Issue 8, October - December 1988
by Dave Chapel
The TUC was once envisaged as a general staff for the entire trade union movement. It was accepted that in their day-to-day affairs unions, by their very nature, had conflicting interests. But the TUC would draw out those aims that were common to the working class as a whole and organise the whole union movement to achieve them. Inter-union differences would be coped with along the way in the context of a programme for achieving the main goals - nationalisation, universal education, social welfare, or whatever was appropriate to the times and circumstances.
The TUC was enormously successful in this role. It became a vital component in the governing of the country. For almost forty years governments ruled in association with the TUC and the CBI, and often in association with the TUC alone. This was true of all governments - Churchill's, Attlee's, Macmillan's, Wilson's and Heath's.
The TUC was seen to speak with authority on a very wide range of issues affecting the lives of the majority of people - the working class. Leaders like Bevin and Citrine earned it this respect as they gave workers direction and purpose as a class.
The reforms enacted during and after the war, and consolidated by the Tories in the 1950s, had their origin in the great purposeful trade union movement. The goals set by Bevin's movement were achieved beyond anyone's wildest dreams by the 1960s.
The working class had become top dog, and needed to set itself new goals. It had destroyed its inferior status. It now needed to shoulder the responsibilities of a ruling class as it prepared to put a reforming Labour government into power once again in the mid-1960s.
The Labour government set up an inquiry into the unions which produced the Donovan Report. This proposed moving away from the confrontational industrial relations of the era when the working class was weak and divided, and towards developing an industrial democracy.
In line with this, Labour Minister Barbara Castle produced a White Paper, In Place of Strife, proposing a legal framework for the conduct of labour relations. This plan was open to almost any form of modification by the unions. But a new conservative breed was now in charge of most of the union movement, and rejected the proposals out of hand.
They wanted things both ways.
They wanted freedom to indulge themselves in class war battles with the employers and the state as if these were equivalent to the bosses of a century earlier. They maintained the mentality of the oppressed, and wanted to wallow in that mentality.
At the same time they wanted to swagger into 10 Downing Street at will for beer and sandwiches. They refused to recognise that their ability to do this was based on the fact that they were no longer representing the poor downtrodden underdogs of the past, but a class which could have anything it wanted, and had responsibilities which went with that power.
This was the point at which the TUC began to lose direction, and therefore relevance to the needs and desires of the working class. The leaders may have wanted to live in the past. But the members were getting on with being modern men and women in a modern world - but as individuals. It would take a while longer before governments realised the growing irrelevance of the TUC, and the latter was to get many more undeserved chances to mend its ways.
When Heath came to power in 1970, he attempted to regulate industrial relations compulsorily, with the Industrial Relations Act. He did this in recognition of working class power and not as a means to destroying it.
The Industrial Relations Act was defeated by industrial action in 1972. Not as a result of a purposeful alternative being pushed by the TUC, but as a result of a squalid dispute between the transport section and the dockers section of the T&GWU over who should load containers onto ships.
Heath did his most important U-turn. He launched the Tripartite Talks, where domestic policies would be worked out on an continuous basis between government, employers and unions. The TUC liked the lunches at No.10, but were not interested in running the country. They helped bring Heath down during the miners' strike of 1974.
Labour got back in, and the TUC had its last chance. The opportunities for the union movement exercising power after a century and a half of fighting for it were seen and proposed by a few key figures: Tony Benn in the Cabinet and Jack Jones, Clive Jenkins and a few others in the union leadership. These men, at that time, knew that a whole era was long over.
The working class had got the vote, was educated, was organised in trade unions as never before. Over half of the economy was in the hands of the state. And, as Harold Wilson had stated, Labour appeared to have become "the natural party of government". The next great height to be conquered was control by the working class of their jobs and of the economy. Industrial democracy.
The government set up a Committee of Inquiry under Alan Bullock. Its terms of reference and its report were dictated by the trade union representatives - Jack Jones from the T&GWU, Clive Jenkins from ASTMS and David Lea, an official of the TUC.
The proposals went even further than any trade unionist had asked for. They gave real workers' control. But that meant control over all decisions, including unpleasant ones. The proposals were roundly defeated in the union movement by a majority of conservative leaders such as Hugh Scanlon (AUEW), Frank Chapple (EETPU) and Arthur Scargill (NUM).
