The role of the TUC in significant industrial disputes: an historical critical overview

Historically the British Trades Union Congress's (TUC) role in a significant number of major industrial disputes has been subject to both accusations of 'betrayals' and 'sell-outs' as well as more sympathetic accounts which emphasise the constraints faced by the TUC both in terms of their institutional role and their relationship with constituent unions. Drawing on evidence concerning the role of the TUC in significant disputes including the 1926 General Strike, the strike wave of 1972, 1975–8 Grunwick dispute, the 1978/9 'winter of discontent', the 1984/5 miners' strike, the 1986–7 News International strike and more recent examples, the paper highlights four constraints on the role of the TUC in relation to major disputes: their political loyalty to the Labour Party; an aversion to defying the law; the avoidance of appearing to challenge state power; and structural constraints to an extent inherent within trade union officialdom.

Keywords: Trades union congress; 1926 general strike; strikes; British industrial relations; 1984/5 miners' strike; labour party

Historically the Trades Union Congress's (TUC) role in a significant number of major industrial disputes has been subject to accusations of 'betrayals' and 'sell-outs' by some of those directly involved, and others on the left. Examples include their refusal to take up Jim Larkin's call to organise solidarity industrial action for locked-out Dublin workers in 1913 (Newsinger, [43]), to call off the 1926 General Strike after nine days to leave the miners to fight alone (Macfarlane, [36]), to reject appeals to organise solidarity industrial action in support of the 1984–5 miners' strike (Callinicos & Simon, [8]), and the failure to mobilise support for many other significant disputes by individual unions both before and since. In more recent years the TUC General Council has been criticised from inside the trade union movement from those frustrated with its apparent unwillingness to organise 'generalised strike action' against government austerity measures, and in 2017 an attempt by the TUC to encourage an agreement with Southern Rail to end the protracted dispute over the removal of guards over the heads of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) was condemned by the union as 'a shocking and historical betrayal presided over by the TUC' (RMT, [46]).

Conversely, it has been argued 'there is no reason to doubt the good faith of the TUC' in refusing to agree to mobilise official trade union support for the locked out Dublin workers in 1913, and that 'it is certainly a mistake to portray the TUC's action as some sort of betrayal of the Dublin men' (Yeates, [67], p.583). At the same time some observers have pointed out that the 1926 General Strike illustrated in sharp relief the problem the TUC has always attempted to avoid, namely of being placed in a situation in which it could be seen to be challenging the power of the government and state power. From this perspective, although the outcome of the General Strike was undoubtedly a severe defeat, it was by no means a 'betrayal' of the union movement as a whole (Milne-Bailey, [41]). A similar defence has been mounted in relation to the 1984–5 miners' strike and other disputes where the TUC has necessarily wanted to avoid acting in a way that could be perceived as supporting the breaking of the law, with its all its implications for court fines and sequestration of union funds (Adeney & Lloyd, [1]; Beckett & Hencke, [6]).

It could also be pointed out that the TUC General Council acts as a federation of unions that can support workers' disputes, its ability to act in a collective directive fashion for the trade union movement as a whole has always been constrained by the underlying autonomy of affiliated unions, constraints that make disingenuous criticisms of its alleged 'sell-out' behaviour. The General Council 'could plead, persuade, invite, cajole, but never give orders. It was to act as a "general staff of labour" ... to an army which had no chain-of-command or commander-in-chief and whose divisions would decide for themselves whether to fight or not.' (Bullock, [7], p. 147) Yet despite such constraints, the TUC has clearly demonstrated on many occasions its official support for many disputes and its willingness to attempt to galvanise solidarity by the trade union movement generally, for example with the 1971 postal workers', 1982 health workers' and 2016–17 junior doctors' strikes.

In exploring the issues raised by such contrasting perspectives, this article provides evidence that emphatically supports the former analysis, contextualised with recognition of underlying constraints advanced by the alternative analysis. In sum, while the TUC have often been willing to formally support industrial disputes by individual affiliates, and on occasion have even coordinated much broader forms of strike action, it has generally only supported such action in strictly controlled and limited fashion, with the result that the often-repeated charge that the TUC has been 'relatively conservative, cautious, reactive, defensive ... over the years' (Dorfman, [23], p.28) appears to have been borne out historically.

Given such a wide-ranging historical review, this study primarily draws on an extensive range of secondary literature, engaging critically with the perspectives outlined above. It also utilises archival material including TUC Annual Reports, Congress declarations, newspapers, pamphlets and similar. The primary focus of inquiry is the senior leading figures in the TUC General Council, and while there is due acknowledgment of the way in which the General Council has been characterised by internal political differentiation between left and right-wing members (Taylor, [54]), word-length limitations preclude any detailed consideration of such features.

