When workers defeated a Tory government
Forty years ago, in August 1971, the anti-trade
union Industrial Relations Act became law. Over the next three years a
mass of strikes resulted in its removal from the statute books and the
ousting of Edward Heath’s Conservative government. JIM HORTON looks at
what lessons can be drawn for the struggles today.
AS MILLIONS OF public-sector workers prepare to take
action on 30 November they can gain inspiration from the strikes of
workers from 1970-74. In defiance of anti-trade union legislation, these
prevented the then Tory government from off-loading an economic crisis
onto the backs of the working class.
The events of four decades ago show that resolute
militant action by the trade union movement can result in victories and
bring the representatives of capitalism to their knees. Yet many
activists will point to the changed balance of forces since the 1970s,
and may question whether a survey of the tumultuous events of that
period offers little more than an opportunity to reflect nostalgically
upon a bygone age.
It was certainly a different era. In contrast to the
last three decades, during the post-war period the union movement had
grown in numerical strength, confidence and combativity. Workers had not
suffered a serious industrial defeat for a generation. Growth in the
economy and practically full employment had strengthened unions’
bargaining position, particularly at local level where negotiations on
pay and conditions were conducted by shop stewards. Workers were able to
take a bigger share of the wealth their collective labour had created.
During the 1960s wages constituted up to 60% of gross domestic product
(and by 1975 had reached 64.5%), compared to 53.2% in 2008.
Pivotal to the industrial action that engulfed
Heath’s government was the role of the shop stewards, who by the early
1970s numbered over 200,000. By 2008 their number had declined to
128,000 (although the overall figure for all union reps, including
health and safety, equality and learning, appears to be no lower than it
was in the mid-1960s). The role of shop stewards in the workplace has
changed dramatically though over the last four decades, including the
current lack of strong organisations at a rank-and-file level, as a
result of management offensives and legal constraints. No less important
has been the effect on political consciousness of the absence of a mass
working-class party following the transformation of Labour into New
Labour.
Nevertheless, while not ignoring the very real
changes that have taken place in union membership and density, workplace
organisation, and political consciousness, it remains the case that the
labour movement retains the potential power to not only defeat the
coalition government’s cuts agenda, but also to precipitate its removal
from office.
The palpable anger of workers at the Com-Dem’s
austerity programme was evidenced on the 500,000-strong demonstration on
March 26 – bigger than any demonstration in the 1970s – and,
particularly the strike of 750,000 public-sector workers on 30 June.
This has pushed the TUC leadership into naming 30 November as the date
for coordinated public-sector strike action. Although ostensibly a
strike over pensions, November 30 will act as a conduit through which
the pent up anger and frustration at pensions, the wider cuts programme,
and years of management offensive, will erupt to the surface.
Indeed, three to four million trade unionists taking
action on 30 November will involve more workers than on any one day of
strike action during Heath’s government. It would, in fact, surpass any
one-day strike action taken by the British labour movement, including
during the 1926 general strike.
Heath’s plan to make workers pay
ONE SIMILARITY IN the situation today and in the
early 1970s is that the Conservative Party had won the general election
of June 1970 against a backdrop of disenchantment with the previous
Labour government, led by Harold Wilson, amid mounting difficulties in
the British economy.
Throughout the 1960s, productivity had lagged behind
its rivals because of the failure of British capitalism to sufficiently
invest in industry. Heath’s Tory government was determined to make
workers pay for this long-term economic malaise. At a time when rampant
inflation and increased taxation were eroding wage levels, a key plank
of its policy was wage restraint to restore the profitability of British
capitalism.
The implementation of wage restraint was premised on
the successful application of the anti-strike provisions of the
Industrial Relations Bill, published in December 1970. The number of
strikes had been on the up in the 1960s, the vast majority unofficial.
The shop stewards articulated the developing militancy of the union
membership, which also found an echo at the top of two of the largest
trade unions, where left-wingers Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones were
elected, respectively, general secretary of the Amalgamated Union of
Engineering Workers (AUEW) and the Transport and General Workers Union
(TGWU).
