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British Trade Unionism, Workers' Strategies and Economic Performance, 1940-79
Conference organised by the Society for the Study of Labour History, the Modern Records Centre, and Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, at the University of Warwick, on 19 and 20 September 1997.
This wide-ranging two-day conference was attended by some seventy people and opened with a stimulating 'witness session' with Jack Jones and Len Murray. It was organised around parallel thematic sessions consisting of three papers, plus plenary sessions at the end of each day.
There were a number of papers which directly or indirectly dealt with Communist activity and influence in the unions.
Those concerned directly with Communist activity were Alan Campbell and John McIlroy, 'The CP and industrial politics, 1964-75'; Richard Stevens, 'Cold war politics: communism and anti-communism in the trade unions, 1951-65'; John Lloyd, 'Were we a fighting union? The ETU, 1945-60'.
There were several other papers that contained substantial references to Communist activity, or produced considerable discussion thereof. These included Jim Phillips regarding dockworkers; Nina Fishman on the 1957 engineering and 1958 bus workers' strikes; Tony Carew on TUC international policy; Rod Hague on the AEU; John Foster and Charles Woolfson on the UCS work-in; and Kerrie Ryan on Hugh Scanlon.
The Phillips-Stevens-Campbell/McIlroy session, chaired by Paul Smith produced much discussion of a number of points. These included the revolutionary aims of British Communists in the post-war period; the degree to which the CP recovered after the events of 1956; the CP's role in the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions; 'rank-and-file' hostility to Communists; input by the International Socialists; local variations in Communist influence and activity; and the role of Bill Jones of the TGWU after 1956. Participants in the debates included Chris Wrigley, Richard Hyman, Alan McKinlay, Joe Melling, John Lloyd and Ruth Frow. Various opinions and assessments were put forward, and at times the session 'threatened' to become another 'witness' event. A measure of the interest stimulated is, perhaps, that its allotted time of ninety minutes was greatly exceeded and could have continued for much longer.
A number of the conference papers are to be published by Scolar Press in a two-volume collection under the auspices of the SSLH. Others will appear in Historical Studies in Industrial Relations. A more detailed report on the conference will be published in a future Labour History Review.