The article is structured along the following lines. To begin with, it explores the way in which any aspirations for the TUC General Council to act as a 'General Staff of Labour' for the trade union movement have always been thwarted by institutional limitations including the relative balance between control and autonomy in the TUC's relationship to constituent unions, highlighted in sharp relief in the General Strike. The article then examines three other crucial external features of the way in which the TUC's willingness to support individual industrial disputes by affiliate unions have also been enormously constrained. First, there has been its political loyalty to Labour (for example, in response to Labour's 1969 In Place of Strife proposals, the 1975–7 development of the Social Contract, 1976–8 Grunwick dispute, and 'Concordat' initiative of the 1978–9 'winter of discontent'. Second, there has been the problem of defying the law (for example, with the 1972 dockers' entanglement with the Industrial Relations Act, and in the 1983 Stockport Messenger, 1984–5 miners' and 1986–7 News International strikes. Third, there has been the problem of trying to avoid being placed in a situation in which it could be seen to be challenging the power of the state (for example, the General Strike and 1972 strike over imprisoned dockers). Finally the article provides explanations for why the TUC's support for industrial disputes has been constrained to such an extent that charges of 'sell-out' and 'betrayal' can be seen to have some purchase, in the process drawing on the evidence to outline the need to go beyond individual agency and to situate policies, strategies and actions within the contradictory structural position of trade union officialdom (Darlington & Upchurch, [21]; Hyman, [28]).

During its early years of existence since its formation in 1868 the TUC viewed all industrial disputes as the concern of individual unions over which the TUC had no jurisdiction, and it effectively played no part in strikes. Instead, as the title given to its executive body – the Parliamentary Committee – was to make clear, its main function was to be a political role of lobbying ministers over legislative matters related to the security of workers and their trade unions (Martin, [37]). Only slowly and with great caution did the TUC venture into collecting funds for unions involved in major stoppages. At the same time, the TUC's Parliamentary Committee also effectively conceded a major role to the Labour Party (formed in 1906) in relation to intervention in industrial disputes, and was not even directly involved in the 'Great Labour Unrest' strike wave of 1910–14 (Holton, [25]).

The 1913 Dublin lockout provided the one exception, when the Parliamentary Committee generated a massive level of financial assistance from itself and affiliated unions, as well as numerous specially charted food ships that were sent to the Dublin strikers in very public displays of support organised under the auspices of the TUC. Yet despite calling an unprecedented special Congress to discuss the coordination of British trade union solidarity for the Dublin dispute, the TUC ended up decisively voting against sympathetic industrial action and condemning Jim Larkin's alleged 'unfair' attacks upon TUC leaders for acting 'as a brake on the wheel of progress' and as 'apologists for the shortcomings of the Capitalist system' (Daily Herald, 22 September 1913; Darlington, [19]; Newsinger, [43]).

Nonetheless there were a number of underlying impulses to the TUC's development into a central, co-ordinating body for organised workers, with subsequent implications for its relationship to industrial disputes in which constituent unions were engaged.

The experience of the 1910–1914 strike wave encouraged the momentum for a campaign of industrial unity that led to the formation of industry-wide bodies such as the National Transport Workers' Federation and National Union of Railwaymen, as well as the establishment of a 'Triple Alliance' of miners', railway and transport workers' unions that was pledged to provide joint solidarity action in the event of any of its constituents being involved in national industrial disputes. Although the war intervened, during 1919–20 amidst a renewed wave of workers' militancy and an increasing rhetoric of 'direct action' used by some left-wing union leaders, there was a new emphasis on the dormant Triple Alliance (to organise solidarity for locked-out miners opposing wage cuts), seen by syndicalists as not only a means of promoting class unity through sympathetic strike action, but potentially a revolutionary weapon to overthrow capitalism (Darlington, [17]). The 'Black Friday' (April 1921) collapse of the Triple Alliance (when action in support of the miners' union was withdrawn at the last minute) not only underlined the lack of coordination between different sections of the union movement, it also encouraged many union militants, syndicalists and socialists to look towards the need for a new TUC 'General Staff of Labour' that could mobilise in the event of outright national conflicts including general strikes against the government and capital (Dorfman, [23], p.193; p.4–5).

Such developments led in 1921 to the TUC's structural reform, with the replacement of its Parliamentary Committee by a more fully industrially representative General Council, to be elected by the annual Congress and provided with a more permanent administrative staff, enabling it to assert its authority as representative of the industrial side of the labour movement, notably in terms of the coordination of industrial disputes (Clegg, [11], p. 397; Allen, [2]; Webb & Webb, [66], p. 573–5; Dorfman, [23], p. 6). Yet as the wartime shop stewards' leader J.T. Murphy (Solidarity, September 1919) was to presciently warn, rather than this 'General Staff of officialdom' providing a powerful lead in organising and coordinating strike action or acting 'a directing agency towards the overthrow of capitalism', it would instead be 'a dam to the surging tide of independent working class aspirations'.

The critical events of the following four years, involving a widespread employers' offensive in many sectors and the approaching crisis in the mining industry, the question of what power and responsibilities the new TUC General Council should have, and how it should be able to use that power in organising assistance for affiliated unions involved in industrial disputes, became a subject of constant debate at the annual Congress. Yet whilst recognising they had a considerable stake in supporting a TUC that could protect their interests on the national level, constituent unions also worried that collective authority operating on a permanent and continuous basis could work against their own individual interests and prerogatives (Dorfman, [23], pp. 22–23; Lovell & Roberts, [34], pp. 65–71).