During the 1960s Britain’s ruling class was
increasingly incensed at the inability of the union tops to prevent
wildcat strikes, unofficial action organised by shop stewards but not
sanctioned by the union leadership. In response, the then Labour
government set up a royal commission, headed by Lord Donovan. Its 1968
report recommended maintaining the voluntary system of industrial
relations, but proposed that shop stewards be brought into the formal
bargaining process to end unofficial action.
In the same year, Labour published its white paper,
In Place of Strife, which went beyond the commission’s recommendations
by ordering ‘cooling-off periods’ and ballots to prevent unofficial
action, with penal sanctions for contravention. This was the first
post-war attempt to use the law to challenge the power of the union rank
and file, particularly the shop stewards. It met fierce opposition
which, because of the position the unions then had within the Labour
Party – in contrast to today – forced even figures on the right of the
party to oppose it and stopped the subsequent bill becoming law.
The Tories, however, pledged to complete what
Labour’s In Place of Strife had set out to do. Their 1970 election
manifesto was explicit that the aim of their bill was to give the trade
union leaders the legal means to exert more central authority over
rank-and-file activists to prevent wildcat stoppages: "We aim to
strengthen the unions and their official leadership by providing some
deterrent against irresponsible action by unofficial minorities". There
is evidence that some TUC leaders had intimated to the Tories that they
‘understood’ the need for such legislation – they too wanted to regain
control over the shop stewards movement – but could not state this
publicly.
What became the Industrial Relations Act 1971
stipulated that any dispute deemed to endanger the ‘national interest’
would be subject to a secret ballot and a compulsory cooling-off period
of not less than 14 days. In an effort to encourage non-unionism it
outlawed the closed shop (union only workplaces). Solidarity action in
the form of sympathy strikes was also made illegal. Sweeping aside the
legal protection in place since the 1906 Trades Dispute Act, unions
would lose all immunity from being sued by employers in the civil courts
if they were not registered and their union rule books had not been
approved by the state. A National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC) was
established to hear cases relating to the act.
Kill the bill
EVEN DURING THE heightened period of militancy in
the early 1970s, TUC leaders expressed no confidence the bill could be
defeated once it reached the statute book, and eschewed demands for
strike action against it. Instead, the TUC merely backed a series of
national, regional and local protest meetings. On 21 February 1971 up to
200,000 trade unionists participated in a national demonstration from
Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, the biggest since the Chartists’ protests
140 years earlier.
In opposition to the TUC, however, four one-day
unofficial ‘kill the bill’ protest strikes took place from December 1970
to March 1971, the last of which involved up to 1.25m workers. The
Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions (LCDTU) played a key
role in organising the action, which received the backing of the AUEW.
Established to oppose In Place of Strife, the LCDTU attracted militant
shop stewards. It was led by the Communist Party, which at that time had
a significant base in the unions despite its flawed policies.
TUC opposition focused on the requirement to
register. Tory ministers believed that after some public protest all the
unions would eventually register. A late amendment to the bill sought to
expedite this by deeming that any union which was on a newly established
‘provisional’ Register of Friendly Societies would be transferred
automatically to the permanent register unless it took the positive step
of actually requesting its removal. This put the onus on unions to
deregister.
Both the government and the TUC leaders held the
view that if a sizable union decided to remain on the register union
opposition would likely collapse, yet the TUC leadership opposed moves
to compel unions to deregister. At a special TUC congress in Croydon on
18 March 1971 a motion instructing unions not to register under the act,
and to deregister from the temporary register, was lost by 5.055m to
4.284m. It was moved by the AUEW, backed by the TGWU and the miners.
Instead, unions were merely ‘strongly advised’ not to register. The
Industrial Relations Act reached the statute book in August 1971.
