Unity After The War. The Repeal of the Trade Disputes Act

In a recent pronouncement, “The War and the Peace,” which was adopted at the last Labour Party Annual Conference, the Labour Party outlines its views on reconstruction after the war. It is based on an assumption which all experience shows to be an illusion, the assumption that the struggle between the classes will be absent after the war. It states that “war has taught us that without Socialist principles there can be no security,” and in another passage it assumes that there is agreement between the capitalists and the workers about reconstruction: —

“We note that all classes in our society, as at no time in our history, are united to assure to ordinary men and women the full implications of that victory for Freedom and Democracy for which we are fighting.”

If we bring these two passages together and ask if war has really taught the Conservative Party and its supporters that Socialism is a necessity, the answer is obvious.

We do not need to wait till the war is over to see that the defenders of capitalism have not changed their aim or their methods. Reference was made in these columns recently to an article in the Sunday Dispatch (June 8th, 1941) by Mr. F. C. Hooper, “one of the biggest business men in the Midlands and North.” The article was called “The Cranks who want to Change Britain,” and its one argument is that in the main pre-war Britain was all right and should not be changed. A similar view appears in an appeal for funds issued by Sir Thomas Barlow, Treasurer of the Manchester Conservative and Unionist Association, reproduced in the Daily Herald (August 27th, 1941). Sir Thomas takes the Labour Party to task for seeming to have the idea “that the war is being fought to save trade unionism,” and goes on to insist that “the fundamental rights of freedom and particularly of private ownership must be maintained in any new order of society, and there can be no surer safeguard of this than a strong and virile Conservative Party emerging from the war.”

So while it is true that all kinds of people may agree on the loose phrase “victory for freedom and democracy,” when it comes to translating the phrase into concrete terms Sir Thomas Barlow means no interference with private property.

How little the war-time suspension of the party conflict really means in relation to reconstruction is shown further by the fact that the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the Labour Party have each set up their own committee to consider and make recommendations on reconstruction. If there were really unity why the separate committees?

A test case is the question of the repeal of the Trade Disputes Act of 1927 which imposed restrictions on trade unions. The Prime Minister has told the T.U.C. that any change must wait until after the war because a request for the repeal or even modification of the Act would start a discussion that would hamper the war effort (Daily Herald, September 4th, 1941)
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Meetings are at present taking place of representatives of the Conservative Party and representatives of the T.U.C. to consider possible amendments of the Act, but the Daily Telegraph (September 16th) reports that “feeling against concessions is growing among Conservative M.P.s, who will watch the progress of the talks closely.” It is worth recalling in this matter that the present legal position of the trade unions as a result of the 1927 Act is worse than it was before the last war in spite of similar prophecies of social unity that were made by the Labour Party while that war was in progress.

P. S