TUC SHOWS NEED FOR RANK-AND-FILE MOVEMENT
By Brian Behan
1958The NewsletterBrian Behan Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
THE Right wing of the Trades Union Congress General Council has emerged triumphant from Bouremouth. Here was a week of lost opportunities for the Left. Though its treachery to the London busmen had completely discredited the General Council im the eyes of many rank-and-file workers it was able to avoid any real exposure. gress. In addition, in Tom Yates’s presidential address it reaffirmed its 1957 line, which had such bad results Not only did the General Council quite brazenly defend its attitude in the report it presented to Confor the busmen.
The Left, in the person of Frank Haxell and others, made only a very mild comment on the report. Haxell said the attitude of the General Council ‘did not meet the requirements of the present situation’. One would have thought steps would have been taken to bring more pressure than was the case, he added.
Frank Cousins was against an ‘inquest’—presumably because such an inquest might well raise the question: Why did Cousins in the last anaylsis bow the knee to the General Council and agree not to extend the dispute?
Neither would force vote Neither Haxell nor Cousins was prepared to move the reference back of this section of the report and force a vote.
‘ And so the report was approved by the whole Congress because of the Left’s failure to pass from words to deeds.
A SPECIAL BRANCH VISIT OUR OFFICE: TALK