from Problems of Capitalism & Socialism, No. 2. April/May 2008
1974:
We Don’t Have Elections
Like Those Any More!
Editorial
The central political issue of the late sixties and seventies in Britain was the power of the working class which had completely undermined management’s right to manage and had demoralised a bourgeoisie which was no longer prepared to make the necessary investment in machinery, plant and training to reverse a long-term decline in industrial productivity. This fundamental imbalance between irresponsible labour and impotent capital generated wage-led inflationary crises and constant political turmoil. It was clear that power and responsibility had to be reconnected within one or the other economically active classes before society collapsed into either purposeless revolution or reaction. And that, precisely that, was the issue in the general elections of February and October 1974.
Tories in the February Election
In the general election of June 1970 the Conservatives had unexpectedly defeated Labour. Two years later a Miners’ strike precipitated a state of emergency and the introduction of a three day week to save electricity (which in those far off days was generated by coal as well as by oil). The Miners won their strike and drove a coach and horses through the government’s attempt to control prices and incomes.
Then in 1973, because of the Arab-Israeli War, oil prices soared and inflation, which was high and rising to begin with, hit the roof. Later that year the miners, who had slipped from first to eighteenth in the industrial wages league table, once again threatened strike action. Tory Prime Minister, Ted Heath, once again proclaimed a state of emergency and invoked a three-day week to save electricity. The Miners came out on strike on February 9th. On February 7th. 1974, Heath called an election for February 28th. When Heath made his announcement the BBC commented:
“In a speech broadcast this evening Mr Heath said the government would continue to try to reach a solution to the miners’ dispute during the election campaign.
“But he said the country was fed up with industrial action and he called on people to use their vote to show the miners how they felt.”
That was true enough as far as it went, but everyone knew the matter at issue went further than just the Miners. The Tories election manifesto went right to the heart of the matter:
“Events from overseas have held us back. They will not destroy us.
“Despite the unprecedented sharp rise in world prices, price increases in the shops have, as a result of our counter-inflation policies, been much less than would otherwise have been the case.
“We have also made sure that those worst hit by rising prices, in particular pensioners, are better protected than they have ever been before.
“But we have also had to deal with the inflation which comes as a result of excessive wage increases here at home.
“For more than two years we tried strenuously to deal with this problem by voluntary means. In particular we asked trade unions and employers to join us in working out a voluntary scheme to prevent one group of workers using its industrial strength to steal a march over those working in other industries.
“Then other groups are inevitably provoked into leapfrogging. And so it goes on, with the old, the weak and those who do not or will not strike, suffering more at each turn of the inflationary screw.
“In the end, after all our talks, although we agreed on objectives, the trade unions could not agree with us on a voluntary means of achieving them, and we had to ask Parliament for statutory powers over pay and prices to hold the line against inflation.
“Stages 1 and 2 of that policy, which are now completed, proved more successful than our critics thought possible. The rise in prices due to internal causes was sharply reduced—to a greater extent, indeed, than in most other countries.
“Now, in Stage 3 nearly six million workers have concluded wage agreements within the approved limits. The special position of the mineworkers has been recognised by an offer, within Stage 3, of a size which few other groups of workers can hope to achieve.
“It is a tragedy that the miners’ leaders should have turned down this offer.
“The action taken by the National Union of Mineworkers has already caused great damage and threatens even greater damage for the future.
“It must be the aim of any responsible Government to reach a settlement of this dispute at the earliest possible moment.
“The choice before the Government, and now the choice before the country, is clear.
“On the one hand it would be possible to accept the NUM’s terms for a settlement.
“The country must realise what the consequences of this would be.
“It would mean accepting the abuse of industrial power to gain a privileged position.
“It would undermine the position of moderate trade union leaders.
“It would make it certain that similar strikes occurred at frequent intervals in the future.
“It would destroy our chances of containing inflation.
“The alternative is to reach a settlement with the NUM on terms which safe guard the nation’s interests as well as the miners.
“The basis of that settlement must be fairness.“The terms must be fair to the miners, but they must also be fair to the nearly six million workers who have now accepted settlements within the limits of our counter-inflation policy and the many others who are prepared to do so.
