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The Party Connection: Divergence and Convergence in the British Labour Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1978

Lewis Minkin
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Extract

The consultations which led to the Social Contract of 1973 are understood to have been initiated as a result of a proposal by Jack Jones made to a Fabian Society meeting held at the 1971 Labour Party Conference. At that meeting Jones told the story of a man who having completed fifty years of marriage was asked if he had ever contemplated divorce. He replied, ‘Divorce—never. Murder—often’.

In the past two decades the relationship between the unions and the labour party — the central feature of labour politics in Britain — has undergone some remarkable changes. It has passed through severe crisis: reinforcing tensions which built up in the 1960s became so great at the end of the decade that the alliance appeared ‘threatened as never before’. One scholar of labour movement politics suggested at the time that there might be a life-span to ‘Labour’ parties. To the Left of the Labour Party some revolutionary critics looked to a militant union break with ‘the immense contradiction’. To the Right of the Labour Party some social democratic critics looked to a realignment which would facilitate the emergence of a new radical centre party.

Type
Research Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 1978 , pp. 458 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978

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References

1 Robinson, Derek, ‘Labour Market Policies’, in Beckerman, W., The Labour Governmenťs Economic Record, Duckworth, London, 1972, p. 325 Google Scholar.

2 Rawson, R. W., ‘The Life Span of Labour Parties’, in Political Studies, 1969, Vol. XVII, No. 33, pp. 313–33Google Scholar.

3 Anderson, Perry, ‘The Limits and Possibilities of Trade Union Action’, in Blackburn, Robin and Cockburn, Alexander, The Incompatibles, Penguin, London, 1967, p. 279 Google Scholar.

4 Taverne, Dick, The Future of the Left, Cape, London, 1974, pp. 159–61Google Scholar.

5 Even in 1953, at the height of constituency party affiliation (1952 membership) out of a total Conference vote of 6,417,000 the trade unions cast 5,086,000 votes, the CLPs only 1,307,000, and the socialist, co-operative and professional organizations only 24,000 votes. Today (1977) the figures are: Total Conference vote 6,499,000; Trade Union votes 5,805,000, CLPs 641,000, Socialist, Co-operative and Profes sional Organizations 53,000.

6 The NEC now has 29 members. Since 1937 the CLPs have elected seven representatives, the Socialist organizations (etc.) one, and the trade unions twelve, but in addition the five women’s section representatives and the treasurer are elected by the whole conference, thus making them subject to the voting preponderance of the trade unions. Further seats are taken (ex-officio) by the Leader and Deputy Leader and by a Young Socialist representative.

7 Since the Second World war approximately one-third of the PLP has been sponsored by the unions (in October 1974 it was 127 out of 319). It has also been estimated that over 80% of MPs hold trade union membership cards. Ellis, John and Johnson, R. W., Members from the Unions, Fabian Research Pamphlet 316, 1974 Google Scholar.

8 Estimates of the union contribution vary widely because of the difficulty of assessing the various sources of party income at the local and regional levels. The party is most reliant on the unions for its General Election fund and national organization finances.

9 It is part of the constitution of the party that even individual members of the constituency Labour Parties ‘eligible for trade union membership must also be members of a union and contribute to its political fund’. Thus the distinction between ‘the unions’ and ‘the constituency parties’ can be misleading.

10 Until the 1974 general elections it was a feature of Labour’s electoral support that there was a strong correlation between trade union membership and Labour voting. Blondel, J., Voters, Parties and Leaders, Penguin, London, 1963, pp. 67-8Google Scholar; Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain, Macmillan, London, 1969 edition, pp. 190-7Google Scholar. Although in February 1974 only 48% of all trade unionists turned out to vote Labour (J. Crewe, J. Alt and B. Särlvik, The Erosion of Partisanship 1964-75, PSA Paper, 1976), the majority of Labour’s electoral supporters were from trade union families.

11 Relations between the TUC and the party have generally been conducted on an ad hoc basis of consultations but at times a permanent bridging committee (the National Joint Council, the National Council of Labour, and today the Liaison Committee) has had an important role in policy-making. There is also a token cross-representation between the Home Policy Committee of the party’s NEC and the Economic Committee of the TUC.

12 Unions normally affiliate to the TUC on the basis of their full membership but to the party (roughly) on the basis of the proportion of union members who pay the political levy. Although most large manual worker unions affiliated to the party, many white collar unions and a large number of smaller unions did not. (See footnote 28 for the 1977 figures.)