While initially Congress defeated efforts to bolster TUC power, by 1924 and 1925 there had been a dramatic shift to the left both on the General Council and inside the Congress that, combined with the disillusioning experience of the first Labour government that held office in 1924, encouraged a greater reliance on direct industrial power to protect workers' interests. At the 1924 Hull Congress radical leaders such as Arthur Cook (miners), A.A. Purcell (furniture workers), Alonzo Swales (engineers) and George Hicks (building trades), gained a majority on the General Council and used their influence to amend the Standing Orders and win new powers for the TUC to intervene in industrial disputes. The General Council was enabled to call unions into consultation and attempt to secure a settlement. Second, where disputes led to stoppages and the union concerned had followed the Council's advice, then the Council was required to 'coordinate industrial action' and to 'organise ... moral and material support.' (Trades Union Congress [TUC], [56], p. 8; [64])

On the face of it, the decision of the 1924 Hull Congress to amend the constitution represented a remarkable increase in TUC General Council power, albeit without threatening the autonomy of individual unions as the General Council could only act with the consent of affiliated unions. Moreover, not only did some centre/right-wing figures increasingly assert their moderating influence, but there was an underlying tension – which would soon become apparent – between the intervention of the Council to settle a dispute and the mobilisation of solidarity in support of it. At the 1925 Scarborough Congress, a proposal to give the General Council direct executive authority to call affiliated unions out on strike and require affiliated unions to make alter their rules to permit this transference of power. Although the resolution was not sponsored by the General Council, the left-wing Alonzo Swales in his Presidential address made reference to the need for development to take place on these lines, and stated that he expected the next Congress to be 'ready to pass in concrete form machinery which establishes the General Council of the TUC as the central controlling and directing body of the British Trade Union Movement on all large issues' (Lovell & Roberts, [34], p. 85). While Congress did not definitively reject the proposal, the General Council were authorised to examine it and make recommendations to a special conference of union executives. But the possibility of the TUC being transformed into a centralised organisation did not materialise (despite subsequent calls by the Communist Party for 'All Power to the General Council').[1] The left-wing interlude ended after Scarborough, with a number of centre and right-wing figures – such as Walter Citrine (TUC general secretary), Arthur Pugh (TUC chairman), Ernest Bevin (transport workers), and J.H. Thomas (railwaymen) – increasingly asserting their moderating influence. Although the influence of the left inside Congress did not diminish, there were important changes at the Scarborough 1925 Congress that altered the General Council's political composition towards the right. While the left-wing figures Hicks, Swales and Hicks all remained on the Council, the right-wing railwaymen's leader, Jimmy Thomas, returned to the General Council and was to play a decisive role in secret negotiations with the government before and during the General Strike alongside the moderate steel workers' leader Arthur Pugh, who replaced Swales as chairman of the General Council and as chair of the pivotal Special Industrial Committee overseeing the dispute. In turn such figures strengthened the hand of the moderate new TUC general secretary, Walter Citrine, transport workers' leader Ernest Bevin, and others who were reluctant to support action that involved confrontation with the government (Bullock, [7], p. 283–4; Lovell & Roberts, [34], p. 86).

However there was one momentous consequence of the widening of the Council's powers in 1924, namely the way it provided the basis upon which it could intervene in the impending clash between the miners and the government.

Following a request in July 1925 from the Miners' Federation for TUC assistance (in support of the miners' platform of no wage reductions, no increase in hours and the maintenance of national agreements), the General Council summoned a special conference of trade union executives to consider a proposal that any employers' lockout of the miners would be countered by a complete embargo on any movement of coal. The union executives agreed and an Embargo Committee was formed, chaired by Hicks and representing the executive committees of the transport unions. The details of the embargo were worked out and the plan was ready to come into operation at midnight on 31 July, the day the miners were to be locked out. However, it was not required as the Baldwin government at the very last moment that miners' wages would be subsidised until 1 May 1926 and that in the interval a Royal Commission would investigate the condition of the industry. On this basis ('Red Friday') the coal owners withdrew their lockout notices, and industrial action was avoided. The threat of an embargo produced this reversal of policy, but it was equally clear that in May 1926, when the subsidy expired, the crisis would return.

The Scarborough Congress that followed the July 1925 coal crisis became a turning point amidst the rise to influence of more moderate figures inside the General Council. Instead of taking measures to actively prepare for extended industrial action on behalf of the miners when the government's subsidy ended in ten months' time, the General Council unceasingly pursued with the government the prospect of a negotiated settlement based on the recommendations of the Royal Commission's Samuel Report. However the Report, while outlining schemes for the reorganisation of the industry, insisted wage reductions would be necessary during the transitional period. While the majority of the TUC and Special Industrial Committee accepted the Commission's report as a reasonable basis for settlement, the Miners' Federation rejected it.