“They must be fair to the even greater number of people who have no union to stand up for them and who rely on the elected government to look after their interests.
“A Conservative Government with a new mandate and five years of certain authority ahead of it would be in a good position to reach such a settlement.
“The present offer by the National Coal Board remains on the table. It can be accepted at any time.
“We have accepted the principles of the Pay Board’s report on relative rates of pay between one group of workers and another. We have already set up machinery for the examination of major claims about relative pay levels, based on the Pay Board.
“As its first task, this new machinery will conduct a full examination of the miners’ case within this framework. It will take due account of the relative claims of other groups, many of whom - such as nurses and teachers - gave evidence during the preparation of the Relativities Report. Moreover, we are prepared to undertake that whatever recommendation the new body makes on the miners’ case can be backdated to the first of March.
“It will be completely free to take evidence from any quarter and to decide upon its recommendations.
“So it will be impartial and it will be thorough.
“And it will be fair, not only to the miners, but to everyone else.
“But whatever settlement is reached, the fact must be faced that, for a time, our nation’s resources will be stretched to the limit, and those most in need of protection against inflation must have first claim on them.
“This Conservative Government has already moved from a two-yearly to an annual review of pensions and all other benefits. We will now move to a six monthly up-rating of pensions and other long-term benefits.
“This will have to be paid for by the community as a whole, out of higher contributions which must be shared fairly amongst all the people.
“A fair and orderly policy for pay and prices, for pensions and benefits meets the economic needs of the country.
“But at the same time, it must be matched by a fair and orderly way of dealing with our industrial relations.
“The foundations for better relations in industry were laid in the Industrial Relations Act. We have never pretended that it would be easy to implement.
“But other industrial countries have found that good industrial relations require a proper framework of law and we are sure that Britain is no exception.
“We shall therefore maintain the essential structure of the Industrial Relations Act, but we shall amend it in the light of experience…
“We shall also seek to improve industrial relations by bringing in new legislation, following discussions with both sides of industry, designed to make large and medium-sized firms introduce a wider measure of employee-participation.
“The best way of curbing the majority of extremists in the trade unions is for the moderate majority of union members to stand up and be counted…
“The General Election that is now upon us is a chance for the British people to show the world that at a time of crisis the overwhelming majority of us are determined not to tear ourselves apart, but to close ranks.
“It is a chance, in other words, to demonstrate that we believe in ourselves as a nation…
“…the moderates within Labour’s ranks have lost control, and the real power in the Labour Party has been taken over, for the first time ever, by its extreme Left wing. And this in turn has been made possible by the dominance of a small group of power-hungry trade union leaders, whose creature the Labour Party has now become…
“…the return of a Labour Government at the present time would be nothing short of a major national disaster.
“The choice before the nation today, as never before, is a clear choice between moderation and extremism.
“We therefore appeal, at this critical time in our country’s affairs, for the support of the great moderate majority of the British people, men and women of all Parties and no Party, who reject extremism in any shape or form.
“For extremism divides, while moderation unites; and it is only on the basis of national unity that the present crisis can be overcome and a better Britain built.”
Put more briefly, as it was throughout the election campaign:—Who runs Britain? Parliament or the Unions?
Those Tory plans for asserting parliamentary sovereignty fell far short of smashing the unions and reducing the working class to Victorian conditions of existence. The most the trade union movement was threatened with was a legislative framework for industrial relations that recognised and regulated its power. Nothing in the Tory proposals could have stood in the way of future extension and consolidation of the political strength and social power of the working class. Nevertheless the organised working class made clear its outright rejection of the Conservative government’s plans for its future. The country at large, the electorate, took it at its word and gave it the legislative power to make its own arrangements. It elected a Labour government, albeit by the narrowest of margins.
Labour in the February Election
With respect to the electoral argument, the Tories were able to address the real issues. Labour could not. It couldn’t openly say that a vote for it was a vote against Parliamentary democracy and for the Unions. It had to pretend the issue was one of administrative competence and rely on the voters to know better. Labour’s manifesto in February 1974 may well have been its shortest ever, and all the better for that. Harold Wilson’s foreword set the tone for the whole:
“The new Labour Government will see that the present dispute is settled by negotiation. We shall control prices and attack speculation and set a climate fair enough to work together with the unions.