13 Votes at the Labour Party Annual Conference are concentrated in two ways: by virtue of the size of the few large unions and because individual unions cast their votes as a block without registering minority opinion. At the Party Conferences of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Arthur Deakin of the Transport Workers, Tom Williamson of the General and Municipal Workers, and Will Lawther of the Mineworkers acted as a group in organizing the defence of political orthodoxy. (See Appendix Table 1 for the 1955 voting strength.) After 1948, with the exception of one minor vote in 1950, ‘the platform’ at the Conference was undefeated until i960. The union base became more uncertain after 1956 with the election of Frank Cousins as Transport Workers’ General Secretary but by this time the Engineers were moving to the Right under the leadership of William Carrón.

14 The divergence is analysed in more detail in the author’s ‘Crisis and Compact: The British Labour Party and the Trade Unions’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, October 1974.

15 Crosland, Anthony, Can Labour Win?, Fabian Tract No. 324, May 1960, p. 10 Google Scholar.

16 By the 1930s Labour’s traditional Socialism was defined primarily in terms of the public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. In the mid-1950s, the revisionists, some of whom later began to term themselves ‘Social-Democrats’, redefined Socialism as a syndrome of values — specifically personal freedom, equality and social justice.

17 TOC General Council Report, 1968, para. 354, p. 274.

18 Lumley, R., White Collar Unionism in Britain, Methuen, London, 1963 Google Scholar, Appen dix I.

19 TUC General Council Report, 1973, para. 107, p. 79.

20 TUO Economie Review, 1969, p. 30.

21 Derived from Guttsman, W. L., in Stanworth, R. and Giddens, A., Elites and Power in British Society, Cambridge University Press, London, 1974, p. 34 Google Scholar.

22 Derived from Guttsman, W. L., The British Political Elite, McGibbon and Kee, London, 1968, p. 242 Google Scholar.

23 Roy Mason, an ex-miner.

24 Callaghan retained the closest links to the unions and in 1969 was a dissident member of the Cabinet in response to the White Paper In Place of Strife.

25 Derived from Organisations Affiliated to the Labour Party, etc., issued by the Labour Party, 1960 and 1970. Of course the number of white-collar trade unionists affiliated via mainly blue-collar unions is higher but difficult to calculate.

26 See, for example, Hugh Scanlon’s comments on the ‘so-called intelligentsia of our party’, ‘an intellectual is one who is educated above his intelligence’. The comment was made in reference to Barbara Castle and the Prices and Incomes Policy. Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1968, p. 142.

27 New left-wing leaders emerged in four of the five largest affiliated unions in the period between 1967 and 1969. They were Hugh Scanlon, President of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (elected 1967), Lawrence Daly, General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (elected 1968), Richard Seabrook, President of the Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers (elected 1968), and Jack Jones, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (elected 1969).

28 The 1977 figures (as at 31 December 1976) were: Labour Party affiliated 59 unions,5,800,069 members; TUC affiliated 115 unions, 11,515,920 members. The total union membership in UK was approximately 12,270,000

29 In October 1974, 66% of trade unionists disapproved of the unions’, close affiliation with the party (Crewe, Alt and Särlvik, p. 23). The proportion has changed little over a decade; in 1964 it was 65% (Butler and Stokes, 1969 edition, p. 211).

30 The General Council for the year 1977-78 had forty-one members of which only five were from unions which were not affiliated to the Labour Party.

31 Only two working parties were set up from the Liaison Committee in the period from 1974-78. They concerned Child Benefits and a Wealth Tax.

32 ‘Consultative Arrangements within the TUC’, Appendix 1, General Council Report, 1977, TUC Report 1977, pp. 314-337.

33 Butler and Stokes, 1969 edition, p. 133; Goldthorpe, J. H., Lockwood, D., Bechhofer, F. and Platt, J., The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behaviour, London, Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 73 Google Scholar.

34 Butler and Stokes, 1969, pp. 131-2 and 322-4.

35 Crewe, Alt and Särlvik give the percentage as 48%.

36 58.3% of Labour’s vote came from union families compared with 26.9% of the Conservative vote. Derived from data supplied by The British General Election Study at the University of Essex.

37 Between 1970 and October 1974 the number of teachers and lecturers on die Labour benches increased from 56 to 76.

38 The two ex-miners were Roy Mason and Eric Varley, die two ex-engineers were Albert Booth (from die Draughtsmen) and Stan Orms. The fifth trade unionist in the Cabinet was Callaghan.

39 For a more detailed discussion of these customs and the behaviour of the union leaders see the author’s ‘The Labour Party and the Unions’ New Society, 6th October 1977. Also ‘Leftwing Trade Unionism and the Tensions of British Labour Politics’ in B. E. Brown (Ed.) Eurocommunism and Eurosocialism: the Left confronts Modernity. Cyrco Press, New York, 1978.

40 David Basnett, interviewed on ‘The World This Weekend’, March 1978.

41 David Basnett, TUC Annual Congress Report, 1977, p. 484.1 would like to thank Martin Burch, David Howell, and Patrick Seyd for their comments on a draft of this paper.