1969: Castle's backstairs deal with the TUC
Socialist Press1980sAlan Thornett examines the manoeuvres behind the decision of the Wilson government not to proceed with its anti-union legislation in 1969
Transcribed by hand from the printed page.
In June 1969 a TUC Special Congress voted to endorse a document undertaking to police the unions and stamp out unofficial disputes, using disciplinary measures against militants.
This "Programme of Action" was a public betrayal of the fight against the Wilson government's White Paper "In Place of Strife", drawn up by Barbara Castle.
But this public betrayal was nothing compared to the TUC's scandalous activities behind the scenes.
While the battle was being waged by socialists to mobilise the working class against the measures, the TUC was conducting a breathtaking series of cynical deals in secret meetings with the government.
None of these stitch-ups were known at the time, to those of us involved in the struggles.
The publication of Barbara Castle's diary in the Sunday Times in January of this year has given us a glimpse of these manoeuvres and the relationship between the personalities involved.
White Paper
She reveals that she had decided very early on to fully involve the TUC leaders in her plans.
As soon as she had completed drafting her White Paper in mid December 1968 she made her move. She saw that the key to the situation was George Woodcock, General Secretary of the TUC. This assessment was to stand her in good stead:
"In the afternoon I see George Woodcock alone. [Woodcock of course was still General Secretary of the TUC at that time but was in the process of handing over to Vic Feather].
"On impulse I have decided to take him completely into my confidence about what I am proposing to do over Donovan. He listened to my full resume in silence and then, to my surprise, said that he didn't think there was anything there that need alarm the trade union movement.
"I could hardly believe my ears! But he urged me to take the TUC Finance and General Purposes Committee equally fully into my confidence."
She goes on:
"This shook me rather as I know that whatever I tell them will leak".
'Dividends'
But Woodcock pressed the point. Castle conceded the point and explained:
"He knew I would be taking a risk . . . but he was sure it would reap dividends . . . Just before he left I remarked casually that, after Christmas, I should want to talk to him about the chairmanship of the CIR [Commission on Industrial Relations]. He tried to keep his face dead pan at this but his eyelids flickered and I could almost feel his hopes rising".
This eagerness of Woodcock to feather his own nest is particularly astounding when you consider that the CIR was not even set up at that time.
It was a part of Castle's package of proposals—and therefore would only be set up if the proposals went through.
The bait had drawn the fish. Obviously if Woodcock was already considering becoming chairman of the CIR there was no chance of him opposing her measures.
Following this private conversation with Woodcock, Barbara Castle met the TUC F&GP in December.
The purpose of the meeting was to outline to them her proposals—her all-out attack on the basic rights of the working class.
She opened the meeting by asking these leaders of the working class for an assurance of confidentiality. This was not very difficult as the Diary explains:
"Then George said they all accepted a pledge of confidentiality. So I went ahead . . . The atmosphere as I talked was quiet and serious. Even the questions were muted and there were certainly no attacks. Frank Cousins frowned a good deal while George played it dead pan. Nonetheless I was under no illusions as to what would happen when the press closed in on them."
In fact some of it did leak to the press and Castle was mildly embarrassed.
But she was quite clear that this was a meeting of monumental importance and the prior committment of these key union leaders to her plan was far more important than embarrassment or protocol.
The future was to prove her correct.
As an ex 'left' and Tribunite Castle had a very good grasp of the necessity to carry the trade union 'lefts' with her.
She also knew the damage they could do if they opposed her proposals. She had already assessed AUEW President Hugh Scanlon as the main 'left' in the unions.
Co-operative
She had worked closely with him in breaking the Girling strike only weeks before. At that time she wrote:
"Hughie was most co-operative and agreed to intervene himself with the strikers if a meeting could be arranged.
"He is an odd chap. I can't help liking him and he is worth 20 Johnnie Boyds anyway . . . I'm ready to sup often with Hughie but I will never take a short spoon".
The Parliamentary 'lefts' were no more of a problem. She rang Tony Benn who greeted her "cheerfully" with the words "I'm your friend".
This cryptic comment was soon to blossom into wholehearted support for Castle and her anti-union plans.
Still sticking closely to Woodcock, on January 2 1969 she jointly met the TUC and the CBI about her proposals.
Naturally the CBI said they though the proposals were very good but should go further. Then she explains:
"After the meeting my people smuggled George Woodcock into my room and I formally offered him the chairmanship of the CIR. Although he carefully controlled his reactions I could see his eyes light up. He repeated that he thought the White Paper was excellent. And he went on almost pasionately to say that I had given the trade union movement the opportunity he had always wanted . . . and clearly inferred that my penal clauses would be an incentive for the unions to do the job themselves".
When she presented her White Paper to the Labour cabinet there was a very curious line-up.
The main opposition to it came from Callaghan. He said the penal clauses were "futile" and "harmful".
Benn and Healey on the other hand strongly supported Castle and Jenkins felt the measures should be brought in much quicker than Castle planned.
The Cabinet line up was: For—Wilson, Thompson, Gardener, Short, Shackleton, Peart, Jenkins, Benn, Stewart and Thomas; Against—Mason, Crossman, Ross, Shore, Marsh and Callaghan.
Manoeuvring
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 leader Frank Cousins and seconded by Danny McGarvey.
Castle 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 Woodcock—both in public and in the now developing back stairs collaboration.
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 scathing articles attacking In Place of Strife—one in an employers magazine and the other in a Soviet trade union magazine.
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 fears, 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 circles 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 still opposing the White Paper in public despite their secret deals.
Eventually Castle conceded to this and began the drafting of a short Bill.
Complication
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.
It also called for changes to the TUC rules to empower the TUC to ensure that they met the commitment.
In order to push the TUC as far as he could, Wilson argued that their document was not strong enough in a number of respects.
Castle records:
"Under pressure Vic admitted that the TUC document had "soft edges", but maintained that if he had taken his proposals any further he wouldn't have got away with it. 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 flew 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 face".
"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.
So the trap was set for the working class. The government had proposed legislation. The TUC had publicly condemned it but agreed privately that it was necessary.
A conference had been called on June 5 to "oppose" the White Paper—but a deal had already been cooked up behind the scenes worthy of Charles Forte's Cafe Royal chef.
The TUC had volunteered to do the job themselves, and police the working class on behalf of capitalism.
Before the Croydon conference even took place the outcome was already cut and dried.
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 government—in 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 help 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 ballot 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 life 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 in February 1974 following the oil crisis, the three-day week and even deeper levels of economic crisis.
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 Scanlon 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 to increase exploitation throughout BL.
In 1978 we again came under attack from the union leadership after securing the ballot defeat of the right wing convenor installed in 1974. We were forced to fight the successful 15 month "Cowley 9" struggle against expulsion from the TGWU.
Now in 1980, Edwardes' imposition of the 5%-with-strings pay offer and rigidly centralised bargaining stands on the foundations laid by Jack Jones in the early period of "workers participation" and the Social Contract in 1974.
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 capitalism—she has helped to shackle and impede the working class in today's struggles in defence of jobs and wages.
In this way a leading Labour 'left' has done her small bit to help the Thatcher government's offensive.
It is now up to today's militants to draw the inescapable political conclusion: that only a principled revolutionary leadership, basing itself firmly on the fight for the independent interests of the working class, can today defend the most basic rights against attack.