THE POWER OF THE UNIONS
NO one will be disposed to under-rate the importance of the Trades Union Congress or of the discussions at its annual Conference at Southport this week. Politics and economics, par- ticularly the economics of industry, were never more mixed up than they are today, and it is entirely proper that the industrial side of the movement should register its views on such questions at its annual assembly as the political side does more continuously in Parliament. Numerically, the T.U.C. is growing steadily ; its present membership is over 7,500,000; and there can be very few Labour Members of Parliament who do not owe their seats primarily to trade union votes. It is. therefore of the first im- portance to the Government that the T.U.C. should keep in step with it. Nothing has, in fact, happened at Southport to provoke anxiety on that score. The trade unions are in some respects supporting the Cabinet even beyond expectation. There is full realisation that the country must be saved by the workers, and the Congress acquiesced with surprising readiness in the adoption of such a measure as the projected, Control of Engagement Order as a necessary means of concentrating men and materials in essen- tial, at the expense of non-essential, industries. It is possible even to read into the brief references to the new wage-ascertainment branch of the Ministry of Labour a tacit recognition that some form of official wage-policy must be promulgated and accepted. The President in his opening address made reference to the familiar and dangerous phenomenon of too much money chasing too few goods. The more wages are raised the more that danger will be intensified. If the present crisis is to be surmounted there must be a moratorium to wage-increases (apart from piece-work earnings) for a considerable period. It may be too much to ask trade unionists to preach that doctrine, but at least they can be asked on both rational and national grounds not to denounce it.
On one fundamental issue the Congress professes views which must be challenged at once. The first essential in a controlled economy, said the President, must be a recognition that industry's prime purpose was to supply in the best and cheapest way possible the commodities the community as a whole needed and desired ; the motive underlying industry in the past, profits for a few by the exploitation of the many, had failed. With the definition of industry's prime purpose there need be no quarrel ; of the assumption that that purpose is ' being better achieved under nationalisation there can be no acceptance. The new method is under test, and it is only by its results that it can be judged. Cer- tainly there is nothing in the recent history of the first industry to be nationalised, coal, to justify any optimism as yet. More men are producing less coal today than in 1941; the price has risen so high as almost to cripple many industries dependent on coal ; the Government's estimate for 1947 has now dropped below 200,000,000 tons (as against a Trades Union Congress demand for 220,000,000); and a series of the most wanton, irresponsible and, in all the circumstances, criminal strikes is now in progress. When a vote is taken to decide whether the 2,600 Grimethorpe men shall stay out, and—because 294 men vote in favour of that and 139 the other way—not only does this pit remain idle, but some 45 others with it, all hope of discussion on a basis of reason and sanity disappears. No blame attaches to the men's official leaders. Every responsible trade union leader is angered and alarmed at the total anarchy thus manifested. Their efforts to restore sanity have so far been utterly futile. If' the Grimethorpe spirit spreads, the economic crisis, grave as it is, will have taken its gravest turn yet.
No community can live if the men who supply it with the where- withal to live refuse to supply it, in defiance of every engagement they have contracted. If there is any Minister who might be expected to carry weight with a trade union audience it is Mr. Sevin, and it was well that in his person the interdependence of home and foreign policies should be driven home decisively at Southport on Wednesday.
The Foreign Secretary will not have spoken in vain if he has succeeded in impressing on organised labour that this country's place in the world depends far less on its Navy and Army and Air Force than on the maintenance of its efficiency as a great industrial nation. In the struggle to keep the place we established in the nineteenth century there can be neither check nor respite.
At the best we shall not fully keep it. Developments over which we have no control make that impossible. Nations which once mainly exported primary products and met their needs for manu- factured goods largely by imports from Great Britain are rapidly becoming industrialised themselves. That partially closes im- portant markets, and for the markets so contracted countries like the United States gre competing with increasing intensity. But that only means that the struggle will be hard, not for a moment that it is hopeless. British quality, in cars, in textiles, in leather goods, in machinettools, in radio equipment, can still carry British exports far. And for British coal the demand is insatiable. Nothing, it must be repeated, in the whole national life is more tragic than our failure to supply what we are so incontestably capable of supplying.
But goods can only be sold where purchasing-power exists, unless indeed they are sold on credit, as so much that America has sent to Britain in the last eighteen months has been. That credit is now suspended, and it will only be renewed in another form, to this as to other countries of Europe, if Europe can satisfy the United States that she is still a good business proposition. That depends very largely on the results of the present Paris discussions. Meanwhile, British trade must be developed where it can be developed, first and foremost within the British Commonwealth of Nations. What Mr. Bevin had to say on that is on the short view arresting, and may in the long run prove historic. A customs union within the Commonwealth, and certainly within the Empire, has obvious superficial attractions. In the words of the Foreign Secretary can almost be caught an echo of Mr. Joseph Chamber- lain's Zollverein demand of more than forty years ago. Two wars, each of which, it was confidently predicted, would finally disrupt the Commonwealth, have left its constituent nations knit more inseparably together. The co-operation they are offering to one of their number, Britain, in the rigours of peace is no less im- pressive than their support in the crises of war. At present, though not necessarily for ever, sentiment will do more than tariffs, or their absence, to foster inter-Commonwealth trade. There must, as Mr. Bevin said, be common plans for defence and an equitable allocation of its cost, and from the close financial arrangements involved in that to close economic arrangements is no impossible step. Even if Mr. Bevin was only flying a kite it will serve its purpose. In the light of his speech the idea of a Commonwealth Customs Union will be discussed in every quarter and from every angle. That, so far as it goes, is all to the good.
So far as it goek—for there are many considerations here which counsel caution, as well as some which counsel speed.. If it is a question of increasing free trade in the world by making trade between all Commonwealth nations free, the prima facie advan- tages of such a plan are clear. But other countries whose products would-have to get into the Dominions over a tariff, while British or other Dominion products met with no such impediment, could hardly be expected to show enthusiasm for the plan. And when Mr. Bevin speaks, not of self-governing Dnyntrilons, but of areas in varying degrees of dependency, other difficulties arise. Take the vast and largely unexploited resources of Africa. Mr. Bevin is perfectly right in saying that they must not be developed by "gambling mine companies in London," though there are better ways than that of referring to investors who have borne the risk of exploring for unascertained resources when no one else would bear it. But by the Berlin Act of 1885, and the terms of the various mandates we hold, complete free trade is established over large areas of Africa, and it is not open to this country to put a tariff fence round them with itself and the rest of the Commonwealth inside. That, perhaps is not what Mr. Bevin meant, but with a European Customs Union, a Benelux Customs Union, a Scandi- navian Customs Union, and now a Commonwealth Customs Union all under discussion a good deal of hard thinking is necessary. It is significant that Mr. Bevin chose the Trades Union Congress platform for the launch of his new project. In so doing he paid a compliment to his hearers, and incidentally emphasised the need for the self-education of the workers in the great and complicated problems of the nation, the Empire and the Commonwealth. Their power is undisputed ; with power, imperatively, must go knowledge.
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