Trade Unions (1)
Threat or bulwark?
George Gale
When Frank Cousins succeeded Arthur Deakin as General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union in 1956, a shift in power within the Labour .movement took place, the consequences of which are still with us. Until then the two general unions together with the miners, as often as not the engineers, and several other lesser unions had formed a pretty solid block of power. This group was led by tough and able men who regarded themselves as the true custodians of the Labour movement and who saw their chief political function as being to keep the Parliamentary Labour Party on the rails, by which they meant on the right-wing tracks. The greatest challenge to their authority came from the Bevanite movement in the early 'fifties, which put together a coalition based on opposition to German rearmament which came within one small union's card vote of victory. At the same time union votes, by electing Hugh Gaitskell to the treasurership of the Labour Party against the candidature of Nye Bevan, made Gaitskell the heir apparent to the leadership of the Labour Party, once it became clear that Attlee would (as he did) time his departure to dish Herbert Morrison.
Frank Cousins was not another Arthur Deakin, and his arrival broke up the alliance of the general unions and the miners. Cousins was a nuclear disarmer and a man of the left. He assisted in one or two lurches to the left, such as that against which Gaitskell bravely and successfully fought over Clause Four in his "fight, fight and fight again" speech; but it required the death of Gaitskell in 1963 and Harold Wilson's succession, together with the election of the left-wing Hugh Scanlon to replace the right-wing Bill Carron as president of the engineers, for the left to possess a potentially dominant position within the Labour movement. The dominance of this position, although potentially effective from about 1969, was effectively concealed by Labour's electoral victory. that year, ending the Tories' thirteen years and inaugurating Wilson's six. Wilson brought Cousins into the Cabinet and this was to open the way for Jack Jones to move into his place. The unionr leaders bided their time, generally supporting the Wilson administration until the crunch came with the publication of Barbara Castle's disastrous In Place of Strife. Jack Jones took the lead in destroying this — and, incidentally, may well have therefore contributed to Wilson's electoral defeat in 1970. Came the Tories, their Industrial Relations Bill — as disastrous as Barbara Castle's failed essay — the two triumphant miners' strikes, Heath's electoral miscalculation in February, and here we are, on the edge of another election and, perhaps, to judge from the clamour of voices prophesying disaster, on the edge, too, of national catastrophe.
The foregoing is, I think, a pretty orthodox account of what is widely believed to have happened. Is it true? Are we, in fact, on the edge of catastrophe; and, if so, have the unions, and their alleged swing to the left, contributed substantially towards bringing us to the brink?
In considering these matters, some historical perspective will not come amiss. The basic pattern of this country's post-war society was set in the first three or four years after the war, by Attlee's first administration. In achievement" this was easily the most successful and formidable government in peace-time in living memory. The structure of the welfare state was laid down, the dismemberment of the empire began and the Atlantic alliance was deter
mined. Since then the pattern has not much changed, although there have been two revolutionary developments which sought to change part of that pattern. The first was Eden's attempt to prove that we were still a Great Power: this came to grief, in Zuez. The second was Heath's European policy, which has as its object the transfer of political and economic control over the nation's affairs from Westminster and Whitehall to Brussels. Attlee's 'revolution' was carried through without parliamentary difficulty and to the fairly general satisfaction of the country and only now, a full generation later, is the pattern seen to be breaking up and some of its fundamental assumptions becoming questioned. Retrospectively much of what that administration did seems both inevitable and right and not in the least revolutionary. If we seek someone who has wanted revolutionary . change since the war, then our revolutionary is Mr Heath. Neither Mr Benn nor Mr Powell in any way approaches Mr Heath in revolutionary zeal and in his determination to change the institutions of this country. Yet it is not Mr Heath who frightens the middle class, the elitists, the Times and retired generals, but the unions. What are these 'militant' trade union leaders wanting and doing and saying that frightens so many people? What revolutions do they advocate? What institutions — particularly what political institutions — do they threaten?
