The Ideologies of Practical Men: Trade Unions and the Politics of Public Ownership

Abstract

Trade union opposition to Gaitskell's attempt to rid the Labour Party of its commitment to public ownership was driven by political and ideological considerations, not the sentimental attachment to the past that has been attributed to them. Their opposition has been misunderstood because trade union ideologies have been neglected for an exclusive focus on the ‘practical politics’ of trade unionism. This is ironic because trade union ideology was itself heavily influenced by ideas of what was deemed to be practical, so much so that the commitment to public ownership was steadily undermined by ever-tougher practical tests that any proposal for public ownership was required to meet. The title refers to ‘men’ because the trade unionists we are discussing were overwhelmingly men, and men have prided themselves on their practical skills.

Keywords::

• Ideologies
• Trade Unions
• Socialism
• Liberalism
• Empiricism

Notes

^[1]Williams, Hugh Gaitskell, 321.

^[2]Howell, British Social Democracy, 222–223.

^[3]Jones, ‘Taking Genesis’, 19.

^[4]Drucker, Doctrine and Ethos, 1, 38; and Jones, ‘Taking Genesis’, 6.

^[5]Jobson, ‘Waving the Banners’, 137.

^[6]McKibbin, Evolution, 91, 97; and Callaghan, ‘The Edwardian Crisis’, 11.

^[7]Reid, The Tide of Democracy, 320.

^[8]Morgan, ‘The Rise and Fall’, 287.

^[9]Jobson, ‘Waving the Banners’, 138; and Desai, Intellectuals and Socialism, 112–113.

^[10]Reid, The Tide of Democracy; and Saville, ‘The Ideology’.

^[11]Saville, ‘The Ideology’, 217.

^[12]Anderson, ‘Origins’, 39.

^[13]Labour Party, Labour Party Foundation Conference, 109.

^[14] Ibid., 215.

^[15]Samuel and Stedman-Jones, ‘The Labour Party’; Battin, ‘Keynesianism’; and Irving, ‘Labourism’.

^[16]Panitch, Social Democracy; Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism; Toye, The Labour Party; and Fielding, Labourism.

^[17]Taylor, ‘“Out of the Bowels”’, 44; and Ellis, ‘Letting it Slip’, 59; for more recent work offering a positive account of Labour's past see Tanner, Thane, and Tiratsoo, Labour's First Century; Tiratsoo, The Atlee Years; and Fielding, Thompson, and Tiratsoo, England Arise.

^[18]Campbell, Fishman, and McIlroy, ‘The Post-War Compromise’.

^[19]Reid, United We Stand. The theoretical approach taken by some writers such as Hyman, Marxism, and Kelly, Trade Unions, is more concerned with Marxist theory than trade union history.

^[20]Morgan, Labour People, 3.

^[21]Francis, Ideas and Policies, 7.

^[22]Foote, Labour Party's Political Thought, 7, 11–12.

^[23]Eagleton, Ideology, 3.

^[24]Harrison, Trade Unions, 33.

^[25]Minkin, The Contentious Alliance, 8.

^[26] Trades Union Congress 1894 (hereafter TUC).

^[27]McKibbin, Evolution, 97.

^[28]Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, 20.

^[29] See page 6 of this article.

^[30]Reid, ‘A New Paradigm’, 10.

^[31]Shaw, The Labour Party, ix.

^[32] TUC 1913, 229.

^[33]Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left.

^[34]Freeden, The New Liberalism, 21.

^[35]Freeden, Liberalism Divided, 199.

^[36]Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats, 57, 236.

^[37]Freeden, Liberalism Divided, 181, 202.

^[38] Ibid., 198.

^[39] Ibid., 197, 201.

^[40] Ibid., 210.

^[41] Ibid., 186, 191.

^[42]Eldon, Nationalisation in British Politics, 90.

^[43] Ibid., 80.

^[44] TUC 1908, 195.

^[45] TUC 1906, 158.

^[46] TUC 1912, 262.

^[47] TUC 1919, 259.

^[48]Eldon, Nationalisation in British Politics, 343.

^[49] TUC 1916, 250.

^[50]Francis, Ideas and Policies, 65.

^[51] TUC 1924, 504.

^[52] TUC 1918, 251.

^[53]Pugh, The Making, 169.

^[54]Cole, A History, 60; and Harris, ‘Labour's Social and Political Thought’, 13.

^[55]Worley, Labour Inside the Gate, 12.

^[56]Richards, The Daily Herald, 14.

^[57] ‘Editorial’, Daily Herald, July 7, 1923.

^[58] ‘Editorial’, Daily Herald, September 4, 1923.

^[59] ‘A Blunder that Labour Will Not Commit’, Daily Herald, March 3, 1924.

^[60] ‘Labour and Liberalism: The Incompatibles’, Daily Herald, December 15, 1923.

