A Master of the Squalid Compromise

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discover. Unlike his colleague, 1970s, by direct connivance Vic Feather, he showed little with governmental wagé-freezinterest in keeping in contact ing policies.

Woodcock George Woodcock, architect of TUC collaboration with Labour wage control, died in Epsom on 30 October at the age of 75.

Woodcock, who was never elected except by other bureaucrats to any significant trade union position in his life, emerged out of the inner recesses of the TUC's bureaucratic machine to be General Secretaty from 1960 to 1969. • Paine thie in on devaled DunDe tis penoo he paved ment of TUC collaboration with the state and employers in the National Economic Development Council, and with the various 'incomes policies' and freezes of the Labour government after 1964.

He was a devout Roman Catholic, a Privy Councillor and a Commander of the British Empire. He is said to have rejected a peerage.

Ruskin College Woodcock was born into a poor family in Bamber Bridge, near Preston, in 1904, and worked from 1918 as halftimer in a cotton mill, when he held local positions in the Weavers Association.

He went to Ruskin College when he was 24, and after that he never looked back.

Having performed with success in Ruskin, Woodcock was transferred to Oxford University, where he did even In 1936 he was made head of the Economics Department at the TUC, where his main job was to prepare briefs for General Secretary Citrine in order to make it easier to work closely with the Tory and Coalition governments of the period.

As a reward for this, Woodcock became in 1946 Accistant Canaral pararaii vițial vociciary lu tha: frantinal nosti nemosseienint LIC. : tanatica da communIsI witch-hunter Vincent Tewson, whom it is said he loathed.

Just what Woodcock did in this position, it is difficult to PHOTO: Chris Davies, Report with ordinary trade unionists by other such meetings. attendino trarlec council UF Woodcock proved his worth however, by chairing a TUC committee that collaborated with the capitalist courts in driving out the Stalinist leaders of the Electrical Trades Union in 1959, and ensuring that the extreme right would obtain the stranglehold that they have retained to this day.

Press image This done, Woodcock succeeded Tewson as TUC General Secretary in 1960.

In the capitalist press, he has been portrayed as someone who took the trade unions 'out of Trafalgar Square' (his own phrase), and into the corridors of power'.

But this view is much too simplistic, since the same could be said of the efforts of every major Dureaucrat since ine IUC annina ha 11- TITA was set up in 1808. ---- urus It is important to make the point that Woodcock did not act in the way that trade union bureaucrats have done in the rin Feather hand, like his predecessors from George Howell to Walter Citrine, into the lobbies of Parliament or the offices of government ministries.

Woodcock's special role was to make the transition from one form of collaboration to the other.

He operated in the period when the great post-war boom was collapsing, and he acted in a way to effect the 'shoddy compromise' he so often talked about between the governments he discussed with and the trade union members he was supposed to represent.

When the Tories were still in government up to 1964, Woodcock devoted a great deal of effort to re-organising' the trade union movement-by which he meant getting greater power for the TUC itself vis-a-vis individual unions.

Lead from the top The purpose of this was to allow greater direction from the top over the policies of individual unions.

However, although Woodeock presented a report to this effect to the 1962 TUC, he found that the vested interests of individual bureaucrats prevented him from achieving more than a move towards more amalgamations.

Generally speaking, Woodcock showed little interest in the decisions of Congresses, still less of union conferences or of ordinary members.

Together with Hugh Clegg, he seems to have been the main architect of the Donovan Royal Commission Report on Trade Untion and Employers Organisations of 1965-8, which drew attention to the power of shop stewards, but did not advocate major state intervention in the unions.

Woodcock was more interested in collaboration and negotiation with government and employers on a higher level than this.

Thus during the Tory wage freeze in 1962, he got agreement to set up thè so-called National Economic Development Council, with representatives of unions, employers and planning supposedly overall 'Planning' As the capitalist economic crisis began to grow, this "planning' came more and more to take the form of how best to confront the working "class.

The 1964 Labour government's so-called 'National Plan' and the 'Declaration of Intent' at the end of 1964 took place against the context of growing economic crisis, with a massive balance of payments deficit and a growing determination of employers and government to keep down wages.

During this period the TUC leadership increasingly cooperated with these policies.

Thus Woodcock told the 1965 Congress 'I am a believer in a prices and incomes policy, make no mistake about that" He persuaded the Congress to accept the early warning system' , which was the Labour government's first step in this direction.

In the following year, Woodcock acted as a messenger boy, directly of Prime Minister Wilson, and less directly of the IMF and international bankers.

Woodcock in efforts to persuade the seamen not to go on strike, then to accept the inquiry Wilson tried to set up. and finally to go back without their aims being realised.

This he did, not by discuss ing with any ordinary seamen, but by being closeted with the Executive, even rushing back for the purpose, bronzed from holidays abroad.

Much has been said of Woodcock's remoteness, and lack of interest in daily trade union life.

This was not just a trait of his personality, but of the position he held, dealing with and responsible solely to other bureaucrats, Tory ministers, etc.

By the end of his period as General Secretary he had grown so remote that he is said to have told Wilson that the union leaders would accept the White Paper In Place of Strife.

However, these leaders were compelled by pressure from their members to reject these anti-union proposals, even when they came from a Labour Irrelevant Woodcock went off to become Chairman of the Commission on Industrial Relations, a sort of early version of ACAS. addressing NALGO conference which, in the circumstances of growing struggle and confrontation, was largely irrelevant.

He left it when the Tories tried to bring it into their anti-union machinery.

If it can be said that the White Paper In Place of Strife, introduced by the Labour government in 1969 prepared the way for the Tory confrontations with the unions after 1971, so also it can be shown that the 'squalid compromises' of the TUC leaders-with all the steps that led up to this ill-fated document-laid the groundwork in the first place.

The hard fact is that 'economic planning' under capitalism, however many so-called "Workers' representatives" are involved, can only be planning to weaken the power and conditions of the working class. • Woodcock did not collaborate as directly in the formulation of such policies in the '60s as Jack Jones and others were to. do in the "70s, but his position in the 'corridors of power' in his day served to reduce the independence of the unions and the standard of living of their members as surely as all the subsequent methods of reformist collaboration beloved by today's bureaucrats of his stamn.

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