'Look at Our Muscles—Don't Touch'
By HENRY
KERBY, MP
legs?
For white-collared and black-coated workers this is a vital question, because if the provincial busmen withdraw their labour, having shown their muscles without result, the railway workers, invited to run extra trains, would be blacklegs if they complied, and in shoe factories overtime Would be banned. Justice could only be assured through solidarity of the workers, and if several 11,thlion wet, cold, sore and chilblained feet was the price to be paid that would not be the fault of the TGWU. Yet even in Britain such a state of affairs might be regarded as constituting an emergency worthy of Mr. HammarskjOld's per- sonal attention. Another point is that as the protector of some 'nation workers, Mr. Cousins will not tolerate a Government whose fiscal and foreign policies are judged to worsen the standards of the Transport and General Workers. Fair enough. The barons _Sid much the same thing to King John. But is f4r. Cousins's -discretion equal to his brawn? If it then Mr. Thorneycroft would be well advised to submit a draft of the Budget to the TUC be- fore seeking the views of Parliament. So much for nseal policy.
'`)reign affairs present little difficulty. Mr. Cousins has only to second a leash of shop stewards for duty at the Foreign Office and the workers can rest assured that their interests, and Colonel Nasser's, will be fully protected. As supervisory officers the shop stewards would, of course, receive 10 per cent, higher wages than civil servants, plus overtime. And for handling tricky customers such as dyspeptic ambassadors an incentive would be payable in the form of 'dirt money.'
There remains the Commonwealth Economic Conference at Ottawa. The Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth and the Finance Ministers are identified with capitalism. Can it be said that Mr. Diefenbaker, a self-confessed Conservative, Mr. Menzies and Mr. Holland are men enough to think first of the trades unions and then of their respective countries and the Common- wealth? What of the numismatic Dr. Nkrumah and Sir Roy Welensky, ex-pugilist and trade- union leader, who speaks openly of British Socialism's 'half-baked ideas'? Clearly such a gathering of reactionaries and blacklegs is not to be trusted, even by proxy.
At the recent London Conference, these men agreed, without consulting the boilermakers or the shipbuilders or the transport workers, that the United Kingdom must remain the chief source of capital for Commonwealth develop- ment. The final communiqué, cunningly pre- pared, threw dust in the eyes of the workers. It evaded the truth that capital could be made available from two sources only . . . the workers, who would first require a guarantee of retirement on half-pay and an escalator clause in new wage agreements to offset further debauching of the currency, or the National Debt.
The United Kingdom delegation to the Ottawa Conference cannot risk making an ass of itself. Its expert advisers should ,include at least six shop-floor economists with instructions to report back to the Transport and General Workers' Union and to obtain Mr. Cousins's personal sanction before any credit is given to the Dominions and Colonies.
Only by the inclusion of the fullest safeguards against the roguery of capitalist Ministers and their lackeys can the interests of the workers be adequately protected.
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