Glossary
From Problems of Capitalism and Socialism special series on the Bullock Report, Number 2
AUEW: Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers led by Hugh Scanlon (see below). An
uneasy amalgamation of engineers, builders, foundry workers and white collar workers (TASS). TASS, which was Communist Party dominated, split away and merged with the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS) to form the Manufacturing, Scientific and Finance union (MSF).
In 1992 the AUEW merged with the EETPU (see below) to form the AEEU. This, in turn, merged with the MSF in 2001 to create the present day Amicus— whatever that means.
British Leyland: By 1976 the bulk of the car industry, except for Fords, was amalgamated and nationalised as British Leyland. It produced such lines as Mini, Jaguar, Land Rover, Austin etc. Leyland Cars employed 128,000 workers at 36 sites and Leyland Trucks and Buses employed 31,000 workers at 12 sites. The company produced many other related products.
CEB: Central Electricity Board, proposed by Plowden to further centralise the industry under one Board. It was to comprise the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) and the 12 Area Electricity Boards. Legislation for this was going through Parliament when the Government fell in 1979. The Thatcher Government went instead for privatisation. The CEGB was divided into Powergen, National Power, National Grid and Nuclear Electric, and a myriad of electricity distribution companies. Only Nuclear Electric remained in the public sector.
EETPU: The Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbers Union was formed in 1968 in a merger between the electricians union and the plumbers. The electricians union was a major power base for the Communist Party. But in 1961 some Party members led by Les Cannon and Frank Chapple exposed ballot rigging and took the union to court. They then led it in an ever right wing direction. A problem for the ideological left is that the idea of principled compromise is out of the question. They only see sell out. So when they react against their Party position they do indeed sell out. Chapple took over the union in 1966 and promoted the policy of privatising the entire state sector.
EPEA: Electrical Power Engineers Association, founded in 1913, represented the top echelons in the electricity industry. In recent years the union has been very much involved in promoting ESOPs—Employee Stock Ownership Plans, especially during the privatisations. It was involved in a plan to completely buy out a power station in Northern Ireland by managers and workers.
GMWU: General and Municipal Workers Union was formed in 1924 and largely duplicated the work of the Transport and General Workers Union. After merging with the boilermakers it became the GMB. Union mergers have as much to do with rivalry within industries as with common sense. The boilermakers, very much based in the now almost defunct ship building industry, would be expected to unite with the sheet metal workers and/or the engineers. But not ‘til hell freezes over! The union became notorious in the labour movement in 1970. It was run by Lord Cooper. Its largest branch was the glassworkers branch at the Pilkington glass plants in St. Helens, with 7,400 members. The workers went on strike and the union refused to support them. For a brief period there was an independent General Glass Workers Union. Cooper had a string of directorships and was involved with the Atlas Foundation, a CIA funded organisation.
Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones were the two most important trade union leaders in the 1970s.
Many have reasonably said that they were the two most important people in Britain, politicians included. Scanlon wrote the first pamphlet for the Institute for Workers Control. But after that he went cool on the matter and opposed specific policies to implement industrial democracy, especially the Bullock report. He implied that such schemes never went far enough: his was left wing oppositionism. Hugh Scanlon joined the Communist Party in 1937 under the influence of the Spanish Civil War. (Jones was also influenced by that conflict and went to Spain where he was wounded in the Battle of the Ebro.) Scanlon left the CP in 1954 but remained in the CP front organisation, the Broad Left. The Broad Left was the springboard for the rise of many future politicians, e.g. Charles Clarke. Scanlon became leader of the engineering union in 1968 and retired in 1978 going into the House of Lords as Baron Scanlon of Davyhulme.
Industrial Relations Act. This was introduced by the Conservative Government of Edward Heath. It registered unions and employers organisations and set up an Industrial Relations Court under Lord Donaldson which had the power to jail anyone in breach of the Act. Its jailing of some dockers’ leaders caused uproar and the Act began to fall into disuse. By 1972, the Heath Government changed its tack and sponsored Tripartite discussions and agreements between Government, unions and employers. But the unions decided for the most part to hold out for a change of government which would be more favourable to them. Heath went to the country in 1974 on the slogan “who runs the country”—the Government or the unions. He lost, and lost again more heavily in another election called later in the year. So the unions had a mandate!
In Place of Strife: This was a Labour Government White Paper introduced by the very left wing and very popular Minister, Barbara Castle, in 1969. It proposed that there must be a ballot before strike action and that there should be an Industrial Board to enforce settlements of disputes. It was the first political acknowledgement that the balance of power had shifted in favour of the working class and that the law had to be reformed to reflect that situation. Union experience of labour laws had been that they were always designed to curtail their activities in favour of the employers. And though this proposal was not in that category, they opposed it in favour of the status quo, which kept industrial disputes outside of any legal framework. In the Cabinet, the future Prime Minister, James Callaghan, led a successful opposition and the measure was dropped.
The Sankey Commission: The British coal industry in the 19th century was a byword for incompetent management, dangerous conditions, and near feudal practices. During the Great War the Government took control of the industry to ensure supplies. After 1918 there was great unrest among the miners as they sought to maintain the conditions they had achieved during the War. To quell these disturbances, Prime Minister, Lloyd George, set up a Commission on the future of coal under Lord Sankey. It was composed of 50% union representatives and included socialists like Sidney Webb and R.H. Tawney. It recommended the nationalisation of the coal industry. This was rejected by Lloyd George and he handed the mines back to the private owners.
Whitley: John Whitley was Liberal MP for Halifax from 1900-28. He made a report to Parliament in 1917 on industrial relations which led to the setting up of Whitley Councils – joint worker-management discussion councils. They were a direct response to the rise of the Shop Stewards Committees and the fear of the development of Soviets, especially in the engineering industries. They never took off in the private sector but they did become a regular feature in the public sector, especially in the Civil Service and the clerical areas of local government.
Nationalised industries: In the 1970s there were swathes of the population, especially in the North of England, who barely came into contact with the private sector. People worked for a state enterprise, lived in a local authority home, travelled by public transport, and shopped in the Co-op— indeed were buried by the Co-op. The privatisation which took place in the 1980s and 90s, and later, not only transferred many sectors to private hands but deliberately destroyed several former state companies in coal, steel, shipbuilding, etc. The Co-op was reduced greatly and, for the most part, operated like private companies where it continued to exist. This was facilitated by the encouragement of the supermarket chains through legal and planning measures. (At the moment a similar process is being proposed for France by President Sarkozy. In Iran its proposal by the Shah and the Americans was a major factor in getting support for the Islamic Revolution.)
Here is an (incomplete) account of the level of publicly owned enterprises existing in the 1970s.
Central Electricity Generating Board and the Regional Electricity Boards. The BBC. London Transport. British Airways. The National Coal Board (all mines with more than 30 workers). Bank of England. The GPO (including Cable and Wireless and British Telecommunications as well as the Royal Mail). British Railways. British Road Services (with about 40% of road haulage). British Waterways Board (rivers and canals as well as general water and sewage). Thomas Cook Travel. National Health Service. British Gas. British Steel (there remained
a couple of private steel companies). Rolls Royce Aerospace. British Leyland. British Aerospace. British Shipbuilders. Many other services were owned and operated by the local authorities – especially housing, which kept private house prices low as well as providing a very large rented sector; it also provided for mobility with schemes for house swaps.
See Problems of Capitalism and Socialism special series on the Bullock Report, Number 2
Labour Affairs 