The TUC: From the General Strike to New Unionism

Citation

Undy, R. (2001), "The TUC: From the General Strike to New Unionism", Employee Relations, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 290-302. https://doi.org/10.1108/er.2001.23.3.290.3

As is acknowledged in the preface, this is not a comprehensive history of the TUC. Rather, Robert Taylor focuses on “some of the more important leaders and events that shaped the TUC during the twentieth century” (viii), and the book is structured in chronological order around leaders not events. This includes three chapters in which the leading characters are not general secretaries of the TUC, but general secretaries of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU). These giants of the labour movement, Ernest Bevin, Arthur Deakin, Frank Cousins and Jack Jones, are shown to be the power behind the TUC throne as they wielded the TGWU’s vote (and that of their allies) to shape, or determine, the TUC’s policy at critical points in its development.

In common with Ross Martin’s study, and other commentators on the TUC, the TUC’s relationship with government and its own member unions are the central and continuing themes. Overall, or at least until the 1980s, the TUC’s leadership is revealed as concerned with these two inter‐related issues or, more specifically, how to maximise influence over government and its own affiliated unions. The foundation stones for building an organization capable of influencing government by mobilizing the affiliated member unions were laid by Walter Citrine (general secretary 1926‐1946). For those, like myself, raised to chair meetings of trade unionists (and anybody else who might prove difficult) according to the rules laid down in Citrine’s ABC of Chairmanship, it should come as no surprise that the person who could find a solution to any procedural contingency that might arise in a union meeting was also capable of modernising the TUC. For, despite the general strike and the consequent 1927 Trade Dispute Act, the TUC under Citrine’s leadership sustained and improved its organization up to the start of the Second World War. So preparing itself for “the Labour Movement’s finest hour in the twentieth century” (p. 75).

As Taylor notes: “The events of the Second World War transformed the TUC into more of an Estate of the Realm than at any other time in its history” (p. 76). At this time, the TUC was part of the system. Its later gradual change of status to the “Enemy within”, is examined through the careers of Bevin, Deakin, Cousins, Woodcock, Feather, Jones and Murray. Over the post‐war period until 1978, the issue of pay restraint or incomes policy dominated the TUC’s relationship with government, as the question of how to manage the economy remained unresolved and contested. The chapter on Woodcock, derived from a previous essay, is one of the most interesting and important contributions in the book. Woodcock, the most cerebral, and it would appear boring and irritating, of the TUC’s general secretaries, pondered long over the question of “what are trade unions here for?” in his period of office (1960‐1969). Given his interest in union reform, the big questions of the day and his own undoubted analytical abilities, it is remarkable to find that he played very little part in the Donovan Commission’s deliberations. Although a member he was “a surprisingly infrequent attender” (p. 150). Indeed, he was absent when they discussed some of the leading questions regarding the role of trade unions and he did not raise the key issues that much exercised his thinking inside the TUC (p. 152). Hence, while struggling intellectually with the main issues, he was not notably successful in finding solutions to the very pertinent questions he raised, nor in persuading others of the importance of the questions that caused him such anguish.

The change of status of trade unions from the “Third estate” to the “Enemy within”, can, with hindsight, be traced in the book back to the growing difficulties the TUC and Woodcock faced in the 1960s and later in the 1970s, in responding to “a more interventionist state” (p. 139). As collective laissez‐faire was gradually abandoned by government, and unions were “turned into the scapegoats of relative economic decline” (p. 142) and related economic ills, Woodcock noted that the union’s selfish use of the power given them by full‐employment, would result in “regulation by unemployment or legislation” (p. 147). Woodcock’s attempts at persuading the unions of the dangers of such powerplay were countered effectively by, among others, Cousins who declared that “in a system of free‐for‐all unions must be part of the free‐for‐all” (p. 148). Such views, of course, meant the unions were not sympathetic to incomes policies or government‐sponsored reforms of trade unions. As a consequence, Heath’s initial attempts at finding an accommodation with the TUC over pay restraint, and Castle’s ill‐fated “In place of strife”, were treated not as opportunities for positive engagement between government and TUC, but as causes of conflict. As Taylor sees it, Woodcock lacked both the personal qualities needed to carry the non‐committed and the support of key union leaders, such as Cousins, with him to realise his reforming zeal. However, Woodcock’s analysis may now be thought to speak for itself.

In contrast to the role played by Cousins, Jack Jones in the 1970s recognised that unions had to adopt their behaviour, vis‐à‐vis government, to suit the changing economic and political environment. Jones, as the boss of the TGWU, was ideally placed to act as the “custodian of the social contract” (p. 202) struck between the TUC and the new Labour Government in 1974. In 1975, Jones was urging the TUC’s general council to adopt policies that would “keep the Labour Government in power” (p. 215). In backing the TUC’s general secretary, Len Murray‐Jones was, at critical stages in the early stages of the Labour government, very effective in delivering majority votes on the TUC’s general council in support of the social contract. Also, he had a strong sense of history and of the political dangers that economic disasters, such as those of the 1930s, could heap on the Labour Government: “The dangers are very great indeed. The circumstances, including the betrayal of 1931, could happen again” (p. 221). Further, in looking forward, Jones noted that the UK could prosper in the 1980s and that, if Labour was still in office, the wealth would flow to the people and not to a few millionaires (p. 221). Unfortunately for the Labour Government, much as Jones supported the Social Contract, his own activists within the TGWU were less convinced of its merits. Just as the TUC experienced difficulties in committing its affiliated unions to the Social Contract and associated pay restraint, Jones similarly could not, at the 1977 biennial conference of the TGWU, gain his own activists’ support for a further phase of the agreement. Echoing Woodcock’s early concern for a socially responsible and not sectionally‐orientated trade unionism, Jones appealed to his members to focus on “injustices in our society” rather than “unfettered wage bargaining” (p. 229). Taylor correctly notes the irony of Jones defeat at the 1977 TGWU conference by the very shop stewards he had empowered inside the TGWU during his period as general secretary.

In the latter part of the book, Taylor explores how the TUC’s leadership have struggled with a different set of issues since the collapse of the Social Contract and the resulting strikes, the “winter of discontent” and Thatcher’s election triumph in 1979. Len Murray, Norman Willis and John Monks, all had to come to terms with declining membership and the negative attitudes of successive governments towards the trade unions. The combination of anti‐union legislation, plus unemployment, in the early 1980s – all as previously feared by Woodcock – found the TUC totally unprepared for such a change in fortune. As Murray admitted: “We completely misread history” (p. 246). Only after the second Conservative victory in 1983, did the TUC start to re‐assess its strategy towards government. “New Realism”, followed by the government’s defeat of the “vanguard of the proletariat” – i.e. the National Union of Mineworkers in the miners strike of 1984‐1985, drove the TUC and its member unions towards a new conciliatory role and made the EU’s corporatist social policies, previously ignored by the TUC, much more attractive. John Monks’ New Unionism, brings the story up to date. Launched at the 1996 Congress, Monks initiated a policy intended to make trade unions part of the solution to Britain’s economic regeneration, rather than part of the problem. Social partnership and workplace rights (p. 208) is the new programme of modernisation. Whether or not the presence of a Labour Government, committed to fairness and not favours, as regards trade unions, will prove to be a force for assisting such a regeneration of trade unions, remains to be seen. Taylor’s high readable and insightful book would suggest that, in the present difficult circumstances, John Monks would need to combine Woodcock’s intellect with Citrine’s organizational skills and Feather’s affability, if he is to restore the TUC’s fortunes.