to ensure that the most backward-looking dele- gates, crawling out from under their stones, will dominate the debate on his National Economic Council. The fear on the General Council is that the delegates will want to throw out the invita- tion to co-operate straightaway, and the aim may be simply to keep the platform's hands untied. But surely more is needed. Having said the worst that it can about the Government's economic de- ficiencies and its interference with the machinery of industrial relations, and having rejected the wages `pause' in tones as militant as it likes, the General Council must give the delegates a lead on what are its terms for helping with long- term planning. On this subject, it has a great deal of public opinion on its side, and it should be able to come forward with a dynamic series of ideas. As Mr. Lloyd sits down to write his working paper, such a programme, endorsed by the delegates,. would tell him that he is dealing with a living, not a dying TUC.
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