Workplace sexism: TUC appoints a woman as General Secretary

[Lateralthinking1]

[scottycelt]

I must admit that I'd not noticed you having said or hinted at such an idea; I simply too am51's word for it. It's a dumb idea, whoever's it may have been.

Not naming names or pointing any fingers, of course, but the vital 'clue' is in your own rigidly accurate statement, ahinton ...

[Lateralthinking1]

Tarra Tone!

Miliband Slays New Labour in Blair's Old Heartland

Veteran Benn Joins Him As Warsi Rants It's A Return to the 1980s

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/9818013.Miliband_tells_Miners_Gala___rebuild_country_with_values_of_Durham_people_/

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/galleries/durham_miners_gala/?ref=gp&ref=mmsp

And On This Day in History

[ahinton]

This has come to be the most boring thread since French Frank set up this forum.

When you write "has come to be" rather than "is", are you suggesting that the topic was interesting and worthy of extensive discussion but the thread progress has deteriorated, or did you actually mean that it was such a boring thread right from the get-go?

Either way, S-A, you don't have to read it!

I've already indicated that it seemed already to have pretty much run its kilometrage some while ago, but if it is indeed moribund but won't lie down, that's surely down to those who keep it going, which includes you as well as me and others...

[ahinton]

Yes, indeed - the way that this thread has gone, it does now really take the biscuit, does it not?!

Anyway, having terminated my trade union membership 35 years after joining, I did rather ruefully (though not intentionally rudely) write at that time to the branch secretary who absurdly upheld the union's stance about life membership having to entail not only that many years of continuous membership but also the attainment of state retirement age (as if the latter meant anything to most musicians), "you can't get me, 'coz I've left the union". OK, that's purely a personal experience and perhaps a rather unusual one but, having insisted on carrying a union card despite having been threatened with expulsion from grammar school for having joined the union concerned while at school, I did find this attitude a dismaying response to a loyal and long-standing union member; whether it would have been any different had there been a female TUC GS at that time, I have no idea, but I rather doubt it, frankly...

[Lateralthinking1]

And More News From Durham

The Return of Barbara Castle

Miliband Pays Special Tribute to One of Old Labour's Most Respected Women

[Serial_Apologist]

Anyone remember "In Place of Strife"? Barbara Castle's attempt to redefine industrial relations. If I remember correctly it was at the time Harold Wilson was PM, but I can't now remember the details, though I do remember she became a figure of malignment in the trade union movement because of it.

[ahinton]

And More News From Durham

The Return of Barbara Castle

Miliband Pays Special Tribute Paid to One of Old Labour's Most Respected Women

Hmmm - a "V for victimisation" gesture, I see. An English socialist's home was his Castle, was it?

Who was it that once paraphrased Peter Sellers' "Bal-ham - gateway to the south" as "Dur-ham - gateway to the left"?

Oh and, by the way, it's not recommended to stick your thumb up when holding a full pint beer mug (if you really must insist on holding such a thing) as it once used to be to crook your little finger whayle holding a nayce Royal Worcester cup full of tea (or is it no longer permissible to mention tea in this thread?)...

[ahinton]

Anyone remember "In Place of Strife"? Barbara Castle's attempt to redefine industrial relations. If I remember correctly it was at the time Harold Wilson was PM, but I can't now remember the details, though I do remember she became a figure of malignment in the trade union movement because of it.

Very vaguely. I do, however, remember a trade union district organiser once despairing of the way industrial relations were going by saying that if the majority of subscribers to the trade union movement were Conservatives we might all get somewhere...

[Lateralthinking1]

Anyone remember "In Place of Strife"? Barbara Castle's attempt to redefine industrial relations. If I remember correctly it was at the time Harold Wilson was PM, but I can't now remember the details, though I do remember she became a figure of malignment in the trade union movement because of it.

True it wasn't all great by any means and she had problems towards the end.

But the future is a combination of overly virtuous geeks and totally uncompromising firebrands.

Personally, I'm looking forward to that moment when the wallpaper runs for the hills.

[Lateralthinking1]

as it once used to be to crook your little finger whayle holding a nayce Royal Worcester cup full of tea (or is it no longer permissible to mention tea in this thread?)...

Thanks. I assume that was before everything else was crooked.

[scottycelt]

Anyone remember "In Place of Strife"? Barbara Castle's attempt to redefine industrial relations. If I remember correctly it was at the time Harold Wilson was PM, but I can't now remember the details, though I do remember she became a figure of malignment in the trade union movement because of it.

Yes, her 'left-wing socialist' brand of Trade Union Reform was actually much tougher than the 'capitalist' Thatcher Government eventually introduced.