Before the Bullock Report, the TUC was formally in favour of industrial democracy. But it gave no lead in demanding the implementation of the Bullock Report, even though not a lot of demanding was needed.
Instead, it ended up giving support to the conservative leaders who launched an orgy of self-destruction in the infamous Winter of Discontent and brought an end to the Labour government in 1979. Then came Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher's government, unlike Heath's, wanted to end TUC privilege. It also believed, rightly as it turned out, that the TUC was a "paper tiger". The TUC's response to Thatcher was disastrous. It opposed every measure of the government, effectively on the grounds that they were measures of the government.
Laws governing ballots on union elections and industrial action were opposed even though it was clear to most people that these were both popular and beneficial to our movement.
The TUC cried wolf so often that when the government finally got around to having a real go - in the recent Bill which refuses unions any sanction against scabs or other erring members - the TUC couldn't raise anything stronger than a whimper.
The TUC supported the totally utopian and undemocratic strike engineered by Scargill and McGahey in the coalfields. A strike which destroyed what was once the greatest union in the country. And a strike which at this year's TUC resulted in the NUM no longer being represented on the TUC's General Council.
The TUC has followed along behind any and every dispute. It has given no lead. It has had no perspective. It has played into Thatcher's hands at every turn. It is irrelevant. On that, Eric Hammond is absolutely correct.
And now the TUC is observing its own dismemberment in the manner of a man celebrating his greatest achievement. It is entirely appropriate that this process is being presided over by a great ball of emptiness - Norman Willis.
Over the last decade, the smooth decline of the TUC into total irrelevance has been upset only by the behaviour of the EETPU. Eric Hammond has regularly told it what it was and where it was going, and has made occasional efforts to stop it.
The TUC has not liked this. It has rejected all possibilities for change, for new directions, for purposeful policies. It has chosen dog-eat-dog free-market trade unionism of the worst kind. Hammond has acted consistently on this basis and become the Doberman Pinscher of the unions. The complaints against him are those of the dachshunds and the poodles.
During the Wapping dispute, it was common knowledge that the NGA wouldn't deal with the great ogre because they wanted The Sun's machine managers' jobs for themselves rather than letting SOGAT keep them, whereas SOGAT were angling for their own single-union agreement with Murdoch. All that happened was that the rank outsider, the EETPU, pipped them both at the post. And aren't we all supposed to be in favour of free collective bargaining these days?
The EETPU got slung out of the TUC because they signed single-union agreements in two companies where other unions had members. This was interpreted as poaching. Under the Bridlington Agreement, unions are not allowed to poach. And if they do, the matter is referred to the TUC Disputes Committee. The EETPU deals were so referred. The EETPU was found guilty and told to withdraw from the agreements. It balloted its members and got a mandate to stick by the agreements. It did so and was expelled.
A few years ago, single-union agreements were considered bad form in the movement. This was a bit silly since the strongest forces in the formative years of trade unionism - syndicalism (NUR, NUM etc.) and craft unionism (NGA etc.) insisted on single-union agreements. But now they're all at it - AEU, GMB, T&GWU.
Given that this is the new "in thing", Bridlington surely has little relevance anymore. Unless the TUC was to be the arbiter of who got what - unlikely since the TUC is in fact regarded by all as irrelevant. Either single-union agreements apply only to "virgin" companies - which they don't - or Bridlington is dead. This is the basis of the EETPU's defence, and it is irrefutable.
Technically, the EETPU was guilty. But if the other unions were serious about TUC unity - which they were not - they would have revised Bridlington to accommodate the new practice of single-union deals which most of them were engaging in. They didn't, because their main aim was to rid themselves of their successful and ruthless rival, the EETPU.
However the proposed merger with the AEU goes, I predict that the EETPU will thrive as a result of its expulsion, and its detractors will decline. And that is no more than they deserve.
I feel it necessary to explain these matters to the Labour movement for the reason that no-one else will. (The so-called Tory Press certainly hasn't got a clue what is going on.) But a word about the EETPU itself is also in order.
It is a product of conservatism in the union movement. Sometimes left conservatism. Sometimes conservatism of the Labour right. Since the war it has been dominated by ideology. It was purely its good fortune that it changed from a left ideology to a right ideology at the appropriate moment .
