BOOK REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 March 1974 |
| Date | 01 March 1974 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1974.tb00009.x |
BOOK
REVIEWS
Political
Purpose
in
Trade
Unions,
by Irving Richter. Allen and Unwin, London,
Labour, the
Unions
and
the
Party,
by
Bill Simpson. Allen and Unwin, London,
THESE
two books, both concerned to some extent with the engineering union,
examine the links between the trade unions and the Labour Party. Irving
Richter, an American academic, in a tightly reasoned book focused on the
A.E.U., argues that the unions are not seriously interested in politics and that,
despite the brave words, their only purpose in entering politics is to keep the
industrial relations sphere free from government interference. In contrast, Bill
Simpson, General Secretary of one of the Engineering union’s sections and ex-
chairman of the Labour Party, writes an assertive, rather dogmatic book which
starts from the assumption that of course the unions are involved in politics.
Richter’s analysis
is
based on a study of the Engineering union up to 1967,
and on comparative studies of the T.G.W.U., A.S.S.E.T. (now A.S.T.M.S.)
and American unions, supplemented with an updating epilogue. It is surprising
that anyone carrying out research at the Engineers’ Peckham headquarters
could come to the conclusion that ‘the union leadership altogether abjured
political action in
a
substantive, or programmatic, sense’, but, according to
Richter, Perlman’s theory that unions are only interested in job control, ‘pure
and simple’ unionism, still holds good.
There is a lot
of
evidence on Richter’s side, and he marshals it excellently.
He points to the union’s lack of action, other than resolution-passing, on social
issues; to the steps the unions took in the focal period of his study, 1945-1967, to
ensure the demolition of war-time controls and their opposition to peace-time
equivalents, and to the unions’ failure to push the case for nationalization in
that period. The political funds and the minimal use the unions have made of
their sponsored M.P.s are considered at length, and Richter produces interesting
new information on the formal links between A.E.U. branch and local Labour
Party to show that at ‘grass roots’ level too the union is not deeply involved.
In fact, he concludes, the unions only enter the political arena when the
established collective bargaining systems are threatened. The unions only
maintain their links with the Labour Party, on this analysis, to enhance the
image of the union bureaucracy and as an insurance policy to protect the
bargaining system.
This
is
the kind of informative and challenging material that should be
required reading for all students
of
the trade unions, but it is based on special
pleading. The connection of Marx and Tom Mann with the engineering union,
the role of the trade union leadership in the formation
of
the Labour Party, or
the activities centred around the Spanish and Vietnamese wars, fit easily into
Simpson’s assumptions, but present problems for Richter’s analysis. His answer
is to ignore some of these facts (foreign affairs, for example) and in other cases
to redefine the words ‘political action’. For him, this means action on
a
formal
132
1973, 258 pp., A4.50.
1973, 256 pp., Cloth A4.50, Paper L2.25.
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