EEC (2)
Grand Coalition
CLIVE JENKINS
Labour pro-Marketeers spent money like drunken sailors before and at last Saturday's special conference of the Labour party. They lobbied, wined, fed and sought to influence more than 500 persons on Friday and Saturday alone under the flag of a political grouping that a large majority of the delegates clearly spurned. Was it this that caused the emasculation of the debate? It had obviously more effect than the anti-Marketeers had estimated.
We cannot be blamed too much for this, for really heavy spending on the American pattern within the Labour party in order to win a programmatic victory is a brand new influence and a highly unwelcome development. There are obviously large (and secret) funds available for propaganda to topple the party over into a reluctant acceptance of the terms for entry into the European Economic Community. In the months ahead, I expect them to be deployed on the most lavish of scales. On the other hand the Party loyalist antiMarketeers are operating on a shoe-string and running duplicating machines where their opponents have colour presses.
One week before the conference, the Labour Committee, for Europe held a briefing session for delegates and (sensationally in Labour party terms) allowances for travelling and subsistence. These were followed by the sessions last Friday evening and an elbow-holding major binge at the St Ermins Hotel during the conference lunch break.
All of this frenetic lobbying is having some effect and should now be checked by the party's leadership — the democratic structure and nature of the Labour movement runs the risk of being subverted by heavy spending from unknown sources. This would be just as bad if all the funds were contributed by open-handed, openminded Labour millionaires. But where does the money come from? Can it possibly be provided by companies hostile to the Labour party? Has all that money been motivated by the belief that entry into the EEC might be the end of Labour governments in the United Kingdom? We now need to know who provides the money on both sides of the argument, otherwise there is bound to be a continuing feeling that the unknown piper' payers may bundle us into decisions by gaudy programme packaging on the American pattern. But it is not good enough for those of us who wanted a decision last Saturday to blame the other men's money for our initial defeat on a procedural motion which would have enabled the conference to take a firm decision. The bald truth is that we played all too cool and had far too much respect for the mood and gravitas of the occasion. It should never have been a 'take note' conference. It became clear as the debate went on that the delegates really had firm points of view already. I estimate that it was at least three to one amongst the delegates against the Market — which would have been multiplied in voting power by the card votes of the unions who had far fewer delegates. So, how did we lose the motion to refer back the Conference Arrangement Committee's Report in order to allow a definitive motion to be discussed? It was not just a question of arithmetic. The anti-Market eers were anxious about the dignity of the occasion and were also over-impressed with a report that serious Marketeers had discussed ways and means of raising so many points of order that television viewers of the conference when it was networked in the morning would look upon the proceedings as immature and farcical. But it did not happen that way.
The story goes like this. On the previous Thursday, the Association of Cinemato graph and Television Technicians, the National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants, and the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs jointly submitted the following motion to the Labour Party General Secretary: "This Special Conference notes that the terms offered for United Kingdom entry into the European Common Market do not meet the conditions laid down by the Party Conference and, accordingly, rejects them. Conference considers that the Government has no right to adhere to the Treaty of Rome without a general election."
When it was decided by the Conference Arrangements Committee that this and others should not be taken, Alf Morris (MP for Wythenshawe) moved the reference back of the report in measured terms to permit another motion which (entirely coincidentally) was in roughly the same terms although prepared by different hands at different times. I formally seconded it. Then to everyone's surprise there was no debate on the issue. The constituency labour parties traditionally want to 'get, on with the business' and usually vote with the platform against any reference back at the beginning of a conference.
On this issue they were also confused. Those wanting a decision failed to make their case so, on a show of hands, the issue was clearly going to be lost. So some of us called for a card vote which was then lost by half a million votes which should have been roughly the other way around working on the assumption that (because of purely traditional procedural reasons) it was estimated that the constituency delegates would split evenly for and against the reference back although they were probably more than two to one against Market entry.
In fact, they must have voted heavily with their cards, if not their hands, for the taking of a decision. For the 'do nothing' vote was swelled by at least three unions committed to vote for an anti-Market motion if one managed to pop up on the agenda. The Miners, the Post Office Workers and the Transport Staffs alone would have shifted 545,000 votes from one column to another thus more than reversing the majority. But they did not. So the decision will be taken at the October Annual Conference. By then the National Union of Public Employees (150,000, and the Electrical Trades Union (350,000) will also have decided. But even if they were both to declare for Market entry, I estimate that there would still be, at the most conservative and pessimistic level, a majority of upwards from 500,000 out of a total trade union affiliation of more than five and a half million. This, plus the local party delegates strength, will ensure support for an antiMarket document from the National Executive Committee.
The issue has been debated on and off at the TUC over the last decade but the decisive shift almost certainly occurred at the annual meeting of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions in the Isle of Man in June, 1970. This annual meeting is largely made up of hard-headed full-time professional bargainers. When they accepted a hardline end-the-negotiations motion from my union it was clear that there had been a decisive turn-around of opinion within the year. The unions spend much of their time arguing and negotiating to keep their members in jobs and there is now the firmest of views that, if Westminster sometimes seems unsympathetic and inaccessible, the Brussels Commission would be very hard indeed to shift on issues such as regional development and the rescue of industrial concerns which stumble into difficulties. Mr Jack Jones was chided for his union's ' xenophobia' in the television programme Man of the Week by Mr Peter Paterson (who really does know better). Mr Jones replied reasonably that the unions of the Six were not quite what they seemed.
Trade union leaders in this country naturally look with some reserve at the unions supporting UK entry whose officers seem to be so heavily engaged in the work of EEC committees that they do not have much time to look after their members' interests. It may not be putting it too high to say that there are some unions whose spokesmen are treated here as representatives of European socialism who could not exist without external finance for 'training and education' and all sorts of union projects.
Mr Ray Gunter in a letter to the Times on July 16 said ... "my trade union colleagues on the Continent always tell me that these policies have provided a powerful incentive for improved trade union organisation both within countries and between the countries of the Six." What shred of evidence is there for this opinion?
The great socialist-communist union federations of Italy and France are bitterly critical of the Community although they feel they have to be represented on it. Even they decline to publish detailed figures of membership and revenue although the well organised Germans do. But the effective trade unions in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland have the gravest possible reservations. So British trade unions, already committed by their annual conferences, will form a grand and hostile coalition which is bound to be reinforced at this year's Trades Union Congress and Labour party gatherings. The only question now, after the lack of clarity of last Saturday's conference, is: Will this demonstration of opinion come in time?
Previous page