Under Communist Party control it was a bit of a thorn in the side of the movement until its leaders were caught fiddling the votes in the late 1950s. But the old TUC, which had real business to conduct, coped with this thorn well enough. Former Communists kept control as they dramatically switched ideologies and became premature Thatcherites. Frank Chapple was a leading force in defeating proposals for industrial democracy in the electricity industry in the mid-1970s and in defeating the Bullock proposals in the late 1970s. But he couldn't have done this if there had been a half-decent progressive body within the TUC as a whole.
At the forefront of current EETPU policies is Roy Sanderson, who stayed in the CP long after the ballot rigging fiasco but is now an absolute free-market ideologist.
The L&TUR is a socialist paper. It favours industrial democracy and service-to-the-public socialism. It is highly unlikely that the Roy Sandersons of this world will be allies in this crusade. But our movement will get nowhere unless we understand that the EETPU is the most coherently representative product of trade union policy as it has evolved since the 1960s.
At the heart of the postal dispute is the use of casual labour. Both seasonally and each day the Post Office operates in successive bursts of activity and periods of inactivity. Until now sufficient staff were recruited to cover the bursts of activity (with the exception of the Christmas rush) and enjoyed the periods of idleness.
The Post Office decided to maximise the use of labour by employing permanent staff to cover "normal" labour needs, and to employ casual staff to fill in the hours or periods of high activity.
Nobody could blame the permanent staff for preferring the old system for as long as they could get away with it. It is clear that they could not get away with it any longer and will have to work like everyone else.
A proper trade union response in these circumstances would be to unionise properly the casual staff. Heaven knows, enough fuss was made at the TUC about recruiting and being relevant to part-time workers.
Casual staff should be snapped up by the unions. Their rights should be protected and they should be given first option on permanent vacancies. Instead, they are being treated as pariahs and alienated from the movement.
The formal reason for the latest dispute was the "over-employment" of casuals to clear up the backlog of mail after a one-day strike called because of the proposed payment of a bounty to new workers where there was a shortage - e.g. London.
It has been said that it was insensitive of the Post Office to offer this pay increase to new workers and not to established workers as well. Provocative even. Well, it is amazing how easily the trade unions rise to provocations - real or imagined - in recent years. In my opinion the current dispute is something of a trial run. The Post Office and the government cannot afford to be without the mail for very long. The union knows this as well.
But in the present climate the tendency is for serious disputes to throw up alternatives to the present arrangements in vital industries. Next time, TNT and other rival mail services will be better prepared, and the government more willing to allow the development of alternatives to the Post Office monopoly. Then a strike in the Post Office may be allowed to run its course.
Maybe this lesson will be learnt by the union. Unfortunately I doubt it.
One of the EETPU's selling points to new members is the range of "non-traditional" union perks it offers them. Now the TUC is on the same kick. No particular harm in this.
Home-loan deals, car deals, credit cards, etc. - these are all very well, and very modern. But they are being made out to be the essence of the new realism in the unions. In fact they are mere front.
Financial services is one of the greatest growth industries of our time. Excellent deals are on offer from thousands of experts. Workers are well advised to look at the overall market and compare what is on offer with the deals of their own unions.
Fringe benefits were once offered by unions - unemployment, sickness, funerals etc. - when they were to be had from no other source. The unions were the pioneers. That is no longer the case.
I fear that they are now offered as a substitute for, rather than an addition to, leadership on central issues facing organised workers.
Before this year's TUC I would have said that at least a quarter of the affiliated unions had still not joined the ranks of the lemming faction. How wrong one can be! Only two affiliated unions refused to join in the hypocrisy which expelled the Electricians - the Engineers and the Civil Servants. (The latter are a pretty unstable bunch at the best of times.)
Among the rest, Ron Todd at least had the grace to do his bit more in sorrow than anger. The darling of the moderate press and Kinnock acolyte, John Edmonds, withdrawing his knife from Hammond's heart, plunged it with great satisfaction into the back of Bill Jordan - probably the only decent man in charge of a TUC-affiliated trade union today.
But the biscuit must surely be taken by Ken Gill of the Morning Star and the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union. Interviewed on BBC Breakfast Time the morning after, he waxed lyrical about the inherent Britishness of TUC traditions. (He actually substituted English for British on a couple of occasions.) The idea was that Eric Hammond was un- (or even anti-) British.
Nice one, Ken. Not bad for a man with forty years' dedicated service to Moscow. As they say - pass the sickbag.
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