“This Election is not about the miners. They are in the firing line today. The housewife has been in the firing line ever since Mr. Heath was elected. Let us now choose a Government willing to face up to Britain’s problems; let us elect a Government of all the people; let us work together.”
Coming to the main body of the Manifesto, matters of substance were not dealt with in any kind of unseemly depth:
“These measures affecting prices and taxation policy will prove by deeds the determination of the new Labour Government to set Britain on the road towards a new social and economic equality. After so many failures in the field of incomes policy - under the Labour Government but even more seriously under the Tory Government’s compulsory wage controls - only deeds can persuade. Only practical action by the Government to create a much fairer distribution of the national wealth can convince the worker and his family and his trade union that ‘an incomes policy’ is not some kind of trick to force him, particularly if he works in a public service or nationalised industry, to bear the brunt of the national burden. But as it is proved that the Government is ready to act - against high prices, rents and other impositions falling most heavily on the low paid and on pensioners - so we believe that the trade unions voluntarily (which is the only way it can be done for any period in a free society), will co-operate to make the whole policy successful. We believe that the action we propose on prices, together with an understanding with the TUC on the lines which we have already agreed, will create the right economic climate for money incomes to grow in line with production. That is the essence of the new social contract which the Labour Party has discussed at length and agreed with the TUC and which must take its place as a central feature of the new economic policy of a Labour Government.
“A LabourGovernment will, therefore:
“(i) Abolish the PAY BOARD apparatus set up by the Tories
“(ii) Repeal the INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS ACT as a matter of extreme urgency and then bring in an Employment Protection Act and an Industrial Democracy Act, as agreed in our discussions with the TUC, to increase the control of industry by the people…
“…more will be needed if we are to create a new spirit in industry. The British people, both as workers and consumers, must have more control over the powerful private forces that at present dominate our economic life. To this end we shall:
“7 Sustain and expand industrial development and exports and bring about the re-equipment necessary for this purpose through the powers we shall take in a new INDUSTRY ACT and through the Planning Agreement system which will allow Government to plan with industry more effectively.
“Wherever we give direct aid to a company out of public funds we shall in return reserve the right to take a share of the ownership of the company.
“8 In addition to our plans set out in point 5 above for taking into common ownership land required for development, we shall substantially extend PUBLIC ENTERPRISE by taking mineral rights. We shall also take shipbuilding, shiprepairing and marine engineering, ports, the manufacture of airframes and aeroengines into public ownership and control. But we shall not confine the extension of the public sector to the loss-making and subsidised industries. We shall also take over profitable sections or individual firms in those industries where a public holding is essential to enable the Government to control prices, stimulate investment, encourage exports, create employment, protect workers and consumers from the activities of irresponsible multi-national companies, and to plan the national economy in the national interest. We shall therefore include in this operation, sections of pharmaceuticals, road haulage, construction, machine tools, in addition to our proposals for North Sea and Celtic Sea oil and gas. Our decision in the field of banking, insurance and building societies is still under consideration. We shall return to public ownership assets and licences hived-off by the present government, and we shall create a powerful National Enterprise Board with the structure and functions set out in Labour’s Programme 1973.
“9 We intend to socialise existing nationalised industries. In consultation with the unions, we shall take steps to make the management of existing nationalised industries more responsible to the workers in the industry and more responsive to their consumers’ needs.”
Just so it was understood that the Labour Party was speaking for the Unions that was all that needed to be said, and said clearly. And it was, in the Manifesto and also in Labour’s election broadcasts. For example, according to James Callaghan on 12th. February 1974…
“The first step we’ll take will be to rebuild some confidence in the integrity of our industrial relations system. Unions and management will be urged and encouraged to take their cases to independent arbitration, instead of trying to settle through the medium of strikes. Good, you may say, that’s good, but will it work? Will the trade unions agree? The answer is yes.