At the TUC congress in September 1971, in opposition
to the TUC leadership, the AUEW successfully moved a motion hardening
the position, instructing unions to deregister. Scanlon warned:
"Whatever the motives a single step towards implicit co-operation with
the act by any section of our movement might give temporary relief but
in the long term it would be disastrous to all". Within four months of
the congress decision, 82 TUC-affiliated unions with a combined
membership of five million had deregistered. However, a number of
important unions remained registered, including GMWU, NALGO, ASTMS,
EETPU, and USDAW. Meanwhile, the Labour Party promised to repeal the
act, but urged union members to obey the law.
The first miners’ strike
THE FOLLOWING YEAR marked a high point in the class
battles between the unions and the government. On 8 January 1972, before
the anti-strike provisions of the act came into force, a six-week
miners’ strike began. Resentment had been developing for a decade over
pit closures and job losses. Discontent had risen to the surface in a
number of unofficial disputes in 1969 and 1970. But the Economist
magazine complacently wrote that the "miners cannot stop the country in
its tracks as they once could have done". Ex-Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt
declared in the Daily Mirror that the miners had "more stacked against
them than the Light Brigade in their famous charge".
Learning the lessons from the last national miners’
strike of 1926, when pickets had remained at their own coalfields before
being virtually starved back to work after six months, the National
Union of Mineworkers (NUM) successfully deployed the new tactic of mass
flying pickets, with thousands of miners traversing across the country.
Each NUM area was given power stations and coal depots to picket with
the aim of stopping all movement of coal.
The TUC refused to give a lead, leaving the rank and
file of individual unions to provide support. ASLEF rail drivers and
TGWU road haulage workers took solidarity action, refusing to move coal
from the pit heads to the power stations. After two weeks, power
stations were under total siege. The power workers were already engaged
in an overtime ban over pay. The decisive battle of the dispute took
place at the Saltley coal depot of the West Midland Gas Board in
Birmingham. Starting with 200 miners picketing on 4 February, within
three days numbers had swelled to over a thousand. The entire Birmingham
police force was put on alert.
On 10 February an estimated 2,000 miners, led by the
then Yorkshire NUM official, Arthur Scargill, were joined by more than
10,000 other trade unionists from workplaces and factories across
Birmingham. The chief constable advised the Home Secretary, Reginald
Maudling, that he did not have sufficient forces to keep Saltley open.
Panic-stricken, the government was forced to declare its third state of
emergency in less than a year. After a six day struggle which at its
peak involved 800 police and 15,000 pickets, Saltley coke depot was
closed. In his memoirs, Maudling recounts how the chief constable of
Birmingham had previously assured him that only over his dead body would
the pickets succeed in closing the depot. Maudling amusingly comments:
"I felt constrained to ring him the next day after it happened to
enquire after his health!"
Brendon Sewill, in 1972 a special adviser to the
chancellor, wrote in 1975: "At the time many of those in positions of
influence looked into the abyss and saw only a few days away the
possibility of the country being plunged into a state of chaos not so
very far removed from that which might prevail after a minor nuclear
attack. If that sounds melodramatic I need only say that – with the
prospect of the breakdown of power supplies, food supplies, sewerage,
communications, effective government and law and order – it was the
analogy being used at the time. This is the power that exists to hold
the country to ransom: it was fear of the abyss which had an important
effect on subsequent policy".
Maudling recalls colleagues asking him afterwards
why he had not sent in troops to support the police. His response
reveals the dilemma facing the ruling class during this period of
heightened class struggle: "I remember asking them one simple question:
‘If they had been sent in, should they have gone in with their rifles
loaded or unloaded?’ Either course would have been disastrous". The
government was pushed into direct negotiations with the miners, and
forced to make significant concessions.
A traumatised Heath subsequently pleaded on
television that the country needed to find "a more sensible way to
settle its differences". The government’s incomes policy was in tatters,
yet the TUC leadership, who had effectively remained on the sidelines
during the miners’ dispute, embraced Heath’s offer to enter into talks
to try to agree a voluntary incomes policy.
