George Woodcock To Be New Secretary Of T. U. C.

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29262, 21 July 1960, Page 20

George Woodcock To Be New Secretary Of T. U. C.

(Special Correspondent N.ZPul.>

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, July 20. A man who has long been regarded as the backroom “brain” of the Trades Union Congress is to become its general secretary in September. He is Mr George Woodcock, aged 55, who is the only nominee to succeed Sir Vincent Tewson.

Mr Woodcock has risen to the top from an obscure background. He was only 12 when he began work as a half-timer in a cotton mill near Preston. For the next 13 years he worked as a weaver and then in 1929 he won a T.U.C. scholarship to Ruskin College. There he was awarded a scholarship to New College, Oxford, and took a first-class degree in philosophy, politics and economics. A further scholarship enabled him to take a year’s post-graduate course at Manchester University. His next step was to become a civil servant. In 1936 he joined the T.U.C. as secretary of the research department and in 1947 he became the T.U.C.’s assistant general secretary. He was nominated as secretary by 22 unions and will be formally elected at the annual congress in September. The “News Chronicle” comments that in keeping with its tradition, the T.U.C. pays its senior officials poorly for the responsibilities they undertake. Mr Woodcock will get only £2660 a year as secretary, an increase of £l5O on his present post.

It says his unopposed appointment is encouraging for he is probably the ablest man in the trade union movement. “He is determined to make the unions play an effective part in modern society and he is prepared to outrage the conservatism of some of his colleagues by urging specific reforms. “Mr Woodcock succeeds Sir Vincent Tewson at a critical time. In the public tnind, the T.U.C. has increasingly assumed the appearance of a dinosaur, huge, blundering, ineffective and obsolete. Power has shifted from the national leaders to shop stewards and among the rank and file, apathy has exacted a heavy toll. “Provided the T.U.C. is prepared to face the changed circumstances of both the industrial worker and the country, it has

still a great part to play, but it is essential that the unions realise that constructive co-opera-tion rather than the raking over of the ashes of the class war is the way forward. It is because Mr Woodcock has the brains to understand this and the courage to say it that his unopposed election is a hopeful augury for the future,” the paper says.