THE ROAD TO ANTI-COMMUNISM. PART 5

The Bevanite row rocked the Labour Party from 1951 to 1957. Tack Tanner - then the A ma Igamat ed Engineering Union consistently suppor ted the Gaitskell wing of Labour Party.

In 1954 Tanner was president oi the trades union Congress. This was the year in which the question of German rearmament, as part of the NATO imperialist alliance, was a key issue in the labour movement.

Although he was presiding at the Trades Union Congress that year, Tanner nevertheless seconded the official resolution on 'collective security' which included support for NATO and German re-armaIt was in his presidential address to that Congress that Tanner spelled out the limitations of syndicalism and rank and filism. He was the first engineer to be president of the TUC since 1925, which led him to compare his ideas of 1925 with his ideas of 1954.

'In 1925' he said, 'many of us thought our aims and objectives as trade unionists could be readily achieved by industrial action alone. We were much under the influence of ideas derived from syndicalist theories of direct action, and But Tanner explained that the General Strike of 1926 had showed 'that industrial action had its limitations. Looking back one might say that the 1925 Congress marked the end of that phase in our movement when syndicalist ideas were looked upon sympathetically by many of us.' And the great ex-left concluded his public repudiation of his past by saying: 'Like all of you, in joining this great movement I held some idealistic views and also accepted some ill-digested theories.' It is one of history's ironies that the man who had denounced Lenin and the Communist International as 'dogmatic' for insisting upon political parties, and who had totally rejected the United Front tactic because of the British workers' 'spontaneous consciousness', should have ended his trade union career as Jack Tanner did Tanner's last public appearance as a trade union leader was as the 1954 fraternal delegate from the TUC to the Labour Party conference.

He used the occasion to push the right-wing line in support of NATO and British and German re-armament.

Politics, the ex-syndicalist told the Labour Party delegates, 'was the art of compromise. And the man who Lenin or British Zinoview our defined claimed he knew more about the British workers than trade unionism as 'our method of adjusting the mutual interests of those who look at their problems from opposing standpoints'. That is, the workers and the employers!

Nineteen years before British entry into the Common Labour Party that the Council of Europe and the Organization for • European Economic Co-operation laid 'the foundations of a future European federation which was the dream of the great trade union statesmen like Ernie Bevin' 'International matters', he proclaimed, 'cannot be settled on the basis of rigid dogmatism.

And so Jack Tanner, syndicalist, exponent of rank and filism, opponent of Leninist 'dogmatism', 'left' union leader, hero of the Communist Party in the 1930s and the war-years and immediate postwar years, bowed out of the labour movement.

But he was not finished. After his retirement in 1954 he became a director of Industrial Research and Information Services Ltd (IRIS)— AUEW president, Hugh Scanlon. He Is now advocating policies which will tie the trade unions firmly to the capitalist state. Above: Hugh Gaitskell. Tanner supported the Gaitskell wing of the Labour Party which opposed unilateral disarmament. an organization whi ized in 'exposing' c in the trade unions.

Needless to say, died in 1965 he rer some obituaries bourgeois Press.

'The Times' hac say: "The most period of his leac the AEU was duri War II.

'Then he strove remove muddle in industries and to inc duction. He was o: moving spirits in lishment of joint committees' The Communist thought that this ner's 'most impressi specialom imunists when he ceived fulfrom the this to im pressive ler: ship of Ing Jard to in the he war :re: ase prone : estabprc ›duction Party • also was Tanve period'.

All historical| analogles have their limits. In this sense it would be an injustice to Tanner to compare him directly with the present-day engineers' president Hugh Scanlon. While Tanner always firmly opposed the formation of a centralized revolutionary party, he did in his early period represent a layer which was thrust forward by the struggle of World War I and forced to take an interest in Marxism.

That many of this layer failed to develop as revolutionary leaders can be attributed to the impact of Stalinism on the British Communist Party. Far from fighting the syndicalism which Tanner and others in the shop stewards' movement represented, Stalinism actually used it for its own counter-revolutionary ends.

Scanlon joined. the Com: munist Party when it had abandoned every vestige of Marxism and was a thoroughly and consciously counter-revolutionary force.

And if Tanner ended up extreme right, as he diA 1AIA ua, we must diso say Wal misct alen ener that Scanlon and all those who support him are playing a far more dangerous role than ever Tanner did. For Scanlon and company are not merely advocating acceptance of productivity deals, reactionary though this certainly was. They are now advocating policies which will tie the trade unions firmly to the capitalist state and endanger all the rights which the movement has secured since the unions were first built.

Tanner ended up a notorious right winger. Scanlon, an +h~ basis of his recent on ine vasis ms recent utterances, is heading also towards the right wing.

It is in this light that the career of Jack Tanner will be considered by every worker today.

Saturday 19,