Transmisor

Ibid., 44.

Facts About Real Earnings’, The Economist. (13 February 1955), 446.

F. Haxell, ‘Speech to 25*^ Congress’ (21 April 1957), no. 18, Manchester, CP/Cent/Cong/ 10/05.

negotiating constantly with the National Federated Electrical Association under the corporate auspices of the National Joint Industrial Council, over issues of productivity and bonus rates/Haxell urged Mr Penwill, the employers’ negotiator, to accept that "individual companies or area JICs could pay site or company bonuses’, a drift away from the unifying principle of national wage negotiations/®®

The co-option of union leaders into the corporate directing of the economy exacerbated an already existing gulf them and their membership. The Economist recognised the existence of this gulf. Discussing the "consensus on unrest in industry’, it wrote of the "really dud argument’ that workers were worse off under the Tories, as one "already being used by some of the rank and file (though not by its leaders)’.^®® The journal suggested that "if small unofficial strikes...could be stemmed’, then official strikes "might also be discouraged’ if "agitators’ were not constantly pressing "upon union officials who naturally want to keep their jobs.’^^® The state should contain pressure from below so that union leaders, released from the occupational need to respond to such militancy, could get on with the business of maintaining industrial order. Were Communist trade union leaders, in this regard, significantly different in practice from their "right wing’ counterparts, however? John Lloyd wrote that Les Cannon "never forgave the [ETU] executive’ for their abandonment of him and nine others, sacked from English Electric in Liverpool.^Despite a strike by 233 workers in support, Haxell and fellow Communist, Frank Foulkes asked for the strike to be called off and were supported by the majority Communist executive.

In 1957, The Economist praised left-winger Frank Cousins of the TGWU as a ’colossus...at heart a very moderate man.’^^^ This was after Cousins had "pushed up’ London Transport’s offer of six shillings a week to London busmen to seven shillings and sixpence, although this did not cover inflation and the busmen had struck for a pound a week.^^® The journal also heaped praise on Albert Hallworth of ASLEF who, after conceding a three per cent rise following a claim of 15 per cent, "soothed the

^®^ J. Lloyd, Light and Liberty The Historv of the EETPU (London, 1990), 378. ^®® Ibid.

^®® 'Mr Butskell’s Dilemma’, The Economist. (13 February 1954), 439. ‘Strikes and the Stricken’, The Economist. (14 May 1955), 547.

Lloyd, Light and Liberty. 377. This was 1954, when Cannon was still a Communist. Two Days Strike?’, The Economist. (12 January 1957), 98.

Ibid. Cousins had asked for nine shillings, which, as The Economist pointed out, was the minimum ‘to cover the cost of living increase...since the busmen last had a rise’ (12 January 1957). Cousins represented a move to left in the TG W U, which had been led by Bevin and ‘his equally tough but less gifted successor... Arthur Deakin’. Campbell, Nve Bevan. 60.

delegates by pointing out that this left the executive free to make another claim when they judged the moment ripe'J^^ Such ‘moderate’ leaders were lauded in contrast to Communists, it is evident that the Communists have heard some home truths from other Trade Union leaders in the course of the negotiations [during the London Newspaper strike] and left in no doubt of their considerable unpopularity.’^^® The journal added, without comment. But that has not prevented Mr Haxell...from being

elected General Secretary of the ETU while the strike was on’.^^®

Trade Union Bureaucrats or Tribunes of the Peopie?

The Party’s leadership strategy demonstrated limitations in translating industrial influence into political influence. Lenin wrote that ‘for the socialist, the economic struggle serves as a basis for the organisation of the workers into a revolutionary party...if the economic struggle is taken as something complete in itself there will be nothing socialist in it’.^^^ He later asserted that Class political consciousness can be brought to workers only...from outside the sphere of relationships between workers and employers.’^ T h e agency for bringing such consciousness from without was the Party. Lenin’s formulation was in contrast to the idealism implicit within Ted Jackson’s statement that ‘The outlook of the working class is superior to that of the capitalist class and it is this that makes socialism and communism possible’.

It was not enough for Communists to be trade unionists, even very good ones, unless they could ‘divert the working-class’ from ‘trade unionism’ which ‘means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie’.^^® This tension between trade union work as something ‘complete in itself and as a means to bringing ‘political consciousness’ from without was emphasised in the document ‘Party Cadres’, which stated ‘there is a serious weakness among some of our cadres...a lack of political perspective, of sometimes sacrificing political principle to tactics’. W o l f Wayne talked

T w o Days Strike?’, The Economist. 98. ASLEF; Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Footplatemen.

‘Newspapers Return’, The Economist. (23 April 1955), 756. Ibid.

Lenin, ‘Apropos of the Profession de Foi’, Collected W orks, vol.4, 293. Lenin, W hat is to be Done?. 78-79.

” ®T. Jackson, Speech to 25*^ Congress’ (21 April 1957), Manchester, CP/Cent/Cong/10/06. Lenin, What is to be Done?. 41.