Some Lessons from the AEU National Committee

By its decision to defend Clause Four, extend nationalization and oppose Gaitskell's nuclear policy, the national conference of the Amalgamated Engineering Union showed the tremendous opposition inside the trade unions to the policies of the Right-wing Labour and trade union leaders.

The conference decisions were particularly important in view of the fact that they were taken in an atmosphere of almost unprecedented witch-hunting. Union president Carron opened the conference with a speech that was designed to obscure the important political and policy questions in a cloud of red-baiting. He described Communists as 'werewolves' who are rushing madly 'to industrial ruin'. 'Unofficial' shop stewards' meetings were denounced by him and strikers were referred to contemptuously as people who had a 'slap-happy tendency to run out of the factories'.

The purpose behind this tirade was quite clearly to isolate the Communist Party and left-wing members of the national committee and ensure that the union was lined-up behind Right-wing policies. This failed.

On Wednesday, May 4, the delegates voted through two decisions which will have real importance and bearing on the fight now taking place inside the Labour Party. First the delegates decided to call for unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain. Rejecting the pleas of Salvation Army member and executive councillor John Boyd that this would leave 'Britain defenceless', conference voted by 38 votes to 14 against the Gaitskell line.

Boyd and Carron moaned that such a policy would mean getting out of NATO and said that Britain then would be no longer regarded by America as her steadfast ally.

More nationalization

That same day the conference also unanimously endorsed extension of public ownership and expressed complete opposition to any change in the Labour Party constitution, 'particularly Clause Four dealing with the common ownership of production, distribution and exchange.'

Making clear what they, the members, meant by commanding heights of the economy, conference pledged full support for nationalization of 'steel, road transport, machine tools, aircraft, shipbuilding, chemicals and motors' and instructed the executive to 'place this programme before the Labour Party for adoption in Labour's programme.'

The weakness of this resolution, however, was that it did not take up the fact that the Gaitskell addendum specifically accepts the mutual existence of public and private enterprise.

Both Boyd and Carron hastened to assure the delegates that they accepted the resolution. Boyd 'forgetting' about the 'mixed economy', claimed that no member of the executive had ever suggested that Clause Four should be dropped. Here, of course, the Right-wing leaders hope to confuse the members by covering up the fact that the new addendum accepts the place in sociey of large sectors of private enterprise and leaves what is to be nationalized to the Right-wing. Already Gaitskell's chief aide, Douglas Jay, has stated that we now have control of the 'commanding heights of the economy'.

If the demands of the conference for the nationalization of all basic industries are to be fought for at the Labour Party and Trade Union conferences, it will be necessary for the left inside the AEU to begin a campaign inside the union and the Confederation between now and these conferences.

The same rule applies of course to the union's policy on nuclear weapons. Defying the wishes of the members is not a new policy for the AEU executive. In 1956, during the disputes in the Midlands car factories, despite national committee decisions not to accept redundancy and sackings, the executive council sent their striking members back to work and accepted redundancy.

In 1955, although the elected AEU delegation to the Labour Party conference wished to cast its vote for Bevan as Party Treasurer, the executive council insisted that the vote went to Right-wing nominee Gaitskell.

The need now is for those forces inside the AEU struggling for more nationalization and against Tory and Right-wing Labour's arms policies to join forces with the left-wing inside the Labour Party and the other unions in a campaign for the removal of Gaitskell.