Everything to lose
TRADES UNION CONGRESS FRANK SHAW
'He told the Congress of many unofficial strikes, which were due to the unions' inadequate attention to the needs of the masses, and con- tempt for the small matters of the workers' life. He demanded real union elections. . . . The economic administration had not observed agreements with the unions, while Party resolu- tions on systematic education of the workers in administering the economy had been frustrated. He agreed the unions should press for higher productivity, but argued that the pressure must take civilised forms.'
That extract from a previous Congress could easily be echoed at next week's Trades Union Congress in Brighton. Compared with the pro- test which last week's unemployment figures will inevitably create, its impact might be muted. But it is not an unreasonable diagnosis, and since the Government seems to have decided that the dignity of any of its number would be grievously impaired by a public appearance at the Conference, it could actually spark some enthusiasm among bored delegates during the verbal wasteland which will precede and succeed next Wednesday's angry debate on economic policy.
Their enthusiasm would, no doubt, diminish if they were to recognise the somewhat obscure source of the eminently respectable remarks quoted above. In fact, they come from a speech by Tomsky to the 8th Russian Trades Union Congress in 1928. Within a year Stalin had ruthlessly removed the poor man, and his colleagues had quietly reconciled themselves to impotence. After all, as Zinoviev had told them earlier: 'Why and from whom do you need independence: from your own Government?' (The quotations are shamelessly lifted from 'Industrial Workers in the the ussa,' one of Robert Conquest's Soviet Studies Series to be published by The Bodley Head next week.'
The issues troubling the British trade union movement now are not quite so stark. Mr Wilson, despite what many trade unionists may say in private, is certainly no Stalin, and Mr Ray Gunter no Kaganovitch. (Nor is Mr George Woodcock's position as precarious as Tomsky's.) Nevertheless, the British unions have been shifted into a position in which they face a similar dilemma. They must decide how militant they are going to be in a struggle to retain real independence from a government which wants, like Stalin, to reduce it.
It seems curious, perhaps, that such a decision need be taken. Ask a trade union leader whether he believes in an independent movement, and ninety-nine out of 100 will not bother to con- sider his affirmative answer. In fact, during the past five years .the characteristic of the leader- ship has been acquiescence. Unlike the Chinese woman who was being raped, the trade unions have not lain back to enjoy it; most of the time they deny that penetration has taken place.
The wage freeze has been imposed without a
murmur of national strike action; and trade unionists have been equally acquiescent in the cases of training and redundancy. There is no reason to believe that the reaction would be very different if the Government decided next year to snitch yet another of the Conservative party's policies, and impose a system in which legally binding contracts could be adjudicated by a network of industrial courts.
It is possible that seduction by government is a good thing. Indeed, a debate about its merits and demerits should be the fundamental concern of the trade unions' policy makers. It is, however, five years to the week since Mr Wood- cock asked Congress delegates: 'What are we here for?' As far as most of them are concerned, it was a rhetorical question. Few of his affiliated unions have even attempted to conceive an answer to what is admittedly an extremely intractable question. It will almost certainly be left to the Royal Commission on Trade Unions in its report this winter to provide some tentative solutions.
The Commission has been devoting much of its time to one significant problem : where, they are still wondering, does power lie in the trade union movement. The most acceptable general- isation is that power is being bipolarised. National headquarters, and therefore general secretaries, are losing power to their shop stewards on the one hand, and to the TUC on the other. But although the process has still to be satisfactorily documented and described, it is utterly unfair to dismiss the whole movement as an institution in which nothing is happening, and no storm signals are being hoisted.
One end of the power spectrum—the TUC— is deliberately trying to change its character. Its attempt to establish a voluntary incomes policy through the wage-vetting committee is undeni- ably an interesting experiment. Equally undeni- ably, the system is still imperfect (many claims are simply not being referred to the committee, or are being referred too late), and its critics can justifiably argue that by accepting the Government's norms for wage increases, the TUC has again acquiesced in government policy. If the policy does not develop into a more genuinely voluntary system, the criticism will be unanswerable; and if it does not develop, it will die.
Another possibly significant straw in the wind is the Tuc's pragmatic use of the fact of steel nationalisation to establish a committee of the many interested unions in a single industry in the hope that a single policy will emerge from a diversity of unions. If the idea can be extended, it could become partial industrial unionism by the back door. Tomsky reincarnate would undoubtedly approve of Mr Woodcock's efforts to reintroduce some kind of independent personality into the movement. If he were at Brighton next week, however, he would be as disappointed as he must have been when his prescription was disregarded in Russia in 1928. The 99th Congress of the 'ruc will not throw up any answers to the questions plaguing the trade union movement. It will actually be surprising if they are rigorously debated.
There is, in fact, no need for the Prime Minis- ter to try to subvert Mr Woodcock in the way that Stalin successfully subverted Tomsky. The danger to the general secretary is from internal erosion, and by the 100th Congress next year it is distinctly possible that the intractable ques- tions will somehow have been answered, and solutions finally imposed by the Government. The truth is that the British workers have every- thing to lose, including their self-respect.
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