Socialists and Closed Shop
The question raised by the failure of the attempt of the Willesden Borough Council to compel all its employees, including nurses and midwives, to join a trade union is not disposed of by the humiliating climb-down in which this piece of petty and provocative t3ranny has ended. The General Purposes Committee of the Council has now very kindly agreed to recognise the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing and similar organisations as "negotiating bodies," and therefore to that extent the equivalent of trade unions. But even this spasmodic effort at face-saving is reduced to farce by a statement issued by the Advisory Council of the Trades Union Congress to the effect that the T.U.C. does not recognise the Royal College of Nursing as a bona fide trade union. This petty-despot performance by a Socialist Council is the pre- destined fruit of the recent Trades Dispute Act, which gives any municipal council the power to insist on a closed-shop policy. Similar attempts have been made to take advantage of that—at Gateshead, for example, where the teachers have successfully protested against the proposal to question them regarding their membership of a union. All this and much more of the kind that is going on con- stitutes interference of the grossest kind with the liberty of the subject, and it is essential that it be fought with the utmost resolu- tion at the outset. The first and best battle-ground is the polling- booth at the municipal elections. If this is the way Socialist Councils use their power a united front against Socialist candidates for the councils is imperative.
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