Taking on the anti-union laws
ON THE DAY the miners’ strike ended, 28 February
1972, the anti-strike provisions of the Industrial Relations Act came
into force. Threatened industrial action by railway workers provided its
first real test. In April, the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR)
rejected a pay recommendation and imposed a work-to-rule and overtime
ban. Maurice Macmillan, secretary of state for employment, activated the
14-day cooling-off period. In line with TUC policy, the NUR refused to
attend the NIRC, but adhered to the cooling-off period ordered by the
court. At the end of the 14 days, the NIRC ordered a secret ballot, the
result of which saw over 80% in support of the union’s proposed action.
The dispute was settled with a wage increase. Mortified, Heath’s
government never again attempted to use the cooling-off and ballot
provisions of the 1971 act.
The most significant dispute of 1972 was by dockers
over containerisation. Companies were moving work to non-registered
ports or container depots away from the docks to avoid paying dockers’
rates. Ignoring the TGWU leadership, who wanted talks with the
employers, the powerful National Port Shop Stewards Committee began an
unofficial boycott of firms who refused to use dock labour, and
unofficial picketing of new terminals and road haulage companies.
Liverpool road haulage firm, Heatons Transport,
sought redress from the NIRC. On 23 March the NIRC instructed the TGWU
to end the boycott and to discipline its members. In line with TUC
policy, the union refused to attend the court or obey the order,
resulting in a £5,000 fine for contempt. Following a further fine of
£50,000 in April, the union made fruitless efforts to persuade the shop
stewards to lift their action. Meanwhile, under the threat of
sequestration of its funds, the TGWU executive attended the court, which
rejected the union’s correct contention that it had no power to stop
unofficial picketing. The TGWU then applied to the Court of Appeal.
Nervous about the consequences of bankrupting the union, it unexpectedly
ruled in the union’s favour, ‘discovering’ that ‘faulty drafting’ meant
the act did not actually make unions answerable for the actions of their
members. The NIRC consequently turned its attention to the dockers’
rank-and-file leaders.
On 12 July, twelve dockers were ordered by the NIRC
to stop picketing the Chobham Farm container terminal in East London.
Three dockers who refused were named for arrest. Thirty-five thousand
dockers immediately responded to an unofficial strike call. The
previously unheard of Official Solicitor stepped in to prevent the three
London dockers going to jail.
Despite this, a case before the NIRC involving the
boycotting and picketing by dockers of Midland Cold Storage resulted in
five dockers’ shop stewards being committed to Pentonville prison on 21
July for contempt. The response was immediate, with unofficial protest
strikes by 44,000 dockers, and solidarity strike action by up to 200,000
other workers, including in the newspaper industry and London buses. The
scale of the unofficial action, which was developing into a general
strike from below, compelled the TUC on 26 July to call a one-day
general strike of its affiliated ten million members for 31 July – safe
in the knowledge, however, that the House of Lords was about to come to
the rescue of the government by overturning the Court of Appeal
decision.
The Official Solicitor then conveniently reappeared
with a request for a review of the Pentonville Five case. Despite
refusing to purge their contempt, they were hastily released. A relieved
TUC withdrew its strike call. However, the next day a dockers’ delegate
conference called an immediate official national strike on the
substantive issues. The government declared its fourth state of
emergency on 4 August. The strike continued until 15 August. An inquiry
report claiming to meet most of the grievances of the dockers over
containerisation and registered jobs was bitterly opposed by the dock
shop stewards for not going far enough.
The jailing of the Pentonville five hardened the
position of those unions who until then had failed to follow TUC policy
on deregistration, but now complied. Without the determined unofficial
action of the dockers it is likely the TUC policy on non-registration
would have collapsed. The government was now confronted with the
completely unsustainable position of even official industrial action
being unlawful because all the major unions were unregistered. The Times
newspaper sullenly complained that "the process of law, like a
disordered slot machine, produces a succession of unforeseen results,
mostly raspberry-flavoured".
Following these defeats at the hands of the working
class, and under pressure from an establishment alarmed at the
inexorable social chaos, Heath entered into tripartite talks with the
Confederation of British Industry and a worried TUC leadership.
