The TUC: avoiding action The Trades Union Congress is nothing
if it is not a traditional institution with its own orthodoxy, and that orthodoxy was traditionally expressed by Mr George Smith, this year's president, in his opening address on Monday. The trade union movement must never imagine that it is an alternative form of government; but it must make certain that its views were heard: therefore, representation to the government of the day was an essential part of the TUC's responsibilities on behalf of trade unionists. The difficulty with this orthodoxy is that it can only be practised if the powerful general secretaries of the big unions who dominate the General Council of the TUC are on speaking terms with the government of the day. Some of them have come close to breaking off all relations, and although the TUC has recently engaged in tripartite talks with the Confederation of British Industry and the Government, Mr Smith was putting it mildly when he said, of these talks, "Reservations are likely to be held by some trade unionists as to the wisdom of such action with a government which appeared hell-bent on pursuing abrasive policies."
It has been clear enough that the Government has changed direction and is now determined to avoid steering a collision course. Its change has been fundamental and, almost certainly, irreversible; and it has not been made without causing great doubts and disaffections within the Conservative Party at Westminster and in the country. The trouble with the Government's change is its completeness: whereas no lame ducks were to be propped up, now it seems that any and every lame duck will receive assistance; and money is being doled out to the regions with an indiscriminate largesse never contemplated by Mr Wilson in his headiest moments. Distortions and dislocations in BBritish industry, instead of being removed, are being preserved. As far as this Government's regional and industrial policies are concerned, there has been not one but one after another " radical change in the style of government ": and the change we are left with is the mixture as before — before, that is, the first radical change promised, and now almost entirely abandoned, by Mr Heath. Unfortunately, the attitudes in the country, and particularly in the trade unions, towards the Government are, very largely, those formed during the abrasive ' or radical period. The situation we are in at the moment is consequently peculiarly undignified and indeed awkward: for the unions are still squaring up for a confrontation with the Government which the Government is now manoeuvring at almost all costs to prevent.
Or are the unions still squaring up? On Monday, the Trades Union Congress made a bit of a fool of its collective self in expelling thirty-two unions for refusing to abide by the TUC's policy of non-co-operation with the Industrial Relations Act, despite the compelling arguments put forward by the National Union of Seamen and Equity and others that registering under the Act was a matter of life or death for them. Such mass suspension — with expulsion threatened next year — was unprecedented; and the following day, the traditional pieties were again not observed: a member of the General Council for six years — Mr Jack Peel, a right-wing leader of one of the textile unions — was purged by the left-wingers, and promptly declared, "I am a casualty in the political war that is being waged within the movement." There seemed no doubt that the series of left-wing lurches by which the TUC has shunted itself, since the arrival of Mr Frank Cousins at the head of the Transport and General Workers' Union, into its present political posture were to be continued at Brighton this week.
The crucial vote was Wednesday's, on the motion put forward by Mr Jack Jones's T&GWU and Mr Hugh Scanlon's Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers which, if carried, would have committed the TUC and its member unions to a policy of total opposition to the Industrial Relations Act. The General Council had decided to oppose this motion, which had been expected to be defeated, but narrowly. As it turned out, the majority against the Jones-Scanlon policy was over two million. Once again, the residual inertia of the TUC which has frequently prevented the labour movement from spinning off into the wilder reaches of socialism, asserted itself; and the country's trade unions, by and large, agreed with the general secretary of the TUC, Mr Vic Feather, who told the delegates on Wednesday that a policy of absolute non-co-operation with the Act (and consequently, with the Industrial Relations Court) made "no kind of sense."
It is plain enough from this week's TUC that the unions are far from entering into amicable relations with the Government and the CBI. All the intimations are that the autumn and winter will see further massive wage claims being put forward, and energetically pursued to the point, if need be, of strike action, by the unions in an effort to keep their members ahead not only of inflation but of other unions. The political hostility of the unions towards Mr Heath because of his European policy and because of the politics of the Industrial Relations Act and of the working of its machinery, is no way lessened; and indeed this hostility may be expected to increase, should entry into Europe come about and should its early effects be noticeably unpleasant. And although there are signs that the Industrial Relations Act, even if it is not put on ice by the Government, will be put on the larder's cold shelf, as long as the Act contains the built-in invitation to any employer (or union) to invoke it, then it retains the appalling ability, to provoke confrontation involving unions, Government and the Courts which no one in their senses wants and which also makes " no kind of sense."
Despite this, the TUC's rejection of the Jones-Scanlon line was, in its cumbersome way, another assertion of traditional orthodoxy. Had the Jones-Scanlon line been followed, then Mr George Smith's presidential remarks would have been repudiated, for one effect must have been to prevent the TUC from undertaking its essential responsibility of treating with the government of the day; and the TUC, even if it were not exactly setting itself up as an alternative government, would have been setting itself up as an alternative legislature and judiciary, by determining which laws it was prepared to obey and which it was not. The Government in early summer made it quite plain that it was determined to avoid collision; the TUC this week, in late summer, has decided not to steer for a collision.
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