When it became clear that the chances of a settlement were remote did the General Council feel compelled to make a gesture in defence of the miners, hurriedly improvising a plan for coordinated sympathetic 'national strike'. This was sanctioned by a specially convened conference of the executives of affiliated unions who effectively handed over the running of the strike to the General Council. Initially, only individual unions in certain industries – transport, printing, building, iron and steel, electricity and gas industries – were called out, while workers in engineering, shipbuilding and textiles were held back until 11 May. The rest, including unions in vital services such as the postal service, were not called out at all. The TUC was described as 'a combatant in a war which had been forced upon it and which it feared to win.' (Klugmann, [30], p. 99)

Crucially the question of who would control the dispute, the role of the miners and the TUC in making decisions was left ill defined. As far as the General Council was concerned, the unions had placed the direction of the dispute into their hands. As Ernest Bevin recalled: 'I insisted that the dispute should pass into the hands of the General Council – the right to call out, the right to control absolutely and the right to come to a decision as to settlement, to be in the hands of the General Council' (Bullock, [7], pp. 299–300). Given that the General Council leadership had no belief in the possibility of achieving the miners' three-point programme, they assumed that with control of the dispute they would be able to negotiate a more flexible settlement on the miners' behalf, even though it involved a reduction in wages (Lovell & Roberts, [34], pp. 74–92). J.H. Thomas went so far as to insist: 'Never mind what the miners or anybody else say, we accept it' (Citrine, [10], p. 197).

By contrast, while the miners' union leaders had agreed to the General Council taking over control, they had interpreted this as meaning that while they would conduct negotiations on their behalf, the final decision as to what was acceptable and what was not would remain with the miners' union – and they flatly refused to accept the Samuel memorandum terms. But with the whole General Council united in its determination to call off the strike at noon on 12 May – with not one left-wing voice (including Purcell, Hicks and Swales) raised against such a proposal, the miners were left to fight alone. The termination of the General Strike after nine days, without securing the withdrawal of the mine owners' notices, any settlement of the original dispute, and no guarantees regarding the victimisation of strikers, came as a profound shock to the miners and many other trade unionists to whom it appeared only too evident that they had been betrayed by their leaders.

The outcome of the General Strike was to deal a body blow to both the immediate and long-term development of a powerful TUC leadership constituting a 'General Staff of Labour' that the TUC had made steps towards in 1924 and 1925 (Dorfman, [23], pp. 9–10). For many years after the strike, the emphasis of General Council intervention in threatened or actual strikes was to act as a mediator and peacemaker – rather than to mobilise the resources of the trade union movement in support of disputes. Indeed, as Lyddon ([35], pp. 147–9) has pointed out, it was not until the 1970s that the TUC was to call on unions to take national strike action again – on five occasions this took the form of political 'demonstration strikes' aimed at the government. In 1973 a Special Congress called on the General Council 'to organise a national protest and stoppages' against incomes policy; the General Council then invited unions to join such a day on 1 May (TUC, [59], p. 281). A 'Day of Action' was called against Conservative policies and their first employment bill on 14 May 1980 (TUC, [60], pp. 236–7). The 1982 TUC conference agreed a General Council statement calling for support for the 24-hour health workers' strike on 22 September (TUC, [62], p. 681), and after the decision to ban unions at the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) from 1 March 1984, the TUC urged unions to get together in a '"common cause" with Civil Service colleagues' who had called a 'Protest Day' for 28 February' (TUC, [63], p. 49). The Conservative government's Trade Union Act 1984 requiring ballots before unions could call official strikes and not risk a court injunction against them (with the threat of hefty fines), and the unlawfulness of 'political strikes' not connected with terms and conditions of employment, put an end to such coordinated action.

In the last few years unions have looked to the TUC to 'coordinate' industrial action which is lawful and within its rules. Thus individual unions can choose to coordinate strike dates with other unions, with such arrangements more common when unions face the same employer(s), but only the TUC has the authority to coordinate large-scale action that straddles several industries. One such example of this was the huge public sector one-day strike that took place in 2011. As early as the September 2010 Congress union leaders generally had faced calls for action in response to the impact of government austerity measures, with a motion calling for the General Council to 'support and co-ordinate campaigning and joint union industrial action, nationally and locally, in opposition to attacks on jobs, pensions, pay or public services'.[2] In 2011 Congress voted to support a collective day of public sector strikes on the issue of pensions on November 30 under the coordination of the TUC. After the Congress 21 TUC-affiliated unions (and eleven non-affiliated unions) with members in the public services balloted their members, and in every case there was a majority for strike action. So the TUC did not call 'N30ʹ, instead it 'coordinated' action that the TUC's public service unions themselves had decided to take (Lyddon, [35]).