Her White Paper failed of course due entirely to paymasters' Jack Jones and Hughie Scanlon's union 'tanks' parked on her and PM Harold's 'lawns'.

Some of us remember only too well, S_A ...

[Serial_Apologist]

Francis Wheen's recollection in 1982 brought it back quite well:

In January 1969 Barbara Castle, minister for employment and productivity, sought to restore some 'order' to union affairs by publishing her White Paper In Place of Strife, which proposed that ministers should have the power to order a 28-day 'cooling off period' during which strikers would have to return to work. Ministers should also have the power to order a ballot of all members involved in any disputes.

This was too much for the TUC, who had always considered the 'policing' of union members to be their job and not that of the government. After waging a determined campaign, they forced the government to back down - but only because of a TUC promise that they themselves would enforce rigorous discipline on unofficial strikes. As Harold Wilson put it in his memoirs, the TUC's 'fire-fighting machinery' was just as effective as government powers in ensuring that workers behaved themselves. The glee with which union leaders carried out this task confirmed the argument put up by a striking building worker in London two years previously: 'An aliance was formed between the employer, the state and right-wing trade union leaders'.

A good example of the bitterness engendered was provided by the strike at Pilkington's glass factory in St Helens, Lancashire, in 1970. What started as an argument over mistakes in wage packets rapidly turned into a full-scale walk-out, much to the horror of the union concerned, the NUGMW. A rank-and-file strike bulletin of 10 May 1970 gave a flavour of the workers' feelings:

Brothers and sisters; We have now come to the parting of the ways. The NUGMW no longer serves any useful purpose for the workers of Pilkington. Therefore ... we are issuing the forms for contracting out of the NUGMW. By doing so we rob Pilkingtons of the last argument they have for not conceding our claim, that is, that the NUGMW think their offer 'fair and reasonable'

A bulletin three days later included a poem addressed to the union's general secretary, Lord Cooper:

Little Lord kneels at the foot of the bed
Looks underneath to see if there's a Red.
Hugh, hush, whisper who dares
Little Lord Cooper is saying his prayers

Another indication of the mood of the time was given by Jim Lamborne, a car worker involved in the Ford dispute of 1969: 'This strike is about control. We, the ordinary workers want to control our unions. Never again will we allow eighteen stiff-necked bureaucrats to make agreements in our name against our interests'.

For all Lamborne's brave talk of 'never again', agreements 'against our interests' were made again and again over the succeeding decade. Employers and ministers were eager to flatter union leaders into acquiescence, and to turn poachers into gamekeepers. An especially remarkable example of this came in 1981 when Reg Brady, a union official at Times Newpapers who had led a one-year lock-out, was suddenly appointed to the Times management - as head of industrial relations. When James Callaghan was prime mininster in the late 1970s he complained that union leaders were not exercising 'enough control' over their members; general secretaries fell over themselves to assure him that this was not true. To have suggested that a more natural order might be the other way round - that the members of an organisation ought to control their leaders - would have been heresy.

Many industrial workers were disenchanted by the government's attacks on the working class. Having lost faith in Wilson, they took shelter in the emerging parties of the far Left, such as the International Socialists, where they encountered another group of people who were dismayed by the Labour government - students'

(F. Wheen: The Sixties, Century Publishing in association with Channel Four, London, 1982, 83-84)

[Serial_Apologist]

Very vaguely. I do, however, remember a trade union district organiser once despairing of the way industrial relations were going by saying that if the majority of subscribers to the trade union movement were Conservatives we might all get somewhere...

There were some on the far-left (the very far-left) who argued that the return of a Tory government would be a good thing, since it would re-inject some militancy back into a trade union rank-and-file that had been confused into seeing a Labour government as being on its side. But I don't suppose that's what your district organiser was thinking of.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, her 'left-wing socialist' brand of Trade Union Reform was actually much tougher than the 'capitalist' Thatcher Government eventually introduced.

Her White Paper failed of course due entirely to paymasters' Jack Jones and Hughie Scanlon's union 'tanks' parked on her and PM Harold's 'lawns'.

Some of us remember only too well, S_A ...

I was in shorts but I can sum up my view on that matter in one sentence. Had post war Governments given far greater decision making power to citizens by 1969, the unions would not have become so focussed on pay and overly powerful in that regard.

I remember the latter years of Castle. A quick scan of her biography reveals a woman not without double standards. It also shows that she was passionate in her support of pensions and the welfare state.

She is also described as fiery and of fierce intellect. It is the positives I recall.

And I think it is the attitudes I'm picking up on today. The current situation requires of a possible alternative Government (a) an awkward squad with passion and (b) in others integrity beyond reproach. That as a brand is a seller almost irrespective of policy.

We are being severely bludgeoned by people who may well have an extensive armoury. They also have the character of feathers.