“It’s now a year since a group of us were deputed by the Labour Party to have a long series of meetings with the T.U.C. leaders and they and we agreed on this—to make a new conciliation and arbitration service a central part of Britain’s industrial relations system. It will be independent; it will be non-governmental. Its offices will be established throughout the land, not only to deal with national disputes but also to be in a position to resolve local disputes. Separate from it will be a new high-powered commission to begin an examination of the relative values of different kinds of work and the proper rewards that should be paid. These first steps will help us to reduce disruption, because ordinary groups of workers will not have the same feelings of frustration to resort to strikes. Far more useful approach than Mr Heath’s philosophy of bash ‘em all.”
Neil Kinnock on 21st. February…
“…the day after we are elected we settle with the miners, we settle with the whole industry, and when the miners go back to work Britain goes back to work. Then we can get down to the problems of solving the conflict in industry, we do that by getting rid of the Industrial Relations Act which will give real security to British workers, by introducing the Industrial Democracy Act which will give industrial control to the people who actually produce the goods in industry.. Then with our new conciliation and arbitration service we’re going to put out the fires of conflict on the shop floor where they start. And the standing commission on incomes will see to it that we have a fair distribution of incomes—all incomes throughout the whole country, regardless where people get their incomes from. But central to Labour’s economic strategy is the voluntary incomes policy based on consent and assent between trade unions and the Government. And that means that when workers see their food prices subsidised, when they see those pensions going up, when they see their rents frozen, they will want to join a compact with a just government. Len Murray has been trying to do that for the last three or four months. Every time he has tried it the last government have rejected it. We can’t afford to have industrial warfare in Britain, we will bring industrial peace on the basis of a compact on the basis of a partnership, we will take the poison out of industrial relations.”
Labour in the October Election
Though the Conservatives gained more votes in February ‘74, with a slightly higher percentage both of those voting and of the electorate, Labour, with 5 more seats, was the largest party and took office as a minority government. Insofar as it could Labour worked to implement its manifesto pledges, but the effort was unsustainable. In less than two months, between June 19th. and July 30th., the government suffered 17 defeats in the Commons and 15 in the Lords. These included 7 defeats on the crucial Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill. So no-one was especially surprised when, on September 18th., the Prime Minister announced that a further election would take place on October 10th. Labour’s Manifesto for this election again was relatively short. Again Harold Wilson’s foreword set the tone…
“In February the country rejected, as we had urged, policies of confrontation and conflict and ‘fight to a finish’ philosophies. We put before the country the policy of the Social Contract.
“We have shown that as a Government we are prepared to take the decisions that are needed to achieve economic and social justice without which this country can never unite.
“The policies we have followed over the past six months, the policies which the next Labour Government will follow, are policies to strengthen the Social Contract.”
And further…
“This election is inevitable since no clear majority emerged in February. Despite its minority position the Labour Government have made a good start. Now we ask for the return of a Labour Government, with a working majority, so that we can continue to tackle the great problems facing Britain. We have to come to the men and women of our country and ask for their mandate for industrial and social reconstruction. We need national support for a steady will for a new society. In fact we are asking your help to carry through policies which will work for international peace and co-operation and at the same time create at home effective measures of economic and social reconstruction…
“At the heart of this manifesto and our programme to save the nation lies the Social Contract between the Labour Government and the trade unions, an idea derided by our enemies, but certain to become widely accepted by those who genuinely believe in government by consent - that is, in the democratic process itself as opposed to the authoritarian and bureaucratic system of wage control imposed by the Heath Government and removed by Labour.
“The Social Contract is no mere paper agreement approved by politicians and trade unions. It is not concerned solely or even primarily with wages. It covers the whole range of national policies. It is the agreed basis upon which the Labour Party and the trade unions define their common purpose.
“Labour describes - as we did in our February manifesto at the time of the last election and as we do again at this one - the firm and detailed commitments which will be fulfilled in the field of social policy, in the fairer sharing of the nation’s wealth, in the determination to restore and sustain full employment. The unions in response confirm how they will seek to exercise the newly restored right of free collective bargaining. Naturally the trade unions see their clearest loyalty to their own members. But the Social Contract is their free acknowledgment that they have other loyalties - to the members of other unions too, to pensioners, to the lower-paid, to invalids, to the community as a whole.