In sum, the role of the TUC General Council as a 'General Staff of Labour' has only been manifest in episodic and highly circumscribed fashion. In part this is because its ability to act in a collective fashion for the trade union movement as a whole has always been constrained by the 'perennial problem of reconciling the special interests of particular unions ... with the general interests of the trade union movement' (TUC, [57] – emphasis added). But at the same time, there has been a long-standing institutional contradiction: the General Council is not powerful enough to have centralised or directive authority to lead, and its constituent unions are not bound by TUC policies, with the older established unions too strongly entrenched to agree to give up their independence (Cole, [15], p. 27). Overall, the General Council has only been as strong as its affiliates – notably the general secretaries of the larger unions – have allowed it to be.

As a consequence any radical aspirations for a centralised TUC executive able and willing to mobilise working class forces in outright national conflicts with employers and government have invariably not been fulfilled. Thus the 2012 Congress decision in favour of 'investigating the practicalities of calling a general strike' across all unions in protest at austerity (and the 2015 Congress decision to offer qualified support for 'generalised strikes' should legal action be taken against any affiliate under the new Trade Union Act) has not been put into practice.

Having analysed the limitations of the TUC's role in industrial disputes that derive from its institutional role and structure, the following sections focus on other pressures that have often operated on the TUC to encourage caution and restraint in its attitude to significant industrial disputes.

One manifestation of this restraining role is the way in which, in attempting to forge a close relationship with the Labour Party, the TUC has invariably been concerned – notably when Labour has been in government office – to restrain strike activity that could undermine the party. Four examples of this process can be examined; the Labour government's 1969 'In Place of Strife' proposals, the 1975–77 'Social Contract' between the unions and Labour, the 1976–8 Grunwick dispute, and the 1978–9 'winter of discontent'.

The Labour government's 1969 White Paper, In Place of Strife, proposed that legislation should be enacted to give governments power to order a ballot before a major strike, and to order 'cooling off' periods particularly in the case of unofficial and 'unconstitutional' strikes. The proposed measures, with their threat of 'penal clauses' for transgressions, were firmly rejected by the TUC, unions and even Labour Party backbenchers – with the Communist Party-dominated Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions organising unofficial political strike action in opposition – until the government was forced to withdraw their plans (Mcllroy & Campbell, [39]). But a very important outcome was that the TUC General Council, under its general secretary Vic Feather, developed a Programme of Action that aimed to show the unions were not just negative in respect to the proposals but were perfectly capable of reforming themselves without any need for government intervention (Silver, [49]).

Feather tried to convince the government that the TUC was keen to be helpful by being prepared to strengthen its existing rules to assume wider authority over its affiliated unions. It would make it an 'obligation' on them to inform the General Council of any 'unauthorised and unconstitutional stoppages of work' and to follow TUC advice as to how to deal with them by 'tak[ing] immediate and energetic steps to obtain a resumption of work', and give the right to suspend and even expel any union that refused to accept its judgements (Coates & Topham, [14], p. 116). But none of this went far enough to satisfy Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Employment Minister Barbara Castle. The TUC's 1969 Croydon Congress accepted the General Council's programme, but delegates made it clear that the unions would not accept the use of statutory penalties in unofficial strikes. When Wilson, Castle and her senior advisors met the General Council, Feather argued that 'there was no difference between the government and the trade union movement about the aim, which was to minimise strikes. Their difference was about means'. He subsequently met with ministers independently of his General Council colleagues to try to find a way forward that would prevent a split between the TUC and the government (Taylor, [54], p. 183).

Eventually a breakthrough came in June 1969 with left-wing General Council member Hugh Scanlon's suggestion that the TUC would accept a 'solemn and binding' commitment (on the lines of the Bridlington inter-union dispute rules) to try to control unconstitutional strikes. This was treated as a face-saving compromise that is likely to have contributed to the Labour cabinet's decision to back down and abandon its intended 'penal clauses' in any future Bill (which in the event did not materialise with the return of the Conservatives to office). Yet as Jack Jones ([29], p. 206) noted: 'A victory had been scored in defence of the right to strike without fear of legal sanctions, but the TUC took aboard some big new responsibilities ... Many strikes were avoided in consequence'. It pushed the TUC into a more interventionist role with regard to mediation and arbitration amidst signs of a growing militancy among lower-paid workers in the public sector, with Feather effectively acting as a trouble-shooter trying to 'coax and cajole and to fudge up settlements around the negotiating table' (Taylor, [52], p. 44). As Barbara Castle ([9], pp. 424–5) acknowledged in her diary, Feather 'kept the TUC's part of the bargain, intervening as an intrepid fire-fighter of unconstitutional disputes and he undoubtedly helped us to avoid several strikes'.

Over successive national incomes polices from 1948 to 1977 the TUC was persuaded to come to the rescue of Labour governments that were attempting to manage the economy by agreeing to accept forms of pay restraint or even a wages standstill which it then urged on the rank and file of affiliated trade unions (Taylor, [54], pp. 11–12). The most notable example of this was the 1975–7 'Social Contract', and the way in which – with profound implications for the TUC's role and authority – in return for legislation favourable to the trade unions, it agreed to 'police' voluntary pay restraint by the trade union movement, despite proving unable to dissuade the government from its chosen course of toleration of high levels of unemployment, substantial cuts in public spending and controlling inflation largely dictated by the requirements of the International Monetary Fund[3] (Coates & Topham, [14], p.119–121). While rank-and-file opposition inside the unions, and then at Congress, forced an abandonment of such acquiescence, it subsequently led to the 1978–9 'winter of discontent' strike wave.

