These are the British

by Drew Middleton

In the trade unions, as elsewhere in British society, the war alliance with the Soviet Union inspired sympathy with the people of Russia and admiration for their resistance to the Nazis. These sentiments altered under the impact of the cold war, and they altered faster at the top levels of the labor movement than anywhere else. The Trades Union Congress in 1948 attacked Communist activities in the unions in a pamphlet called Defend Democracy and followed this with another pamphlet, Tactics of Disruption. In 1949 the TUC quitted the World Federation of Trade Unions, which is dominated by the Communists, and helped establish the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. A year later the TUC barred Communists and fascists as delegates to the annual conference of Trades Councils.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the TUC strove to explain the true nature of the Communist challenge to free unions, and to emphasize the refusal of the Communists to accept democratic principles in the unions or anywhere else.

All this has had some effect, but not enough. The TUC has thus far failed to shake the average industrial worker out of his lethargy. Safe in the security arising from full employment and high wages, he does not take the Communist challenge seriously. And now that many of the basic objectives of the labor movement have been won, he does not work so hard to protect them as he did to win them.

In this atmosphere Communist successes are inevitable. For it is the members of a Communist cell in a union or a factory who are prepared to talk all night at a meeting, to vote solidly as a bloc in support of one Communist candidate while the non-Communists divide their votes among three or four candidates. In many cases the non-Communists will not even turn out to vote—it is too much trouble, especially when they can watch the "telly" or go to the dog races.

The official leadership of the unions faces a formidable task. It must first educate the rank and file on the true nature of Communism. After that, it must organize anti-Communist action in the unions. Here they encounter a real obstacle in the minds of the rank and file. In the past, reaction in Britain and elsewhere has lumped Communists, Socialists, and trade-unionists together. To many a unionist, anti-Communism seems, at first inspection, to be an employers' trick to break the solidarity of the working classes. Of course the Communists do all they can to popularize and spread this erroneous idea.

The Communists in Britain seem to have been moderately successful in establishing themselves as a national rather than an international force. When Frank Foulkes, the General President of the Electrical Trades Union and a member of the Communist Party, asserted: "This country means more to me than Russia and all the rest of the world put together," few challenged this obvious insincerity.

We must accept, then, that Communism within the trade unions is a far more serious threat to the welfare of Britain than Communism as a political party. It is on hand to exacerbate all the difficulties in the field of industrial relations which have arisen and will arise during a change from obsolete economic patterns to the new patterns by which Britain must live.

The introduction of automation—the use of machines to superintend the work of other machines—and of nuclear energy for industrial power are two of the principal adjustments that British industry must make. Each will involve labor layoffs and shifts in working population. These are important and difficult processes, and with the Communists on hand to paint them in the darkest colors there will have to be common sense, tolerance, and good will on the part of both management and labor. In particular, the rank and file of British industry must be made aware how important the changes are to the average worker and his family. There is little use in publishing pamphlets, however admirable, if the man for whom they are intended will not stir from in front of the television set.