TUC leaders bow to King

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IN THE topsy-turvy world of TUC bureaucrats, the passing of Norman Tebbit and the arrival of Tom King at the laughingly-entitled 'Department of Employment' has provoked alarm and some regret.

From the standpoint of top union leaders, the recent period - which has seen Tebbit's anti-union laws enacted, the first injunctions issues, and legal wrangles proliferate - has been one of 'improvement' in union-Government relations.

And as supreme collaborators, capitulators, trimmers, fixers, and turners with the wind, the union leaders found it hard , to conceal their admiration for the brutal hard line and uncompromising defence of ruling class interests epitomised in Tebbit.

So Bill Keys - the supposed 'left' of the TUC's top-level team sent to talk with Tebbit -told the Guardian quite firmly that:

"In a peculiar way I am sad to see Mr Tebbit go. As an abrasive man myself, I used to like meeting him"

Like a maltreated mongrel grateful to be given even scraps of food and relieved at not being kicked, Keys celebrated their relationship:

"He has been prepared to listen to us, and we were able to have long and detailed discussions with him"

But if Keys was pleased simply to receive a bone or two, the CPSA's right wing leader Alastair Graham had looked forward to getting his own basket in Tebbit's living room - by reaching political agreement with Tebbit!

"As this Government finds itself in increasing economic difficulties, it will need to get a wider consensus.

''The TUC at its last Congress showed that it is prepared to be realistic in its demands (!) on this government"

While NUPE and GMBU leaders pointed to King's intervention to hold down water workers' pay, Graham expressed the hope that King would not try to be more 'macho' than Tebbit.

With this as a warm-up to the meeting last Wednesday, it is scarcely surprising. that TUC leaders came out enthusiastically talking of King's 'willingnes to listen' and his eagerness t see the TUC's own package r measures to restrict the preser operation of union politic funds.

They have now pledged ther selves to engage in 'detaile negotiations' on the third phas of Tory anti-union legislation.

Chances

And King - like Tebbit be fore him - knows that as lon as he can tie down the TUI chiefs to piecemeal 'negotia tions' on the political levy, hi chances are increased of forcin through the other aspects of th new anti-union laws - th imposition of ballots befor strikes and ballots for the elec tion of union executive com mittees.

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Socialist Organiser no.152 October 27.1983 PageA..