It was one of the leading members of the General Council and a towering left-wing figure in the union movement generally, Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), who was the real architect of the Social Contract. Jones provided the necessary initiative and dynamism required to enable the TUC General Council and its new general secretary, Len Murray, to convince the unions to agree to a voluntary limit on wage rises of £6 a week. It was claimed they had to shoulder the crucial responsibility for helping to save the economy from inflationary disaster and being consumed by union claims for wage rises of 10, 15 or even 20 per cent, otherwise there was a strong possibility of another general election and the fall of the minority Harold Wilson-led Labour government (Taylor, [53]: 222–224; [54]: 201–223). The Social Contract led to a significant decrease in the level of strike activity and weakening of workplace union organisation. It became apparent that the TUC would be unable to persist with pay restraint beyond the summer of 1977, with even Jack Jones challenged by his own union conference delegates who called for a return to free collective bargaining. The TUC were obliged to comply, albeit warning against unfettered wage bargaining that could increase the danger of bringing the government down.

The 1976–8 dispute over trade union recognition at the Grunwick photo-processing factory in north west London involved a predominantly female Asian migrant workforce. Solidarity boycotting of Grunwick mail was taken in November 1976 and then in June 1977 by members of the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW), albeit on both occasions the threat of court action led the union leadership to instruct their members to resume collections and deliveries. Meanwhile, the Grunwick strike committee called for mass pickets outside the factory's gates to try to stop non-striking workers from entering the workplace, with hundreds of trade unionists and anti-racist and feminist supporters responding despite daily violent police counter-mobilisations. The largest mass picket took place on 11 July 1977 with 18,000 supporters from across the country, including miners from Yorkshire (led by Arthur Scargill), South Wales and Kent, attempting to blockade the plant and clashing with police (Rogaly, [47], p. 182).

Following a request for help from the strikers' union, the Association of Professional, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX), the new TUC General Secretary Len Murray had requested unions give all possible assistance to the Grunwick strikers, including asking their members not to use the mail order services of the company. Murray told the strikers the TUC 'are not just behind you. We are right alongside you' (Dromey & Taylor, [24], p. 99). But the scenes of fighting at Grunwick repeatedly displayed in the national media became of real concern to the TUC, which feared it would undermine support for their Social Contract with the wafer-thin majority Labour government, and it insisted the trajectory of the dispute be reined in by the APEX union leadership rather than determined by the strike committee. This led to APEX winding down the picketing on the basis that a government-appointed Court of Inquiry (Rogaly, [47], pp.103–9) was likely to find in the workers' favour. Yet the Grunwick management's rejection of the inquiry's findings and recommendations for rehiring of strikers and union recognition, led to a resumption of mass picketing, with the belief that the law would be on the Grunwick strikers' side further undermined when an industrial tribunal ruled that the workers had been 'fairly' sacked.

In the absence of support from the trade union leadership, the strikers found it impossible to revive the militancy and numbers previously displayed. The unwillingness of TUC leaders to encourage effective solidarity action was bitterly criticised by the strike committee. Pickets lobbied the September 1977 TUC Congress to call upon affiliated unions to cut off essential services and supplies to the company, in particular, electricity, water and post. But the General Council voted by a majority not to support action that might be deemed illegal, and which they believed would have had the effect of embarrassing the Labour government (Dromey & Taylor, [52], p. 101; Anitha, S. & Pearson, R, [4], p. 101; pp. 128–9). Although the strikers maintained their picket for several more months, with a small group of pickets even launching a desperate hunger strike outside the TUC headquarters to shame them into action, they eventually called off the dispute conceding defeat.

With the collapse of the Social Contract the increasingly hostile union attitude towards the Labour government became evident in the anguished debate on the General Council in 1977 over an impending national firefighters' dispute. The Fire Brigades Union wanted the TUC to launch a public campaign against the government's 10 per cent pay limit and annual wage settlements. But the extent to which the General Council was prepared to go to continue to help the government was made clear when it voted in December 1977 by 21 to 19 not to throw its support behind the firefighters' strike (Coates, [12], p. 76; Moore, Wright, & Taylor, [42], p. 37).

The TUC issued a statement in July 1978 warning the Prime Minister James Callaghan that while the unions had no wish to return to the inflationary difficulties of 1974–5 with a wages explosion, there would be industrial unrest if he tried to impose a 5 per cent wages policy for the 1978–79 round. The 1978 Congress delegates voted overwhelmingly against further wage restraint and the upsurge of bitterness became manifest in national strikes by Ford car workers, lorry drivers, and low-paid public sector workers. Len Murray held numerous meetings with the prime minister and became personally involved in the disputes, attempting to convince union leaders that the situation was so fraught with danger that they should even risk acting in defiance of their members in seeking rapid and peaceful settlements (Dorfman, [23], pp. 81–89). But in spite of the collective disapproval of the TUC, as well as the objections of even some individual union leaders, the 'winter of discontent' was to lead to an upsurge in the level of pay settlements that inflicted severe damage to the 'special relationship' between the union movement and the Labour government.

