NALGO'S AFFILIATION TO THE T.U.C.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1966.tb00919.x |
| Date | 01 March 1966 |
| Published date | 01 March 1966 |
| Author | D. Volker |
NALGO’S AFFILIATION
TO
THE
T.U.C.
D.
VOLKER*
AT the time of its affiliation to the Trades Union Congress in October
I
964,
the National and Local Government Officers’ Association had
338,322
members.1 This made it the sixth largest trade union in Britain
and the largest one composed entirely of non-manual employees. The
addition ofNALGO to the T.U.C. has gone far towards making the T.U.C.
representative of all sections of the country’s employees and settled any
doubt that Britain’s non-manual unions might follow the example of their
counterparts in Sweden and create a separate central body. For NALGO,
the decision to affiliate ended nearly fifty years of controversy but brought
the need for a reappraisal of the union’s attitudes and methods of operation,
which developed in an environment of self-imposed isolation from the rest
of the trade union movement on a firm basis of non-involvement in politics
and co-operation with employers.
It was through the efforts of
a
small coterie of high-ranking officers that
a National Association of Local Government Officers2 was formed in
1905.
This group, made up mainly of town clerks, city engineers, borough
engineers, borough surveyors and similar ranks, filled most of the Associa-
tion’s official positions and controlled its activities in its formative years. At
this time the Association was no more than
a
loose federation of guilds,
local associations and professional associations with the aims of promoting
social activity among officers and the discussion of general matters of
common interest to members. The one major objective of the national
body
-
the establishment of
a
superannuation scheme to cover the whole
service
-
was pursued with little success.
Membership decreased sharply during the First World War, and by
I
g
I
7
the Association’s finances were
so
depleted that it had either to curtail
its activities or to undertake a drastic reorganization to broaden the scope
of its membership recruitment. Reorganization and
a
complementary
membership drive brought many new members from the middle and lower
salary ranges of the service into the Association. At once it was clear that
there were groups of members prepared to challenge the hitherto accepted
concept of the Association
as
a purely professional body, depending solely
upon consultation as a method of achieving its objectives, and maintaining
a
strict political neutrality. It was vigorously argued that NALGO should
*
Research Student in Industrial Relations, London School of Economics and Political
Srirnce.
_...
.~.
1
Annual Report, NALGO,
1964,
p.
8
2
The Association changed its name to National and Local Government Officers’ Association
in
1952
to reflect the transfer
of
some members into nationalized industries.
59
60
BRITISH JOURNAL
OF
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
adopt legal trade union status and ally itself with the Trade Union Move-
ment.
So
vociferous were the supporters of this view that within a year of the
reorganization the National Executive Council thought it necessary to
issue a report3 on its attitude to the question. It acknowledged that trade
unions were an advantage to the mass
of
manual workers and even to many
professional men, but argued that public servants were in a different
position from these groups because of the nature of their work and of the
special relationship they had with their employers. The N.E.C. considered
that the association had to preserve a strict political neutrality
so
that there
could be no doubt about the impartiality of officers in administering policy
whichever party controlled their local authority. Furthermore their
ultimate employers were the whole community and notions of a class-
struggle between capitalist employers and employees were irrelevant in
their case. Therefore it was the Association’s duty to pursue its objectives
by amicable consultation depending on the objective merits of its arguments
and doing nothing to jeopardize the role of its members as servants
of
the
community. For these reasons the N.E.C. was firmly against any links with
the Labour Party or doing anything which could be construed as the act of a
politically aligned organization. Instead, it considered that the Association
could be best strengthened by the development of a national local govern-
ment service with national standards for recruitment, training, and working
conditions and with NALGO as the accepted representative organization
for the whole ~ervice.~ At the same time efforts were being made by the
N.E.C. to effect closer relations with non-manual workers in associated
occupations and a ‘Triple Alliance’ was formed with the National Union
of
Tcachers and the National Association of Poor Law Officers to establish a
united Parliamentary lobby. Hopes were high that the Civil Servants
would join the Alliance, and, in
192
I
,
it seemed that a ‘white collar T.U.C.’
might be developing when the National Federation of Professional, Techni-
cal, Administrative, and Supervisory Workers invited the ‘Triple Alliance’
and the Civil Servants to federate. A Conference was convened at which it
became clear that there was no common basis on which an acceptable
organization could be established. However, NALGO and the associations
representing the Civil Servants, Teachers, and Poor Law Officers did agree
to the formation of
a
Public Officers National Alliance, and even agreed on
a constitution for the new body. At the last moment the Civil Servants
withdrew, the Poor Law Officers joined the wider Federation, and the new
organization disintegrated.
Inside NALGO the N.E.C.’s policy ofpolitical neutrality and of ranging
the association’s interests with those of other non-manual groups was
3
Presented at the
1918
Annual Conference.
4
At this time several other unions, notably the National Union
of
Clerks, the Municipal
Employees’ Association, the Workers’ Union, and the National Union
of
Corporation Workers,
were openly competing
for
the allegiance
of
demobilized soldiers in the areas
of
employment
covered by
NALGO.
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