FRIENDLY SOCIETIES (MEMBERSHIP OF TRADE UNIONS) (Hansard, 29 January 1957)

§ Mr. Ian Mikardo (Reading)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to invalidate rules of friendly societies discriminating against membership of trade unions. There are, happily, a considerable number of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who follow closely the problems which are involved in the maintenance and improvement of industrial relations, because it is common to all people of goodwill that in meeting the difficult economic situation which we have to face at present one of the most important requirements is the best possible relations in industry between management and workers and between one class of workers and another. Therefore, it is altogether heartening that interest in good relations in industry should be widespread and universal and not confined to one side or the other.

Those who have concerned themselves with this matter will know very well the point of the Bill, leave to bring in which I am here seeking, because the point is one which has been referred to by a number of my hon. Friends in one context or another in the House in the last few years. During the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of this century a great deal of resistance has been shown, by at least some employers, to the growth of trade unionism amongst their manual and craft workers, but after a while it came to be generally realised that that was obscurantist.

Now, everybody in the country, except a handful of crackpots, accepts that it is in the widest national interest that both employers and employees should organise themselves in appropriate associations and unions in order to have a common voice in speaking to each other and with the Government of the day.

The resistance which formerly existed to membership of trade unions amongst craft and general workers has now almost entirely disappeared. It is fair to say that the measure of comparative industrial peace which we have enjoyed in this country for thirty years is to no small 864 extent due to the fact that employers' organisations and trade unions have flourished and people have been able to enter them as they wished, and no undue pressures or influences have been applied to try to prevent their entering these organisations.

The picture, however, is not quite complete. The resistance which was formerly shown by some employers to the growth of trade unions among what I might call their shop-floor workers has now been transferred to a resistance to the growth of trade unionism among what may broadly be called the white-collar workers—the foremen charge-hands, the departmental heads, managers, technicians, designers, draughtsmen and office managers.

These are classes of personnel whose place in the industrial structure and whose relations with other people in the industrial structure are of the highest importance. Many of them are the bridge between the higher management and the workers. Many of them are the interpreters of the views of management and workers to each other and, most important, and this is a commonplace among people working in industry, the first-level supervisor—generally the foreman—is really the determinant of the industrial relationship of the organisation.

One can be fairly sure that if a man starts work in a new job and goes home at the end of the first day and says, "I do not think so much of this firm", what he is really saying, almost without realising it is, "I have had a look at my foreman and I do not like him." And vice versa, if the foreman impinges well on him, he thinks well of the firm.

Therefore, these relations are very important indeed, and have in recent times been greatly improved by people of the managerial, sub-managerial and technical classes coming into the trade union movement and, as a result, being able to speak on terms of friendship and comradeship and equality with all the other millions of workers in the trade union movement.

So it seems to be a mistake, even in their own interests, for employers to resist this development. Unhappily, some employers do resist it, not by the crude, overt, bludgeoning methods by which they resisted general trade unionism half 865 a century ago, but by more subtle means. One of these means is the sponsorship by employers' organisations of friendly and benefit societies, which are worthy institutions of themselves and do good work, and to the membership of which they nominate their foremen and other people, but only on condition that such persons are not, or do not remain, members of a trade union.

Now this is a subtle compulsion, but it is a quite powerful compulsion in some organisations, if a new man comes in at the foremanship level, it is sometimes quietly hinted to him, and sometimes said to him overtly, that his future hopes of promotion depend to some extent upon whether he joins the club. Joining the club means that he has to give up membership of a trade union or has to undertake never to join one. There have been occasions when these methods were applied to companies engaged on Government contracts and then, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Southwark (Mr. Isaacs) knows, because he had some first-hand dealings with this matter, the operation of the fair wages clause has been brought into play because these things conflict with the clause.

In general, this subtle pressure has considerable effect, and the trade union movement as a whole has been very much perturbed about it for a long time. That is why, for thirty years, year after year, the annual Trades Union Congress has expressed concern about this matter.

866 That is why I am joined in the sponsorship of this Bill, and I am very grateful for it, by a number of my hon. Friends who, between them, speak with the voices of many millions of organised workers.

I am sure that hon. Members on all sides of the House who want to see the best industrial relations, and who welcome the extent to which, over and over again the trade union movement gives assistance and advice to Governments of all colours, will want to see this somewhat nineteenth century anomaly removed, and will want to see that these worthy institutions go on being open to all people who keep to the rules and pay their subscriptions and behave themselves, but should not debar people on the ground only that such people are members of trade unions.