As a result, in February 1979 strenuous negotiations were conducted between the TUC and government to try to repair the severely damaged relationship. The General Council agreed – in recognition of the perceived public damage inflicted on the unions by ostensibly 'aggressive' picketing and the lack of official trade union control over their behaviour – to publish TUC guidelines, voluntary 'codes of conduct', advocating limiting the number of pickets deployed in a strike and secret ballots of union members before calling strikes (Coates, [12]: 80;). Yet it was all to no avail, as without a parliamentary majority the Labour government was defeated by one vote in a confidence motion and subsequently lost the general election in May 1979 to Margaret Thatcher (Taylor, [54]: 201–231).

The firefighters' dispute of 2002–4 also revealed the way in which – in this case a 'New Labour' government headed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, committed to the imperatives of neoliberalism adopted by its Conservative predecessors – insisted on maintaining public sector pay limits. As a result the Fire Brigades Union general secretary Andy Gilchrist came under massive pressure from both ministers and the TUC to call off planned strikes 'in order not be seen to be political' as the government finalised preparations to go to war in Iraq. As one firefighter wrote in Red Watch, the rank-and-file paper for firefighters, Tony Blair put pressure on [John} Prescott, Prescott put pressure on the TUC, the TUC put pressure on Gilchrist and Gilchrist just buckled' (Smith, [50], p.20).

In summary, ideological and political loyalty to the Labour Party, especially when Labour is in office, has encouraged the TUC to dampen down strike action so as not to undermine 'their' government, make Labour appear 'irresponsible' and harm its management of the economy. Similar trends have operated even when Labour is out of office (Coates, [13]; Crouch, [16]). Whilst there have often been tensions between the TUC and the Labour Party (for example with an increasingly critical stance being taken by some union leaders towards Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's neo-liberal policies in the early 2000s), the pressure on the TUC to blunt workers' militancy has often been apparent.

Another important feature of the relationship of the TUC to industrial conflict has been the way it has repeatedly stepped back from supporting open defiance of government employment legislation in the face of potential fines and sequestration of union funds. We can explore this with reference to the 1972 dockers' defiance of the Tories' Industrial Relations Act, and the challenges posed by the Thatcher government's employment legislation in the 1983 NGA Warrington, 1984–5 miners' and 1986–7 News International disputes.

As with Labour's In Place of Strife, the TUC leadership played a very ambiguous role with reference to the Tories' Industrial Relations Act in the early 1970s. On the one hand, they had provided an important degree of ideological, political and organisational resistance against the government's proposals, with a huge propaganda initiative and campaign of meetings and an estimated 140,000-strong London demonstration (TUC, [58]). But at the same time, once the measures had been enacted onto the statute book, they were extremely reluctant to take action that would defy the law and risk all-out confrontation with the government (Taylor, [54], p. 195). When the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, the Communist Party-linked rank and file movement drawing its strength from militant trade unionists in the construction and engineering industries, called a one-day strike in opposition to the Act in December 1970 it was denounced by the General Council, and although somewhere between 350,000 and 600,000 stopped work in the 'biggest political strike since 1926ʹ, TUC general secretary Vic Feather remarked that 9.5 million trade unionists had worked 'in the face of attempts by a front organisation to mislead them' (Mcllroy & Campbell, [39]; Darlington & Lyddon, [20], p. 28).

The issue of legality came to a head inside the TUC with the formal request from the TGWU for advice on what it should do when it was fined £55,000 for contempt of court in refusing to attend the National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC) or obeying the courts order to stop its dock members' unofficial picketing and blacking of goods being transported to a new container terminals by Heatons, a road haulage company on Merseyside. In the face of the potential threat of sequestration of TGWU assets, the Finance and General Purposes Committee (F&GPC) advised the unions to pay the fine, and hence to recognise the NIRC and drop the TUC's previously agreed principled stance of opposition (Taylor, [54], p. 195). The fact that a majority of the General Council were not prepared to confront the government through an uncompromising stance towards the Act meant that the whole edifice of TUC opposition seemed in danger of collapse by the early summer of 1972.

What decisively altered the picture was the activity of rank-and-file dockers who, far from agreeing to lift the blacking, now extended their picketing across the country, leading to five London dockers being committed to Pentonville prison for contempt of court over a case involving unofficial blacking and picketing of Midland Cold Storage. Against the background of a national stoppage of 35,000 dockers and unofficial solidarity strike action involving a quarter of a million workers, the TUC General Council came under intense pressure to call action (Lindop, [33]). But on Saturday 22 July, Vic Feather devoted most of a speech to attacking calls for a general strike, which would be 'harmful to the country, but harmful also to the trade union movement' (Observer, 23 July 1972).

