T.U.C. Issues Warning

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31775, 4 September 1968, Page 15

T.U.C. Issues Warning

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BLACKPOOL, Sept. 3. Britain’s Trade Union Congress began its 100th annual meeting yesterday with a warning to the Labour Government to change its tactics or risk losing the backbone of its support the British working man.

The warning, in a speech by the T.U.C. president (Lord Wright), was delivered against a background of mounting

militancy in the trade union movement, including the threat of a national strike by 1,200,000 engineering workers and a split over voluntary pay restraints.

Lord Wright told more than 1000 delegates representing nine million workers: “The Government cannot succeed without carrying with it the workers and their unions, who must be persuaded that the policy decisions taken by the Government are necessary.

“But in some of the Government’s tactics for surmounting obstacles ahead it has lengthened the odds against the chance of being given the time to reach the long-term

objectives it shares with most of us in the trade union movement."

Lord Wright added that the penal clauses in the Government’s Prices and Incomes Act would not restrain workers and unions if there was a widespread feeling of justice. Observers say this ‘‘feeling of injustice” is readily apparent at the congress. Militant groups, including the leaders of Britain’s two largest unions, the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Transport and General Workers’ Union, are prepared for a frontal assault on the T.U.C.’s own voluntary pay restraints policy.