Tuc Volunteered to Police: the Unions

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cousins and woodcock - scheming for a sell-out and Thomas; Against-Mason, Crossman,: Ross, Shore, Marsh and Callaghan.

Later, on the NEC of the Labour Party, Benn voted "unhesitatingly" with Castle on a motion supporting the White Paper-which was defeated 15-6.

-On January 7 the General Council of the TUC-the official public one this time-came out against the White Paper.

They agreed a unanimous resolution sharply condemning it, moved by TGWU léader Frank Cousins and seconded by Danny McGarvey. .

Castie explains that even at that meeting there was manoeuvring behind the scenes. Vic Feather, she says, rang the government secretly to assure them that everything would be OK despite the resolution and advising her to play it cool.

He told them that Woodcock had lectured the General Council that day saying that they would never improve industrial relations unless there were sanctions to give backing to any proposals which were made.

Castle responded saying:

"That's all fine and dandy, but i get a little tired of hearing trade union leaders talk sense in private whilst attacking us in public for doing the very things they know must be done"

By late January Feather had taken over from Woodcockboth in public and in the now developing back stairs collaboration.

Dined On the very day he became General Secretary he dined privately with Castle in an exclusive hotel and pledged himself to help get the legislation through in any way he could.

Castle urged him to "keep contact like this"

"I think he may turn out to be a great General Secretary", she wrote!

Feather however was not as agile as Woodcock in maintaining a double face.

Shortly after his meeting with Castle, he wrote two scatning articles attacking In Place of Strife-one in an employers magazine and the other in a Soviet trade union magazine.

Panicked

Castle panicked and arranged another private chat. She explains that:

"He seemed quite surprised that i should take his articles seriously"

After all, this was merely what he was saying in public. Surely a politician of her experience didn't believe he meant what he said in public? Didn't she know that this was simply for the consumption of his membership? To allay her tears, he assured Castle that he would "Make a constructive speech on the White Paper at the Executive meeting on February 27". "It'll be alright, luv," he patronisingly reassured her.

Meanwhile a battle had been taking place in cabinet circies on the advisability of bringing in a short Bill quickly, which would simply contain penal clauses.

This was the Jenkins line. Wilson had argued that this would force the pace with the TUC who were stilf opposing the White Paper in public despite their secret deals.

Eventually Castle conceded to this and began the drafting of a short Bill.

Then a complication arose which meant that it never got off the ground. A quarter of a million workers struck on May 1-despite the efforts of the TUC to defuse the issue.

Urgent consultations were held. It was decided that, given this demonstration of hostility to the White Paper, the Government should not escalate the situation by drafting the short Bill, but should place reliance on the TUC, work with them as closely as possible and await the outcome of the June 5 Special Congress.

The TUC leaders, of course, were only too ready to comply. As soon as Feather had completed the draft of his sell-out document-brazenly entitled "A Programme for Action"'-ready for Croydon on June 5, he sent castle a copy.

She quickly arranged a secret meeting with them to discuss it.

The document called on individual unions to accept responsibility for and to discipline their members involved in strikes.

Empower

It also called for changes to Ine ul rules to empower the TUC to ensure that they met the commitment In order to push the TUC as far as ne coula. wilson arqued that their document was not strong enough in a number of respects.

wastic recoves.

«Under pressure Vic admitted that the TUC document had 'soft edges" • but maintained that if he had taken •logosals any further wouldn't have got away with it.

L LIVE Militants lobby the TUC calling for action But he added, encouragingly, "I don't mind how diamond hard you go, so long as it comes from you""

In other words, Feather was saying screw the working class, but don't reveal that I have been collaborating with you to do it!

Wilson's pressure failed to produce changes and he proposed that there should be a further meeting before Croydon.

It should, he said, be:

"Strictly private discussions with a few key TUC people of which not even the General Council would know"

Not even fellow trade union bureaucrats should know-let alone the working class, who they all purport to represent!

Castle said she was about to go on holiday but would return for the talks when they were arranged.

It turned out that she had certainly planned a sumptuous holiday-on Charles Forte's yacht in the Adreatic.

Here was a Labour Minister engaged in anti-union legislation and defending herself by saying she was strongly pro-trade union and that her legislation was designed to strengthen the unions, taking a holiday with a viciously anti-union millionaire employer on his luxury yacht off the Italian coast.