Cognisant of the militant mood of union members, the TUC presented a
list of demands that included statutory price controls, suspension of
rent increases due under the 1972 Housing Finance Act, the introduction
of a wealth tax, substantial increases in family welfare benefits and,
most notably, a government assurance that it would not use the
Industrial Relations Act. The talks inevitably collapsed.
Who runs the country?
ON 6 NOVEMBER, the government announced its
intention to introduce a statutory incomes policy from January 1973
after the immediate imposition of a 90-day freeze on wages, prices,
dividends and rents.
However, still smarting from their painful defeats,
the government trod carefully. According to Sewill: "The statutory
policy was in a way all bluff. On the pay side the law was never
invoked. Indeed because the government had realised that all hell would
break lose if any trade unionist was fined or imprisoned… what the
policy really meant was that the government staked its whole reputation,
its whole authority, indeed the authority of parliament, in the hope
that the unions and their members would accept the law, or anyway
believe that the government would never allow a strike to succeed. For
18 months the gamble worked; but when it failed the stakes were lost".
While the TUC leadership offered little more than
‘resentful and reluctant acquiescence’, gas workers began unofficial
stoppages, including an overtime ban. This was extended and made
official on 14 February 1973, involving more than 23,000 workers. Three
civil service unions called their first ever one-day national strike,
involving 128,000 workers. Fifty thousand low paid hospital ancillary
staff also took part in selective action.
Heath launched stage three of the government’s
income policy in October which, under pressure from union members, the
TUC denounced. More serious for the government was the response of the
NUM. On 10 October 1973 the National Coal Board management made what
they described as their ‘final’ wage offer, which was immediately
rejected by the union.
Following widespread support for industrial action
in a national ballot, an overtime ban began on 12 November. The next
day, the government declared its fifth state of emergency. On 28
November, Heath called the NUM’s negotiators to a meeting with the whole
cabinet where he promised a review of the coal industry and better
pensions and fringe benefits. The NUM executive committee rejected the
offer. On 13 December, Heath blamed the miners for the introduction of a
country-wide three-day week, in effect a national lock-out of hundreds
of thousands of workers.
The TUC offered Heath a potential lifeline, pledging
that if the miners were treated as a special case it would not be used
as a basis for negotiations by other unions. But this was rejected by
Heath because, understandably, he was not confident that the TUC leaders
would be able to hold the line against other workers taking action.
Heath was also under pressure from rabid anti-union backbench Tory MPs
who were convinced a general election would decide the issue in their
favour, and allow a strong Conservative government to act decisively
against the trade unions.
On 24 January 1974, the NUM executive decided to
ballot its members with a recommendation for all-out action. The NUM
executive announced its ballot result on 4 February, with 81% supporting
a strike. It declared an all-out national strike to begin on 9 February.
After some hesitation, on 7 February, Heath called an emergency general
election.
The theme of the Tories’ election campaign was ‘who
runs the country?’ Its general election manifesto, under the
sub-heading, ‘The Danger from Within’, declared that settling the
miners’ dispute on the NUM’s terms would "undermine the position of
moderate trade union leaders". Promising, "in the light of experience",
amendments to the Industrial Relations Act, their manifesto went on to
declare that they wanted a country "in which there was change without
revolution".
Wilson joined Heath in making it known he wanted to
see the miners’ strike suspended for the duration of the election.
However, the Labour Party was not unaffected by the radicalised mood of
the working class. In 1973, it had adopted its most radical programme
since the second world war, promising to attack inequalities of wealth
and power, extensive nationalisation with workers’ participation, and
state planning of the economy. This had been preceded by a resolution
successfully moved by supporters of the Militant (now the Socialist
Party) at the Labour Party conference in 1972 – at a time when
industrial militants attended conference and participated in genuine
debates – calling for the public ownership of the major monopolies. All
this would be unimaginable today in a New Labour enthralled to big
business – with policies barely distinguishable from its Tory and
Lib-Dem rivals – and Ed Miliband condemning low paid workers taking
strike action in defence of their paltry pensions.
