Political Commentary
By CHARLES CURRAN Tait: most popular song in Britain at the moment is called I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas. It seems to sum up the Trades Union Congress at Brighton this week. Apparently, the TUC is eager to walk back to 1945; back to controls, food subsidies, rationing, universal planning, a State- regulated siege economy. Apparently, the unions are so angry with the Government that they are about to declare industrial war; to start an inflationary wage-scramble for more paper money—so that they may presently have the pleasure of jeering at the Tories from the dole queues. was their way to the tomb. For if the State is to plan automa- tion, then the State must supplant the unions.
A new personality in British politics was seen in public for the first time at Brighton this week; Mr. Frank Cousins, the freshly inducted ruler of the Transport and General Workers' Union. He appeared as the spokesman for the resolution to take the brake off wage demands. There is much conjecture about him. But before Mr. Cousins is classified as a man of the Left, there are two facts that need to be weighed carefully.
The first fact is the curious anatomy of his union. It is the most singular mammoth in social zoology. Much light was thrown upon it in a book published four years ago that deserves to be recalled now. The book was called The Government of British Trade Unions; the author, Mr. Joseph Goldstein, an American researcher, revealed the results of a probe into the TGWU that he undertook with the blessing of the late Arthur Deakin. Mr. Goldstein found that no fewer than 80 per cent. of the union's members were inert—so inert that they did not qualify under the rules to hold any office; and that the TGWU was in fact run by an active minority amounting to no more than one-fifth of *he total.
Mr. Cousins rules the TGWU by reason of his hold on the minority of active zealots. As yet it is not at all a firm hold. Already, in the ftrst few weeks of his reign, he has suffered the shock of the BMC strike fiasco. For Mr. Cousins now to talk demagogically, to utter wild and whirling words, is to behave with no more than common prudence. It is a form of verbal insurance. For the second fact about him is his age. At 51 Mr. Cousins may look forward under his union rules to four- teen years of power before retirement. It is human and forgiv- able for him to play himself in with polychromatic adjectives.
It was not in the automation debate only that reality broke upon the TUC. While the anti-Tory hot-gospellers were in full cry at Brighton the Labour Party National Executive published its annual report. This revealed that the individual member- ship of the Labour Party slumped last year by no fewer than 90,000. It was the third successive year of falling membership. Normally a political party gains strength in opposition. The Socialists lose it, and go on losing it. any social reformer left who still believes that people's lives become richer and fuller when they are well housed and freed from the pressures of poverty, he should examine Family and Neighbourhood. It will make him ask whether the housing estate really is the final answer to the wage-earner's problems.
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