THE SKELETON IN THE SOCIALISTS’ CUPBOARD

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27274, 15 February 1954, Page 8

THE SKELETON IN THE SOCIALISTS’ CUPBOARD

TRADE UNIONS IN BRITAIN

[By "A Student of Politics" in the "Sunday Times"}

(Reprinted by Arrangement)

When, in the House of Commons, cn January 19, the Prime Minister made a short but highly significant statement of Government policy towards trade union liberties, it passed almost unnoticed, except for a few cheers from the Opposition. He said that the Government has no intention of departing from the tradition under which the trade union movement is left to manage its own affairs to the fullest possible extent without Government interference. The significance of this is that it indicates a reversal of the respective attitudes of Conservatives and Socialists to trade union freedom. They have exchanged their traditional roles. It is no longer the Tories who threaten trade union liberties, but the Socialists. Is the Labour Party, as a political body, equally resolved to let the trade union movement manage its own affairs? The question can be put in a more comprehensive form. How can socialism permit the existence in a nationally planned economy of a powerful, independent and individualistic organisation like the trade union movement? The logical answer, which not only the Socialist Left but many on the Socialist Ri«ht and in between now accept, is that it cannot. Labour’s Private View

This is not an issue which Labour men care to discuss publicly, except one or two bold spirits on the Left. Eut in private many argue that the Socialist principle that it is the function of the State to plan the use of national resources, so as to secure full employment and “fair shares,” cannot be made effective without some .modification of trade union freedom. You cannot, they say. have a production policy and a profits policy and a welfare policy, and all the rest of it, without a wages policy: continuation of the familiar catch-as-catch-can, competitive, wage-bargaining ’ by the unions will make the Socialist purpose impracticable. This is the skeleton in the Socialist cupboard. During six years of Labour Government it was kept in the cupboard. Probably few Labour men realised that it was there. Ministers and party were intent on a rush job of laying the foundation, as they thought, of the new “industrial democracy” through State ownership; telling those who worked in the nationalised industries that the businesses now belonged to them, .when all that was happening, as many Socialists now realise, was the transference of effective control to remote Ministers and managing boards. It was, in fact, a long step towards that “managerial autocracy” which many members of the party, including Mr Attlee, think is an increasing danger. It is even infecting the trade union movement—the Electrical Trades Union, for example. Though many Labour men are convinced that the trade union question must be faced, reference to it is carefully avoided in formal statements of|

policy. This is not entirely is a frightening issue—thtMTS. Party does not lack couragecWtanuZ but also because those who hJfcfc”sidered it think that time and tion vzill sooner or later farin’ 11W3 forefront and influence the uni W the right way. while a blunders proach now might well have the a IK site effect. But how. it may be asked, can th J be education without frank ooen j 1 ’ -cussion? The answer one "You can’t convince people on a Liter like this by making speeches S feels will convince them"- by meant, presumably, the facts of sJrtJ Ist experience as socialism advS This must be a slow process b may prove a sensible one. ' " “Cession of Sovereignty’’ Members of the Left group in party are not so shy of the nrohlL That is to their credit. It is they have done the most to bring'the |J. to the party’s attention. * In a contribution to the Fabian Essays,” Mr lan Mikardo Mp said that the trade union movanif needed to hammer out for itself“, new type of centra! mach’nerv whU' he suggested, might be in two tisS First, a general council larger than the present one. and elected fay a i™ rigid formula which would not le-dt the automatic re-election of the san! members; and. second, an inner “cabi net,” composed of full-time executiwi who had severed their connexion wif. their individual unions. The power, of these central bodies would need to be much greater than those of tS present general council. “This, in turn would involve the cession of each union of some of the constituents its national sovereignty.” Challenge to Union Liberty In the same collection of essm Mr Richard Crossman. M.P., asked if inflation could be countered in con. ditions of full employment, without i national profits and wages policy and if not, could such a policy be put into execution “without some amendment by the trade unions of their cherished freedom of collective bargaininE’" These theorists do not speak for the party, though Mr Attlee recommended the careful study of their essays, but their arguments have greater weigh, now than when they wrote two yean ago. Some Socialists say that the old feeling in the Labour movement. that the political side ought not to interfen on the industrial side, will stop am attempt to change the structure o! the trade unions and check their independence and power. They are, surely, behind the march of event They seem not to appreciate one of the outstanding facts of the post-war years—the bringing info politics of industry, and thus of the unions, by the Labour Party itself and-the developing and inescapable challenge to trade union liberty inherent in the Socialist ideal.