“It is these wide-ranging hopes and obligations which the General Council of the TUC described in its declaration of June 26 and which were overwhelmingly approved by the Congress on September 4. This is the Social Contract which can re-establish faith in the working of Britain’ s democracy in the years ahead…
“We promised to repeal the Tory Industrial Relations Act and this promise has been fulfilled. The last minute amendments inserted into our Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, by the coalition of Tories, Liberals and the Lords, will be removed in the first session of the new Parliament.
“But the repeal of the Tory Act was only the first step. Our aim is to make industry democratic - to develop joint control and action by management and workers across the whole range of industry, commerce and the public services.
“This objective involves strong trade union organisation and widening the scope of collective bargaining. In addition, however, it will mean the provision of new rights for workers through changes in company law.
“First, We will introduce an Employment Protection Bill - to provide extensive new rights for workers covering such issues as union membership, apprentices’ training and conditions, the guaranteed week, maternity leave, safeguards on redundancy and employers’ bankruptcy, to give new rights to unions in collective bargaining, including new safeguards for peaceful picketing, to reform the Wages Councils and establish a key role for the new Conciliation and Arbitration Service in helping to get rid of low pay.
“Second, we will introduce new legislation to help forward our plans for a radical extension of industrial democracy in both the private and public sectors. This will involve major changes in company law and in the statutes which govern the nationalised industries and the public services.
“Measures will also be taken to tackle the evils created by private employment agencies and to deal with abuses of labour-only contracting…”
Most interesting there is the way in which the committment to industrial democracy hardened from “We intend to socialise existing nationalised industries. In consultation with the unions, we shall take steps to make the management of existing nationalised industries more responsible to the workers in the industry and more responsive to their consumers’ needs.” to:
“Our aim is to make industry democratic—to develop joint control and action by management and workers across the whole range of industry, commerce and the public services.
“This objective involves strong trade union organisation and widening the scope of collective bargaining. In addition, however, it will mean the provision of new rights for workers through changes in company law…
“…we will introduce new legislation to help forward our plans for a radical extension of industrial democracy in both the private and public sectors. This will involve major changes in company law and in the statutes which govern the nationalised industries and the public services.”
At the outset of this second phase in the Labour Government of 1974-79 it can really only be described as the Rule of the Social Contract, an informal coalition of the Labour Party and the Unions in which the Unions were the dominant partner (these are the years in which Britain very nearly went Syndicalist). The firming up and broadening of its commitment to working class power in the economy was entirely due to the growing influence of Jack Jones’ views on industrial democracy and workers’ control. In the late sixties’ Jones had chaired a Labour Party working party on Industrial Democracy, whose Report was accepted by the 1968 Conference. This recommended that there should be…
“…experiments in placing representatives of the workers directly concerned on the boards of publicly owned firms and industries (or alternatively provision for attendance at board meetings) and this representation should not be confined to full-time officers of unions. Workers’ representatives should be drawn into decision making at every level, particularly at the various points of production.”
That Labour Party Report was the basis of a more comprehensive document that was adopted by the TUC in September 1974, along with the rest of the Social Contract. This set out a legislative framework for the establishment of industrial democracy: a new Companies Act requiring 50% worker representation through trade union channels on the policy making boards of private companies; new statutes for the nationalised industries that “would provide for 50 per cent direct trade union representation on the policy-making boards of nationalised industries”; and new arrangements to make provision for “a satisfactory degree of trade union representation on decision-making operational bodies in the public services” (Industrial Democracy, para 106). The recommendations of the TUC Report were the terms of reference of the soon to be established Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy, of which a little more shortly with much more to follow in future issues of this magazine.
