A Conservative Case for Trade Unions

A Conservative arguing for trade unions? Have we tripped into an alternative timeline? No, we have not, it's just the latest missive from the try hard would-be hegemonisers over at CapX thinking out loud about trade unionism and how it might save their failing system.

Drawing on recent pieces from boring American writers, John Lloyd writes about how neoliberals of the left and right have attacked trade unions and undermined them by unpicking the post-1945 consensus. Quite, which is a reason why Blair was a bad 'un, even if you box out the calamity of Iraq and price in all those PFIs. This undermining of union power has left workers unable to organise effectively, which has seen the productivity gains of the last 40 years accumulate in the hands of the wealthy as living standards have stagnated and, as I'm writing, are going backwards. And, to dust off the frightful phrase, there is the social capital argument. The experience of active trade unionism forces workers together into collaborative relationships, and writ large across a given employer, multiplies social contacts. The workforce become more cohesive, less atomised, and the broad consequence is the building of social trust. Cynicism does not have to be the default.

Not much to disagree with here, but to make it past the Tory filters there must be a sting in the argument, yes? Sort of. Despite highlighting the point unions are "lobby organisations for the overprotected public sector" and how UK unions have come to rely on state-provided services for its industrial backbone, there's a whistful paen to non-political trade unionism. Oddly, new small militant unions like the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain and the United Voices of the World are talked of in positive terms because, at least as far as Lloyd is concerned, their militancy is grounded in the day-to-day challenge of organising precarious workers and ensuring they get their fair share. If the patchwork of society could be sewn together in like manner, especially among "lower class politics" (his phrase) then extremism can be seen off and atomism overcome. Happy times are here again.

Why is this a conservative case for trade unionism? Because it argues for an ideal-typical trade unionism that is a throwback from where we actually are. In the first place, there is nothing new about these points. Conservative Trade Unionists were a body of some not insignificant clout in the workers' movement during the 1970s and, at its height, organised tens of thousands of Tory trade unionists. None of this should come as a shock. To use a phrase from one of the old beards, trade unionism is the bourgeois politics of the working class. Pay, discipline, safety, hours, bullying, these are the everyday issues faced by union activists, stewards, officers, and branches. In a period of labour movement ascendency, like the 1970s, collective action and the strength of workplace organisation delivered results. Struggle helped worklife get better and made sure it paid more. Depending on the politics of a particular workplace, this could intersect with socialist politics and lead to Labourist or, indeed, revolutionary conclusions. But equally, in the absence of politics collective struggle becomes a means of reconciling trade union activity to the system. The rounds of collective bargaining backed by thr strike threat, or even wildcat strikes over sackings of convenors and stewards, or new working practices at their most militant might have challenged management's right to manage, but did not, by and large, raise wider questions. Even if, as was often the case, stewards and key activists were Trotskyists or from the Communist Party. Trade unionism in the post-war period might have made socialists out of hundreds of thousands, but its success ensured millions more were not politicised. This system of institutionalised class struggle worked for them.

This non-political trade unionism tended toward Labourism: trade union stuff is up to the workers, but leave the wider politics of labour to the professionals. But Tory trade unionism had the same root: the union was a place of knowing one's station in life, of guaranteeing community at work while promoting contentment with how things were. Too much militancy was disruptive and threatened workers' security and livelihoods, and this from the standpoint of the CTU was their mission: to preserve and, unsurprisingly, conserve. When Thatcher began her assaults on the labour movement, the bulk of the CTU were unperturbed: the workers' movement had become "unreasonable" and "irresponsible" and needed the state to bring it into line. The layer of conservative trade unionists and working class Tory supporters generally saw it as harsh but necessary medicine, and some were happy seeing the "disruptive" miners getting a good hiding. This famously included one Patrick McLoughlin, a working miner (then a Tory councillor, later a grandee) who denounced the strike from the floor at 1984 Tory conference. If trade unionism had steered away from politics and kept the extremists from power in the movement, none of this might have happened.

Some far-sighted right wing thinkers are alive to the importance of class struggle to their system, and not just in terms of workers having enough wages to avoid crises of underconsumption, as per the present. An active, trade unionised work force is a pain in the arse for management, but it forces them to innovate to intensify exploitation and replace workers with machines, thereby retaining control over work and boosting productivity. It's a creative tension perspective, and without it productivity stalls, low paid jobs proliferate, and we end up with something looking not unlike the British economy of the last decade. The Tory fantasy of quiescent, non-political trade unionism in the 21st century is a fever dream of a cap-doffing working class who'll happily work with them to grease the wheels and, ultimately, do themselves out of their jobs. As was the ultimate fate of so many CTU supporters in the 1980s and 90s.

A multitudinous mass of good workers who'll do their duty, shop til they drop, and inculcate a new class culture of deference, communitarianism, and perhaps a bit of "suspicion toward outsiders". Lloyd says this conception of trade unionism is "humanist", not political. He could not be more wrong. Sectional to its core the whole argument is sodden with bourgeois assumptions and the sense of a misty-eyed reactionary pining for a better yesterday. A conservative case for trade unions certainly, and one a million miles away from ours.