There are a few noisy communists and others who receive some than their due share of publicity and some are in positions of some power and influence in some unions. Official communists are now outflanked on the left by
outfits such as theinlernation al Marxist Group and various Trotskyist and anarchist bodies, but there is little evidence that such extremists carry much weight within the trade union movement. The International Socialism Group seems to have got some way inside some town halls, hospitals and schools. There are undoubtedly reds under certain beds; but trade union leaders know better than most the nature of the communist threat: they have contained that threat pretty well over the years, they know that among their members at large there is no disposition at all towards revolutionary doctrine and practice, and that when a communist is elected to union office this, when it is not the outcome of apathy, usually reflects hard work on behalf of the union and its members rather than hard work for the CPGB. But those more sophisticated observers who may use the reds under the beds scare while being aware that this threat is greatly exaggerated will nevertheless argue that the unions themselves, under a leadership which is, they will admit, overwhelmingly devoted to the Labour Party, do now pose, because of their new found militancy, a major threat to the democratic process in this country.
Such observers will point out, first, that the trade union leadership has taken on and defeated successively a Labour and a Conservative administration. However, the trade unions were not able to prevent the passage of the Industrial Relations Act; and although they most bitterly opposed it and sought to frustrate its operation, they did not use their industrial strength to force its repeal. During the two miners' strikes, it is argued that a union found itself in confrontation with the elected government of the day and twice secured victory. But the miners each time were striking for .improved pay and conditions, were not acting in any way illegally or improperly, and in fact reached settlements in both cases within the existing framework of law. It is true that these strikes demonstrated the power of an organised and determined union to cause immense damage to the economy. But there iS nothing new in such power. It has been there all along; although it could I think be argued that the increasing complexity and interdependence of modern industrial processes strengthens the power of individual unions to inflict excessive damage. It is finally argued sometimes that the second miners' strike demonstrated excessive power in that it compelled Mr Heath to go to the country. This is nonsense. It supplied Mr, Heath with a pretext for calling a general election on the "Who rules?" theme so fancied in certain Conservative circles at the time. But there was no element of compulsion in it. Governments of the day not infrequentlY have to back down in the face of strong and well organised opposition; and if a government chooses to intervene in a wages dispute which it then proceeds to lose, this in no way means that the democratic process is suddenlY endangered. It means, instead, that governments should not intervene in wage disputes, However, I do not think we have yet reached the real ground on which is based the charge that the unions now present a general threat to the country. It is now, I think, generally agreed that the real trouble with the country at the moment is inflation; and many people floundering around in this inflationary situation, seeing their savings eroded, fearing for the value of the currency, and above all frightened by the continued and seemingly inexorable rise in prices, look for someone to blame. And instead of governments, they blame the unions.
Thus the proposition runs: the unions now use their new excessive power to grab for their members more and more of the national cake, to make and break governments, and to threaten to destroy, in the process, democratic parliamentary government in this countrY. There is some meretricious plausibility in the argument; but I do not think it bears close analysis. The unions have not used their industrial strength to serve political ends; and there is no reason to suppose that they would contemplate doing so, except possibly in support of the parliamentary democratic process itself if that were to be endangered from the extreme right or left or (as is most likely) from the extreme centre. I do not believe that union wage demands are the prime cause of inflation; rather are they the natural consequence of it. And in the union demands for an end to statutory incomes policy and a return to free collective bargaining I see, far from a threat of further inflationary pressure,
the glimmerings of hope that the disciplines of the market will begin to enter the economy. In some of the more opaque utterances of Mr Healey are to be found hints that he, too, perceives the responsibilities of governments in causing inflation; and such views are commonplace among the so-called "right-wing" of the Conservative Party, who share with Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon a very healthy dislike and distrust of state intervention in wage negotiations. I see in this dislike and distruct no
threat whatsoever to parliamentary and demo
cratic process; but rather, instead, a bulwark. There is in this country a major and several minor threats to our parliamentary way of doing things; the major threat comes of course from the Eurocrats of the extreme centre, and the minor threats from the Popski's private armies which are popping up on the right and the subterranean conspiratorial cells of the left which have been with us for long enough. And in the nation's countering of these threats, both major and minor, I find it far easier to discern the trade unions as bulwarks of essential stability than as battering rams smashing to bits the major institutions of our society.
George Gale, formerly editor of The Spectator, is currently conducting a daily 'Open Line' programme for London Broadcasting
Previous page