Tories in the October election
In many ways the Tory Manifesto for the election of October 1974 is the most interesting of any of the documents quoted in this article. The Conservative Party had fought the February election on the issue of Who Runs Britain? The electorate had decided that question in favour of the Unions. Heath’s Tories were prepared to accept that decision and, albeit on their own terms, work within it. So, the Manifesto both recognised the new realities and argued the case for their political interest under them. That could have been said very briefly but Tory voters and, more important, Tory money, had to be petted and stroked and jollied along so it was said at great length with much old rhetoric…
“In the interest of national unity we will not re-introduce the Industrial Relations Act…
“This is a far better way of protecting the interests of people at work than the excessive increases in some wage settlements over the last few months. These merely feed inflation and lead eventually to heavy unemployment. We believe that our attempt to protect the real value of wages, combined with the responsible self-interest of trade unions, should make a voluntary policy on pay and prices effective. But no government could honestly say that it will never be necessary to use the law in the national interest to support an effective policy for fighting inflation. In the absence of a viable prices and incomes policy any government would have to take harsher financial and economic measures than would otherwise be needed…
“…no part of the nation can exist by itself. Disruption may bring temporary advantage to a few, but all are hurt in the end. The nation is diminished and impoverished by it.
“Trade unions are an important estate of the realm. We shall co-operate closely with them, and we hope that our proposals for industrial partnership will lead to close and effective co-operation both with employees and management. But we shall not be dominated by the trade unions. They are not the government of the country…
“Our policies will lead to a united nation. We shall uphold the law and the authority of Parliament. It is in Parliament, not in the streets, that national policies must be worked out and disputes resolved…
“The Conservative Party, free from dogma and free from dependence upon any single interest, is broadly based throughout the nation. It is our objective to win a clear majority in the House of Commons in this election. But we will use that majority above all to unite the nation. We will not govern in a narrow partisan spirit. After the election we will consult and confer with the leaders of other parties and with the leaders of the great interests in the nation…
“We do not believe that the great majority of people want revolutionary change in society, or for that matter that the future happiness of our society depends on completely altering it. There is no majority for a massive extension of nationalisation. There is no majority for the continued harrying of private enterprise. There is no majority for penalising those who save, own property or make profits. People are not clamouring for Whitehall to seize even greater control over their lives. They want more choice and diversity, not less…
“…We must therefore as a matter of urgency, work out with the trade unions and the employers a fair and effective policy for prices and incomes. We believe that the great majority of the trade union movement will be prepared to work with the democratically elected government of the country for the public good. If after all our efforts we fail to get a comprehensive voluntary policy we shall need to support the voluntary restraint that is achieved with the back-up of the law. It would be irresponsible and dishonest totally to rule this out, but the various methods no less than the principle would need to be widely discussed. In the absence of an effective prices and incomes policy any Government would have to take harsher financial and economic measures than would otherwise be necessary…
“…There are no short cuts to building a new prosperity. There is no alternative to improved efficiency, higher productivity and increased production. No government, whatever its colour, can simply switch on economic growth by itself. It depends on the hard work, skills and enterprise of the British people.
“Our taxation and industrial policies will therefore be designed to encourage firms to invest more money in new plant and machinery in our factories. It is here that we have fallen behind other industrial countries. In the last few months, investment and industrial confidence have received a terrible and deliberate battering. Taxation has clawed back much of the cash which industry needs. Threats of nationalisation have destroyed confidence. It is time to call a halt to these immensely damaging policies…
“We will introduce a major reform of company law as proposed during the period of our last administration…
“…We shall…examine straightaway the possibility of introducing in this country the sort of national scheme which operates in France for giving a fair share of the increased profits made by individual firms to those whose efforts produce improved performance and to those who make their contribution by investing their savings in new factories and new machinery.
“We support the general strategy for coal agreed during 1974 with the industry. Our aim will be to make the industry viable so that it can provide an assured and prosperous future for all those who work in it. An important element will be the establishment of a productivity scheme…
“People at work
“PARTNERSHIP IN INDUSTRY
“We want to promote partnership between government and industry, and partnership between those who work together in industry. It is on this that our chances of overcoming the country’s economic difficulties and laying the foundations of a new prosperity for everyone will depend.
“THE LAW AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
“Governments of both parties have tried to establish a new legal framework within which industrial relations could develop. As we have said elsewhere, we still believe that our own legislation was soundly based and unfairly attacked, but in view of the hostility which it aroused we will not reintroduce it. We accept the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, introduced by the present government and sensibly amended by Parliament, as the basis for the law on trade union organisation and as the legal framework for collective bargaining. We hope that our decision will help create a better climate for industrial partnership.
“EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION
“To strengthen this partnership, we will lay a formal duty on all large and medium-sized firms to consult employee representatives on a wide range of subjects. This is necessary not only for economic reasons but also because a better understanding is important in its own right. We want to leave the precise methods and procedures as flexible as possible, but we have it in mind that the subjects covered should range from disciplinary and dismissal procedures and redundancy arrangements to consultations about methods of working, and profit-sharing and share-ownership schemes. These proposals should lay the foundation for future developments in employee participation at every level of the enterprise, but it is much too soon to be dogmatic about the exact form of participation in management.
“Much can be learned about the right to consultation at work from the success achieved by certain companies. The government in particular will need to set a clear example with its own employees and the nationalised industries will be expected to play their part.”
The Tory Manifesto went on for a very long time about many things that were important enough, some very important, in their own right, but that mattered not at all to the electorate in the second election of 1974. All they had to say they did say: that wherever the TUC made its case and stood its ground the TUC would have its way; that the Miners had won their strike and would not be bothered again; that Company Law would be redrafted and industrial democracy introduced throughout the British economy. Stripped of rhetoric and verbiage, where it addressed the real world it was hoping to govern, the Tory Manifesto was really not very different from Labour’s (just a lot longer).
That the electorate chose Labour to administer the day to day of things while the TUC got on with organising the future seemed natural and inevitable at the time. And perhaps it was just that. But, knowing how things worked out it is hard not to wonder, would it not have been better if the Conservative Party had been elected in October ‘74 to conserve something of the old world amidst the new? Might the new world then actually have come to fruition? Ah well…
In the real world…This time Labour won most seats with most votes and a shaky overall majority of 4.
The Bullock Committee
On August 5th. 1975 Peter Shore, Secretary of State for Trade, announced his intention to appoint a Committee of Inquiry “to advise on questions relating to representation at board level in the private sector". The Committee’s terms of reference read as though they had been written by workers’ control enthusiasts on the General Council of the TUC, and indeed they had been:
“Accepting the need for a radical extension of industrial democracy in the control of companies by means of representation on boards of directors, and accepting the essential role of trade union organisations in this process, to consider how such an extension can best be achieved, taking into account in particular the proposals of the Trades Union Congress report on industrial democracy as well as experience in Britain, the EEC and other countries. Having regard to the interests of the national economy, employees, investors and consumers, to analyse the implications of such representation for the efficient management of companies and for company law”.
The membership of the Committee was announced on December 3rd., 1975. Bevin’s biographer, Lord Bullock, Master of St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, was appointed Chairman. The other members were: Professor George Bain, Director of the SSRC Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick; Mr N P Biggs, Chairman of Williams & Glyn’s Bank Ltd and former Chairman and Chief Executive of Esso Petroleum Co Ltd; Sir Jack Callard, Former Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd and (since 30 June 1976) Chairman of British Home Stores Ltd; Mr Barrie Heath, Chairman of Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds Ltd; Mr Clive Jenkins, General Secretary of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs; Mr Jack Jones, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union; Mr David Lea, Secretary, Economic Department, Trades Union Congress; Mr John Methven, Director-General of Fair Trading; Professor K W Wedderburn, Cassel Professor of Commercial Law in the University of London (London School of Economics); Mr N S Wilson, Solicitor. Mr John Methven resigned from the Committee on 15 July 1976, on taking up his appointment as Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry.
Those details concerning the Bullock Committee are taken from the Preface to its Report, which was presented to Parliament in January 1977.
The central core of the work of this magazine over however long it takes will be the narrative of the Bullock Report; the evidences to it, the agitations around it, the Report itself and the working out in politics and in the economy of all the consequences of all that. How the British Left met power along the way, but preferred a masque of anarchy. How the British Left brushed past outright victory to embrace the most comprehensively drawn out defeat in the history of class struggle.
The Use of Power
Workers’ Control as a matter of political strategy is not about the right of workers to be involved in consultation exercises or decision making processes at shop floor or board level in industry. As a matter of fact it is not about rights at all. Workers’ Control is about power and nothing else. It is all about power.