^[61] ‘Transport Unions and War Menace’, Daily Herald, July 13, 1923.

^[62] ‘Labour's Creed and Crusade’, Daily Herald, November 23, 1923.

^[63]Snowden, Labour, 82; and TUC 1930, 69.

^[64] ‘Socialism at Work’, Daily Herald, July 27, 1923.

^[65]Jones, Remaking the Labour Party, 9; Jones describes this sense of identity as ‘political myth’, not to mean something false but as visionary ideas, the stories people tell themselves (and others) about the past as a way of making sense of it.

^[66] ‘Ends and Means’, Daily Herald, February 27, 1928.

^[67] ‘Future Policy of the Miners’, Daily Herald, July 18, 1928; and Tanner, Political Change, 36, asserts that Herbert Smith was miner-conscious not class conscious and that he had no time for abstractions about class. This seems to seriously underestimate the man.

^[68] TUC, 1931, 260; and see TUC 1916, 250 for a motion on the national organisation of industry.

^[69] TUC 1932, 206.

^[70] TUC 1932, 217.

^[71] TUC 1932, 393.

^[72] TUC 1944, 398.

^[73]Brooke, Labour's War, 242.

^[74] TUC 1944, 403.

^[75] Ibid.

^[76] TUC 1944, 405.

^[77] TUC 1944, 407.

^[78] TUC 1944, 409.

^[79] TUC 1944, 290.

^[80] TUC 1944, 405.

^[81] Labour Party Conference Report (hereafter LPCR) 1952, 111.

^[82] TUC 1944, 290.

^[83] For a fascinating parallel with the thinking among German trade unionists see Moses, ‘The Concept of Democracy’.

^[84] TUC 1944, 291.

^[85] TUC 1930, 69.

^[86] LPCR 1952, 92.

^[87] TUC 1953, 61–80.

^[88] TUC 1953, 524.

^[89] LPCR 1953, 125.

^[90] Archives of the British Trades Union Congress: TUC Committee Minutes and Papers 1922-53, Microfilm, University of Bristol. TUC pamphlets on Steel (1934), Cotton (1935) and Coal (1936); and the TUC plans for nationalisation and their reactions to proposals in engineering lends weight to the argument of Millward and Singleton, The Political Economy, that the ‘causes’ of nationalisation with the exception of coal and the controversy over steel lay in the perceived needs of industrial structure.

^[91]National Engineering Joint Trades Movement, Plan for Engineering. Papers of the Trades Union Congress 1949–1960, 1/5/51 (MSS 292/615.2/5), Modern Records Centre at University of Warwick (hereafter MRC).

^[92]Tomlinson, ‘Planning’, 172.

^[93] A revised version of the Plan was published in 1965, and further revisions were still being discussed in 1973. TUC MSS 408/2/30/4, (MRC), 1965; and TUC MSS 292D/615.5/1, 1973 (MRC).

^[94] TUC MSS 292, 9, and 14 March 1955 (MRC).

^[95] TUC, Len Murray to A. Jameson, D. Lea and J. Skinner.

^[96] LPCR 1957, 140, 141; and Ellis, ‘Letting it Slip’, 59, suggests that the TUC Economic Committee was opposed to Industry and Society but muddles this with controversy over the proposed national superannuation scheme.

^[97]Brivati, Hugh Gaitskell, 304; Ellis, ‘Letting it Slip’; and Favoretto, ‘Wilsonism Reconsidered’.

^[98] LPCR 1959, 85, 130.

^[99] Labour Party NEC, Special meeting 16th March 1960 E.C.5 1960/61; Special Meeting of the NEC 13 July 1960 E.C.10 1960/61 (Microfiche Bristol University Library); and Haseler, The Gaitskellites, 170, suggests that the union leaders would have accepted Gaitskell's compromise but feared to do so because trade union conferences were so hostile. There may be something in this but according to Richard Crossman, none of the leaders wanted it, Morgan, Backbench Diaries, 829. Trade union opposition on the NEC was led by Harry Nicholas, a mainstream TGWU official, and John Boyd, an organiser of the AEU right wing.

^[100]Cronin, New Labour's Pasts, 42, suggests that the unions understood that modernisation would reduce their influence; and Riddell, ‘The End of Clause IV’, 23, argues that the battle over Clause IV changed the balance of power in the party, loosening the hold of the union leaders.

^[101] TUC 1960, 442.

^[102] TUC 1960, 445.

^[103]Zeitlin, ‘The Triumph of Adversarial Bargaining’; and Whitston, ‘The Origins of Disorderly’.

^[104]Pugh, Men of Steel, 494.

^[105]Freeden, ‘The Stranger at the Feast’, 13–14.

^[106] TUC 1960, 442.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Whitston

Kevin Whitston is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Universities of Bristol and the West of England. He has taught in further and higher education, worked for many years in trade union education, and was Head of Widening Participation at the Higher Education Funding Council.