Corrupted

This was the real face of Castle and the real face of the government compromised and corrupted in the most crude way by capitalism.

Forte gave Castle, her husband Ted and fellow minister Richard Crossman who accompanied them, the most lavish treatment. He even fiew out the head waiter of the Cafe Royal to wait on them-something which he did extremely well according to Castle.

Nothing is too good for services rendered!

On June 1 Castle was indeed called from her luxury playground to a secret meeting with the TUC.

The meeting was at Chequers. Jack Jones (who had now fully taken over as TGWU General Secretary from Frank Cousins) was there and so was Scanlon. Feather had pressed Castle to try to persuade Wilson that the TUC could go no further than the terms of the "Programme for Action"

The atmosphere, she says, was positively "jovial"

"You would never have guessed that Hughie Scanlon had just come from a speech declaring all out war on us!"

She went on: "The roast duck having been despatched with relish Harold got down to business. 'How do you see things now, Vic?" "

She explains that at first there was argument-but then "over the brandy' things began to "crystalise out" . "Hughie" was very frank:

" 'Let's face reality', " he said, The question isn't whether our scheme works or your scheme works. It is the fact that our people won't accept government intervention'.

"He reminded us that he was personally in a very difficult position having led his people in all out opposition to the White Paper:

"Moreover, he faced an election for the Presidency and he could be accused of a "volte "But he was prepared to back the TUC whatever the cost"

Feather again argued that Wilson should accept the TUC "Programme for Action" in its existing form. If the government was not prepared to accept this, the TUC would not accept the Bill.

Feather even had the cheek, having consistently opposed it, to threaten Wilson with "more action like May 1" if the government went ahead!

Although Wilson made no reply, he clearly knew that the deal had been struck and the document as it stood would be adopted at Croydon.

The vote went in favour of Feather's "Programme for Action"-and within two weeks, after some ritual haggling, Castle's In Place of Strife was withdrawn by the governmentin favour of "A Programme for Action"

The Croydon deal and the period of In Place of Strife, in which trade union and Labour leaders each struggled to heip capitalism through a period of deep economic crisis, have had far reaching consequences for the working class in Britain.

Edward Heath came to power in June 1970 and began the preparation of the Industrial Relations Act, a piece of legislation more far-reaching than In Place of Strife but built firmly on the foundations laid by Barbara Castle.

The secret bailot principle was taken up by the Tories.

But probably the most lasting effect of In Place of Strife on the working class was in cementing the long term political collaboration between the trade union leaders and the Parliamentary leaders of the Labour Party in government.

Both of these wings of reformism accepted the employers' argument that in a time of crisis the answer is not socialism but for someone to discipline and attack the working class-whether this be the government and the employers or the union leaders themselves.

This did not show up so clearly, during the lite of that particular Labour government, which only lasted a year after Croydon.

But it was to dominate the relationship between Wilson and the TUC when the Labour government was reelected February 1974 following the oil crisis, the three-day week and even deeper levels of economic Jack Jones, having cut his teeth on the sell-out of 1969 emerged as the lynch pin of four stages of harsh wage controls under the "Social Contract' backed by Scanion who had swung sharply to the right after his involuntary confrontation with Heath's Industrial Court.

Nor did the union leaders forget or renege on the pledge offered to Wilson and the British capitalists by Vic Feather at the 1969 Croydon conference:

"Where workers defy these [TUC] committees individual unions would have to commit themselves to taking action under their own rules"

Within months of the return of Wilson to office in 1974 Jack Jones had set a cracking pace in establishing close collaboration with major employers such as British Leyland-and in attempting a "clean up" of the union through the witch-hunting of militants.

In April 1974 my victimisation as deputy convenor at Leyland's Cowley Assembly Plant signalled the start of a nationally coordinated drive by Jones and the union bureaucracy to "reorganise" the union in the BL plant with the most principled leadership in the corporation, and thus create best conditions for management increase exploitation throughout BL:

Barbara Castle may never have seen In Place of Strife on the statute books: but with the aid of reformist union leaders -whose first concern is for the viability of British capitalismshe has helped to shackle and impede the working dass in today's struggles in defence of jobs and wages.

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ol anot Organiser, Thursday I