Workers’ Control is about power in precisely the way that Ernie Bevin was about power. In the course of winning the anti-Fascist war in Britain and fitting-out Britain to play some part in winning that war abroad Bevin established all the elements of working class life, from trades unions and methodist chapels to working men’s clubs and music halls, at the heart of British social life. In just the same way that the acknowledged routines of social power in the First World War were middle class by origin, training, manning, accent and inclination the force that infused the second effort wore cloth caps and hob-nailed boots.
Historically British society is adversarial; so much so that its managers often have difficulty in making a pattern out of the war of each against everybody else which occupies so much of their social space. Margaret Thatcher couldn’t see it at all, famously declaring in an interview with Woman’s Own in 1987: “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.”—then moving on with policies to undermine the economic basis of family life.
For almost forty years the working class, by sheer combative reflex, was on top of the zero sum game of British politics. Unfortunately that combative reflex was never absorbed in reflection to become a body of knowledge providing workers with a programme for imposing their collectivist instincts on the bourgeois morass. While he lived Bevin was the closest thing the British working class has ever had to a programmed body of knowledge. After his death it lived on for some time in the great union he founded and built. Elsewhere the class reverted to brute force and an ignorance which to say the least suited many of those who were supposed to be providing it with political leadership.
Back in the day, having shared in winning the war on the back of working class social power the British state had no immediate choice other than to acquiesce in Bevin’s consolidation of that power as a Welfare State. It had no choice because if it was to remain true to itself it had to abide by the one rule of the zero sum game of British politics—to the victor the spoils.
Britain’s welfare state was an acknowledgement on the part of its ruling class that working class power entitled workers to rights. Though these may have been mostly negative rights in the first instance, such as the right not to die screaming in a Poor House or on a charity ward, they very quickly acquired a postive character, transforming the quality of life of individual workers and the political prospects of the class as a whole. But this, though rooted in power, was all perceived as a question of abstract right and was tenuous thereby.
Bevin would have had it otherwise. He would have had the welfare state develop as a logical outcome of working class power, in such a way that just seeing itself in the light of such power relations would impel the class to the further consolidation of still greater power. To that end Bevin asked the unions to manage the welfare state. And the unions, probably blinded by the rights, certainly frightened by the responsibility, refused.
The Work Ethic
An editorial in the most recent issue of Labour & Trade Union Review (No. 185, March 2008—Why the ‘work ethic’ isn’t working) cites John Monks, former general secretary of the TUC, current general secretary of the European TUC, as source for Bevin’s attempt to bring the welfare state under workers’ control. The editorial links the unions’ refusal of that offer to the beginnings of a decline in what it calls the British work ethic, which is a very important point towards understanding the working class’s failure to generate a political movement adequate to the success of its combative reflex.
Its work ethic was the point at which the British working class asserted its humanity against the reductionist crudities of the capitalist division of labour. Workers who could control nothing else in their working lives could at least decide how well or how poorly they performed their allotted tasks at the point of production. Where and when they decided to take a pride in their work was the moment that determined them to combination and collective action. Wreckers don’t form unions and struggle to secure their future. Workers taking a pride in themselves and in their work do precisely that. It is precisely so that working class confidence and power was built, precisely in the loss of all such that the New Labour cancer developed and spread.
Wreckers did not take the lead in developing combination and collective action but they had a tendency to flourish by way of militant rhetoric in the bureaucracies that combination and collective action required to be made effective. Work ethic was not highly regarded in any union headquarters, no more than any other form of undisciplined shop floor spontaneity. On all sides of the industrial and political wings of the British working class movement the work ethic of the workers was devalued and disdained.
At the same time the workers’ combative reflex was diverted to wrecking agendas which were realised almost in total.
Now almost all of British industry has been wrecked. And the wreckers, New Labour now, rule the wasteland.
Labour, in the old sense of the term, the working class interest, is almost completely powerless now, and encumbered with so many rights it hardly knows where to turn to beg a crust. Powerless now, begging is just about all the left has left to it.
But this magazine is still concentrating on better days, when working class politics retained a vision of working class power, when a Labour government sought to legislate for the working class interest and at least a few union leaders could think clearly through to what that entailed.