The Friendless TUC

This year’s Trade Union Congress in the Isle of Man was very fully reported in the Press, more fully than in some past years, but comment was almost everywhere disapproving and disappointed. Taking the comments at their face value the reader may imagine that the newspaper proprietors and editors and the politicians are the friends of the rank and file trade unionists and are genuinely sorry that the leaders, individually, and the TUC collectively, are not making a good job of looking after the members’ claims for higher wages and better conditions. It is only necessary to state it in these terms to see that there must be something wrong with this explanation, for we know well that most of the commentators habitually oppose strikes for higher wages and shorter hours, whether official or unofficial, and would be much alarmed if the TUC were to forget politics and devote its influence and organisation to promoting an all-round higher wage movement. They may say, or imply, that they sympathise with the delegate who tried, in vain, to get Congress to agree to devote more time to bread and butter issues, but workers know from experience that a change in that direction would meet with even more disapproval. The reason for their disappointment must be sought elsewhere, and an observation by the Times Labour Correspondent (12/9/60) indicates what it is. He wrote:

“In the old days, union loaders could usually be relied upon to accept the decisions of the general council and could almost always carry their unions with them.- Now there is little sense of collective responsibility and leaders are frequently overruled by their own unions In the debates on nuclear disarmament this year the executives of three of the big six unions, those of the engineers, the railwaymen, and the distributive workers, were outvoted by their annual conferences.”

This is the change that the government, the employers and the leaders of the big political parties find disturbing. In a time of full employment capitalism needs something to dissuade the workers from pressing to the full their relatively stronger position. A disciplined trade union movement controlled from the top and guided into paths of moderation and industrial peace is the ideal instrument from the standpoint of the owning class and the government; even better (because less crude and obvious) than the Russian type of State organisation masquerading as a trade union movement.

The argument that the TUC ought to concentrate on trying to get higher wages and shorter hours is a very sound one. but there is nothing to support it in the TUC’s history and constitution. It was political at its foundation and has for the most part kept to that view of its purpose. The Webbs, in their History of Trade Unionism, show that the TUC came into being largely to handle the problem of the law affecting trade unions and when it obtained in 1875 a law to its liking, for which it gratefully thanked the government, “it became for ten years little more than an annual gathering of Trade Union officials, in which they delivered, with placid unanimity, their views on labour legislation and labour politics.” (Chapter VII.)

The Webbs show how Congress deliberately excluded from its discussions not only questions of trade union rivalries, but also all the controversial aspects of trade union activity. “Arising as it did between 1868 and 1871, when the one absorbing topic was the relation of Trade Unionism to the law, it had retained the character then impressed upon it of an exclusively political body.” It was the TUC that voted for independent parliamentary representation and promoted the formation of the Labour Party.

It began as a political body and so it has remained, in spite of periods during which, as in the 1926 general strike, it was reluctantly pushed into taking a leading part in industrial disputes.

A glance at the TUC’s “Objects” will show how political it is. Alongside general phrases about promoting the interests of the workers and the unions, it has a list of particular measures, including “public ownership and control of national resources and of services,” nationalisation of land, mines and minerals and “nationalisation of railways.” (Apparently nobody has noticed that the railways were nationalised long ago!). It also demands a legal maximum working week of 40 hours, a legal minimum wage for each industry, and “adequate State pensions for all at the age of 60.”

The interesting thing about the demands for legislation on wages and hours is that not only have they not been achieved, but it would appear that the TUC has long given up any serious attempt to press them or get a Labour government to do so. The object on hours used to be in the form of a demand for legislation for a maximum 44 hour week, but this was obtained years ago in most industries by the unions themselves. without legislation and without the aid of the TUC. And the TUC, like the Labour Party, has tacitly recognised 65 as the pension age and stopped asking for it to be lowered.

Much of the General Council’s activity is concerned with direct contacts with government departments and governmental agencies and Sir Vincent Tewson makes a modest claim for it:

“We therefore can and do talk to any government because we believe in and get the right of consultation. 1 think our views are respected and that they have some effect on the making of Government policy.” (Daily Telegraph, 13/9/60.)

Clearly the TUC has as yet no intention of giving up politics and the delegates do not want it to do so.

All the critics agree that the trade union leadership has lost much of its influence with the rank and file in recent years, but few mention one obvious factor in this, which is that members have become suspicious that the leadership is too much in touch with the government, the employers and the professional economists, and too ready to accept their policies. In particular, trade unionists claiming higher wages and shorter hours, are tired of being told about the “national interest,” the export trade, the gold reserve, and so on, and the leaders’ influence waned when they lined up with the Labour government’s policy of “wage restraint.” Sir Vincent Tewson, who defends that policy, has to admit that it “chafed,” and says: “The wonder is not that the formal restraint ended when it did but that it had been possible to maintain it for so long.”

In 1950 the General Council’s recommendation to continue “wage restraint” was defeated, but the outlook out of which it arose is still there. The TUC supports consultation with the government, cooperation with employers to increase production and the subordination of trade union policy to what are called “national” needs. And Labour Party spokesmen have admitted that another Labour Government would again try to get the unions to agree to “wage restraint.”

This is a continuing dilemma of the trade union leadership and particularly of the TUC. Apart from a few oddities who gape open mouthed at the supposed superiority of Russian State capitalism over other capitalism, the leaders accept British capitalism and start from the proposition that on Britain’s ability to produce efficiently and sell profitably depends the jobs and wages of British workers. As Tewson put it in the interview already referred to, “We found we could not stand aloof. The unions cannot do their job effectively unless there is a stable economy”; but while the great majority of the members may in theory share the leaders’ acceptance of capitalism and Britain’s position in it, they do not at all see what this has to do with their own particular grievances and claims. The more the leaders harp on restraint and responsibility the more the number of members who view them with suspicion.

Strange as it may seem to those who think this is an “affluent society,” masses of workers are overworked, hard up and harassed and are resentful of it as ever they were.

H.