The election outcome on 28 February 1974 was close.
The Labour Party formed a minority government, and repealed the
Industrial Relations Act on 31 July. It increased its majority in the
general election of October the same year. Commenting on the miners’
strike, The Times noted: "This has been an historic dispute. It is the
first time that an industrial stoppage has provoked a general election
and indirectly brought about the downfall of a government". (7 March
1974)
Anti-union laws today
SINCE THE 1980s the relationship of forces swung
favourably to the capitalists, at a national level and in the
workplaces, with the ground yet to be recovered. Even during the
economic growth of 2001-08, union membership barely inched forward. More
importantly, shop-floor representation and organisation continued its
downward trend. The combativity and confidence of workers had increased
throughout the 1970s, but the 1974 Labour government’s refusal to break
with capitalism led it into a series of conflicts with workers, most
notably against low-paid public-sector workers during the winter of
1978/79. The resulting disillusionment led to Labour’s defeat in 1979,
which allowed Margaret Thatcher to come to power with an agenda to
destroy militant trade unionism.
Thatcher’s vendetta against the unions in the 1980s
was partly revenge for the battering her class received under Heath – to
try and ensure that never again would ordinary union members be able to
inflict such a devastating blow against the representatives of
capitalism. Thatcher and her successor, John Major, eventually achieved,
with eight shorter and specific pieces of legislation over a 13-year
period, what Heath had attempted to enact in one fail swoop. But the
successful enactment of the anti-union laws and the heavy defeats of the
workers’ movement in the 1980s were not inevitable. A TUC leadership
matching the determination of the union rank and file could have
defeated Thatcher on a number of occasions before she was finally seen
off by millions of poll tax non-payers.
The subsequent turn by the TUC to partnership with
the bosses, which in practice meant concessions to the employers,
disoriented activists, compounded union decline, and has proved
disastrous as the government’s cuts agenda exposes the sham of
partnership when it comes to paying for the financial crisis. The
collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe, and the
transformation of the Labour Party from a workers’ party with a
leadership unwilling to break with capitalism to a party empty of
working-class participation and enthralled to the market, also impacted
negatively on the consciousness of most active trade unionists.
Thatcher’s anti-union laws remain a shackle on
organising effective industrial action, both at a local level and in
terms of more generalised action. Workers can only take industrial
action against their own employers, solidarity action and political
strikes are unlawful. The millions-strong strike set to take place on 30
November will result from coordinated industrial ballots by the
individual public sector unions.
1972 was the closest Britain came to a general
strike since 1926. Yet it was not strikes specifically aimed against the
Industrial Relations Act that defeated it, but decisive action on wages
and terms and conditions in defiance of the anti-trade union laws that
rendered the act unworkable. Defiance of such laws may prove necessary
again where they act as a barrier to workers defending their
livelihoods.
Key to the action that eventually defeated Heath was
the militant role of the shop stewards in thousands of workplaces across
the country. But no less important than the numerical strength of shop
stewards was their political consciousness, reflected in the role of the
LCDTU and the shift to the left in the trade unions and the Labour
Party. Indeed, the number of shop stewards peaked at over 335,000 in
1984, before the heavy defeats of that decade took their toll. The
National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) is not yet in the position of the
LCDTU in the 1970s, but it has already played a crucial role in
galvanising pressure on the TUC to coordinate strike action on pensions.
It has growing support among the best activists in unions such as the
RMT, PCS, FBU, Unite and the NUT.
With six-and-a-half million members, the trade union
movement still remains potentially the most powerful force in society.
In the coming period the momentous working-class struggles of the 1970s
will provide rich lessons for the current generation of activists moving
into battle. This time round though, workers will not only have to
rebuild strong workplace structures as part of the process of
transforming the unions into fighting democratic organisations, but will
also need to address the question of political representation. This
requires the establishment of a new mass workers’ party, which can
reflect the growing militancy of workers and aid the development of
powerful rank-and-file movements in the unions. |