How Back Room Boys Run the Tuc

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unjon, by means of threats, by the Congress, or whether democratically expressed unions with more than wishes of the union's 100,000 members should members. have the right to automaticThe structure of the ally appoint members to the General Council will also be General Council. (The smalla big issue at this year's Con- er unions would then vote in gress - specitically, whether their own minnows' section the 41 person leadership of to elect a specific number of the trade union movement representatives between should be elected annually them).

"I set about cultivating the acquaintance of the employers' officials and being as frank with them as my duty to my members permitted. I tried to play straight with them. I found they did the same with me. "We knew that ours was a continuing WALTER CITRINE, TUC general secretary ... never out of place, whether he is choosing wine and a cigar in a smart restaurant, making deals with employers and Ministers, or simply chatting to rank and The Sunday Times describing VIC FEATHER', ', TUC general secretary 191 THE SELL-OUT of ASLEF has focused the attention of socialists on the operation of the TUC.

The Finance and General Purposes Committee (a subcommittee acting with no authority from the General Council, and consisting of leaders with no mandate from their own unions) accessfullv broke the official strike of an affiliated file trade unionists" Congress proposes -and who disposes? Carol Hobbs looks at the backstage plans and plots in the TUC At the moment, the entire General Council is elected from 18 trade groups based on specific industries like engineering and electricity, or clusters of unions in a particular area like the civil service.

The principle deduced from this is that once elected the General Council member is answerable to Congress, not to his (and almost always it is his) individual At first glance responsibility to the whole movement will appear a valuable principle, one which embodies the unity of the working class and the necessity to overcome sectionalism.

This was the aspiration years ago of the militants of the Shop Stewards Movement and the Minority Movement, who fought for "All power to the General Council" , as a "general staff of labour"

They saw it as a means of concentrating the power of labour against the growing concentration of capital.

Shield In reality, alas, this conception of accountability has often been used as a shield and justification for those who wished to take steps which were far from being in the interests of their members.

Bryan Stanley of the POEU said at last year's Congress.

"It is inconceivable that the General Secretary of the Transport Workers or the Engineering Workers has a responsibility to Congress when their own unions is telling them to go in a different direction"

Yet in 1977 Jack Jones informed the executive of the TGWU that they were bound to observe the 'only one wage increase in 12 months' rule despite TGWU conference decisions to the contrary. Similarly Scarbon "late' Hugh faced a move by the AUEW National Committee to bar him from taking part in talks with the Heath government, he replied:

"Do your damnedest! I participating as a representative of the General Council, not the Engineers"

Moss Evans or Alan Sapper, if asked to explain their strike-breaking on the railways, could reply in the same terms.

Where the militants of the generation before 1926 saw the role of the 'general staff as leading struggles, the General Council has in real ity acted to dampen resistance, limit working class action, and relay the policies of the capitalist state into the labour movement.

As so often, a weapon forged for the emancipation of the workers has become an instrument to discipline them.

The state's exploitation of the contradictions inherent in the role of the union official has led in the last 60 years to the growth of a trade union super-bureaucracy, centred on the General Council, whose personnel are far more remote from and resistant to rank and file control than the officials of the national unions in the early 1900s.

In 1914 the predecessors of the General Council, the Parliamentary Committee (the title illustrates its far narrower focus) was little more than a talking shop with a part-time General Secretary.

What consolidated the General Council as a mediat0I between labour and capital was the 1926 defeat and the strategy of 'influencing the state' followed after that by Ernest Bevin, the most powertul union leader of the day, and Walter Citrine the first real TUC General Secretary.

Partner

During the second world war and after the TUC was accepted as a (very junior) partner in the administration of capitalist society. Its leaders were given direct access to government its representatives sat on hundreds of state boards and committees, its purpose became the successful management and conconflict.

The attitudes that union officials have always brought to Congress House can be seen from Citrine's comment "I set about cultivating the acquaintance of the employers' officials and being as frank with them as my duty to my members permitted. I tried to play straight with them. I found they did the same with me.

«We knew that ours was a continuing relationship"

By the '7Os, the TUC had developed into a hard bureaucratic machine, its policy and decisions being increas ingly centralised at the top and relayed downwards.

Rule 14

Its devolved machinery such as regional councils and Trades Councils, has been hemmed in by controls such as the notorious Rule 14 (which forbids Trades Councils from taking decisions contrary to TUC policy). Its officials are total and capable bureaucrats.

By the 1960s, George Woodcock could inform Congress.

"The General Council do not as a rule welcome motions on the Congress agenda. Our general attitude to motions is that if they tell us to do what we already intend to do, they are redundant, and if they try to tell us what we do not intend to do they are offensive"

The Sunday Times could describe Woodcock's successOr as general secretary, Vic Feather, similarly insulated from rank and file control, as:

... never out of place, whether he is choosing wine and a cigar in a smart restaurant, making deals with employers and Ministers, or simply chatting to rank and file trade unionists".

Like their successor Len Murray, Woodcock and Feather were bureaucrats in the pure sense.

They had never moved up the union structure, never led a strike, never fought out policies at stewards' committees or branches.

Down from Oxford, Len was appointed as a researcher in the TUC economic relationship".

1926-45 department in 1947, having impressed his interviewer Woodcock with his cynical view of trade unions.

After 25 years as a backroom Uriah Heep Len eventually made it by dint of scrupulous orthodoxy and 'Buggins' Turn' Such an individual is not ikely to possess even the residual shards of union consciousness that must lurk somewhere deep in the souls of General Council *left-wingers.

If one strand in the creation of a hard bureaucratic centre in Great Russell St is the bureaucratising pressures on the individual union tops as they scramble up the ladder from Hartlepool section steward to Hampstead general secretary. the other ingredient is the interplay of General Council members with the full-time staff of Congress House. ' Murray's powers are immense because ill-defined. Rule 10 of the TUC simply states that the General Secrtary is elected by Congress and sits in an ex-officio capacity without a vote on the General Council. • He is there all the time. He is not burdened with the suppression of the rank and file of an affiliated union.

The full-time staff at Congress House, which has burgeoned in the last decade, is at his beck and call.

There are seven main departments in Congress House, intended to provide expertise and resources for Murray and the General Council.

Organisation and

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Socialișt Organiser no, 98 September 2 1982 page oze " = sraif

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trol, rather than the success- ful prosecution, of industrial