proposals!
ago the Labour government of Harold Wilson published a white paper on industrial relations, In Place of Strife. In the face of fierce opposition within the unions and the party it was withdrawn.
In Place of Strife never became law. But the attack on the democratic rights and strength of the British trade union movement which it posed was taken up by the government of Edward Heath.
When Heath followed Wilson into government, he introduced the dustrial Relations Act. labour movement took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands. Five dockers the Pentonvile Hive. jailed for refusing to comply these laws. But massive sentiments aroused against this legislation only forced Heath to do an about face to get the dockers out of jail, but helped lay the foundations of his own demise, finally brought about by the miners strike of 1974.
But the Tory party didn't give up the idea of using the law to put more and more shackles on the unions, it simply took note of what happened to Heath's government - and prepared its ground more carefully.
When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 she equally ruthlessly pursued changing the law to weaken the unions. The industrial relations legislation of Thatcher's seven years In- has systematically the democratic rights from trade unions.
At the same time she prepared to take on the miners, the strongest and most determined section of the movement, with first with the planned, in essence, not down the NUM disastrous consequences or the close The concentrated when they struck.
change the decisively against the unions.
removed working people, had lost. But Strife, through Ridley Report which Hone of these how to bring thoroughgoing as the new without the statement jointly ON avoid a head-on conflict with Neil Kinnock and the NEC majority who support this document.
There is no doubt that Kinnock is refusing to budge on this issue. For him, attacking the trade unions is synonymous with winning the next general election. He has swallowed Thatcher's rhetoric hook, line and sinker. But it is for that same reason that trade unionists too must refuse to compromise. The entire document, and the strategy it represents, must be thrown out by the TUC. Instead, the right of trade unions to determine the content of their own rule books and to conduct their affairs free from interference by the state must be reaifirmed.
That is the single most important task at this year's IC congress.