ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From International Socialism, No. 62, September 1973, p. 3.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Paul Blackledge.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
THE SIGNIFICANT thing about the TUC was not that the Congress itself went for continuing talks with Heath and ducked away from any preparations for a confrontation in Phase Three. That was only to be expected, given the block votes still at the disposal of right-wing leaders such as Sid Green, David Basnett and Frank Chapple. The important point was that Jack Jones, with the support of his union, and Hugh Scanlon, this time without his union’s backing, supported the right on the central question of the talks.
It cannot be said that they are unaware of what is likely in the coming months. Jones and Scanlon, and even Basnett and Gormley, have been predicting large-scale industrial disputes. As Jones put it, only 10 days before the Congress met, he expects there to be ‘a far greater disposition on the part of the workers, without any “incitement” by the unions, to take industrial action’ in the months ahead.
One explanation for the behaviour of Jones and Scanlon is put about by those who used to be their closest friends and comes in particular from the members of the Communist Party. They assert that the two leaders have made a temporary lapse of judgement over the Downing Street talks, but otherwise remain on the left. Such a view has enabled the Morning Star to give favourable front page coverage to many of the things said by Jones. It also enabled Ken Gill, of the technical and supervisory section of the AUEW, to insist, while moving the resolution at the TUC calling for an end to the talks with Heath, that ‘we do not believe that those people who oppose us do so for anything but the best of motives.’
But what is involved is more than an error of judgement. A year ago trade unionists showed over the mines, the railways and the docks that they could defeat the government. Today the government is politically more isolated than ever with much of its electoral support draining away to the Liberals and with the traditional anti-union bias in opinion polls seeming to disappear. Yet it has been able to impose a cut in real wages on most workers. The reason is precisely the ‘error of judgement’ which meant that instead of organising to fight Heath, union leaders have been talking to him.
ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 1 March 2015