Say Uni All Ships

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It is for this reason . - not because of any shred of loyalty of the Labour leaders to the workers' movement that had put them in office - that the Wilson government ultimately failed the bourgeoisie and failed to bring in anti-union laws.

This first article will deal mainly with the early years of the government, centring attention on struggles over wage control and productivity.

A central question facing the Wilson administration was its relationship with the trade union bureaucracy and its ability to cultivate a close working bond with reactionary leaders such as Woodcock (TUC General Secretary) Cannon (right wing leader of the ETU) and Frank Cousins (TGWU General Secretary.

Of course trade union bureauAND SLL demonstration to back seamen. May 1966 were not, however, put off moving closer to the Labour government.

"LEFT"

After all in a cabiriet including Callaghan as Chancellor, George Brown as head of Department of Economic Affairs and Gunter as Minister of Labour, was the 'left' Frank Cousins, General Secretary of the TGWU as Minister of Technology!

As the SLL's paper, the letter put it:

"The presence of Cousins in the government... is a sign not of the progress of the lefts but of a final step by a left opportunist to play his role in serving capitalism, in this case by collaboration in the deception of the workers about the character of the Labour government."

The key question for that government in its struggle to restore capitalist profitability was, then as now wages..

Yet the trade union leaders approached the question of wage restraint, more warily - or with more appearance of wariness than they do today.

But the parallel is also striking. Just as the resolution passed at the TGWU Biennial conference immediately prior to the signing of the social contract laid down eight stringent conditions including "lower unemployment, massive