The TUC
and Social Partnership:
The Way Forward
An Interview with Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress
Labour Affairs interviewed Frances O’Grady for the September 2015 issue. The text can be found here
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Industrial Democracy was at the centre of the Bullock Report, which in turn was inspired by the example of Ernest Bevin.
For more on Ernest Bevin, see these pages
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How to pay for state intervention in the economy: Lords Economic Affairs Committee Discussion/Report, part 2, session of 23 March 2021 is to be found here
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A special series of the Magazine “Problems of Capitalism and Socialism” was devoted to the Bullock Report and Industrial Democracy is to be found here (Then click on the February 2008 issue at the top of the list). Jack Jones wrote the Introduction to the Series:
“The great power of the trade unions and sympathetic Governments in the late 1960s and the 1970s provided an opportunity for the working class in Britain to start becoming the ruling class. These conditions were the result of the social and economic reforms introduced by Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin following the second World War. The Government was prepared to admit the unions as equal partners in planning the economy. The Bullock Committee, on which I had the privilege to sit, was set up under terms of reference devised by the Trades Union Congress and recommended a parity of power between employers and unions on the boards of large private companies. another committee was set up by civil servants to deal similarly with the public sector.
The opportunities offered were unfortunately not taken up in the wider union movement and Britain moved in a Thatcherite direction. This all happened over thirty years ago. A whole generation does not know about these things or about the world as it was at this time.
I am glad therefore that two of the workers’ control activists of the time, Joe Keenan and Conor Lynch are publishing an account of these times and these events as a series in their magazine “Problems of Capitalism & Socialism”. I am also pleased that most of the material will be in the form of reprinting journals, pamphlets, and articles from that era. This will not only inform this generation but to some extent help it to experience the arguments, the controversies and the atmosphere of that period.
Jack Jones, January 2008
(Note: The Bullock Committee was set up in 1975)
The Bevin Society has published a pamphlet entitled ‘A Guide to Socialist Ideas — A Worker’s Guide’ available here
Labour Affairs 