At the TUC's F&GPC on the afternoon of Monday 24 July, some members argued for a 'national one-day stoppage of work', particularly because it was feared 'if the General Council did not themselves take action of this kind unofficial bodies would assume leadership' (Darlington & Lyddon, [20], p.169). At a meeting of the General Council on Wednesday 26 July it was reported that 'the House of Lords would, that morning, give their decision on the appeal, and following that the Official Solicitor would probably go to the NIRC', thereby leading to the dockers' release. It was in this context that the meeting agreed to a motion that called on 'all affiliated unions to organise a one-day stoppage of work and demonstrations on Monday next July 31ʹ (Darlington & Lyddon, [20], p. 173).

Significantly all the participants at the meeting denied it was a call for a 'general strike'. Vic Feather disingenuously said that 'any suggestion that the one-day stoppage could be construed as a political general strike could be dismissed quickly', it would merely be a 'protest stoppage of work'. Moreover, all participants at the meeting knew that with moves afoot to release the dockers that day its call for action would be unnecessary and not need to be translated into practice. As predicted, on the same morning that the TUC issued its strike call, the Law Lords held an unprecedented morning sitting and overturned the Court of Appeal's previous ruling to declare that industrial action in defiance of a court order was, after all, the responsibility of national unions, not individual shop stewards. Thanks to the judiciary extricating themselves from the rapidly escalating industrial unrest in this fashion, the Official Solicitor was then able that afternoon to secure the release of the five dockers from prison (with the Law Lords re-imposing the fines on the TGWU). The threatened one-day stoppage was called off.

The election of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives in May 1979 led to a series of set-piece national strikes that reflected Thatcher's determination to suppress what she saw as irresponsible trade union power. In the process, the Tories avoided the errors of the 1970–74 government by legislating against trade unions not by passing a single all-embracing law such as the Industrial Relations Act of 1971, but with a cumulative series of employment acts between 1980 and 1993. With specific relevance to this article, the 1980 Act removed immunity from most secondary (sympathy or solidarity) action and strikes other than over terms and conditions (e.g. political strikes), immunity was lost for secondary picketing, and a restriction to six pickets became a code of practice. The 1982 Act significantly narrowed the definition of a lawful trade dispute and opened up unions to injunctions or being sued for damages.

At a one-day TUC-organised special conference of union executives in Wembley in April 1982, union leaders lined up to show their solidarity with any unions that found themselves confronted with legal action. Point number 5 stated: 'Where the General Council receive a request to assist a union faced by or experiencing legal action by an employer, and are satisfied that assistance from the movement is justified, they are empowered: (i) to co-ordinate action by other affiliated unions in support of the union in difficulties, including, if necessary, calling for industrial action against the employer concerned, or more widely (ii) to provide financial assistance to a union which experiences severe financial problems as a result of damaging action'. This action plan was subsequently endorsed at the September Congress, but TUC General Secretary Len Murray, concerned to avoid confrontation with the Tory government and preferring the road of 'dialogue', also clarified: 'There is no question of the TUC setting out to break or encouraging members to break the law. There is no question of unions or members getting blank cheques for support from the TUC' (TUC, [61], p.349; p.366; p.408). At the 1983 Congress (in the wake of Labour's catastrophic election performance in the May 1983 general election) Murray began to spell out a new TUC strategy (of what was later to become known as 'new realism') towards employers and the government that viewed strike action as outmoded in the changed economic and political context (Bassett, [5], pp. 47–8; Thornett, [55], pp. 335–7; p. 348).

One of the first key tests for Murray and the TUC came in November 1983 with a bitter dispute over the employment of non-union labour between the National Graphical Association (NGA) and the Stockport Messenger, a regional newspaper owned by Eddie Shah (Dickinson, [22]). As soon as the NGA instructed its members to boycott the Messenger group and began mass picketing of the non-union Warrington plant, Shah was granted an injunction against the union for breaching the 1980 Employment Act limiting the closed shop. When the union ignored the injunction by refusing to comply with the courts and accept the Tory anti-union legislation – in line with the TUC policy established at its 1982 Wembley special conference – it was first fined £50,000, and then (when it still refused to obey the court) another £100,000 fine, and later was subject to the sequestration of the total assets of the union. In response, the NGA called a mass picket of Shah's Warrington plant at which 5,000 responded, but were dispersed by 3,000 police who used new riot control tactics implemented with unprecedented ferocity. Once it became clear that mass picketing could not halt production, the NGA called a 24-hour national print strike – which closed down all national newspapers on Fleet Street completely for two days – while lifting the picketing for two days to allow negotiations. It also went to the TUC for support, citing the Clause 5 of the Wembley Principles that pledged to support any union under attack in exactly this situation.

The TUC's Employment Policy and Organisation Committee met and expressed a 'supportive attitude' to the NGA's call for a print strike in line with TUC policy, but its decision was dramatically challenged later the same day by Len Murray. Murray called a press conference on the steps of Congress House to say that the decision had been out of order, since the TUC could not support the NGA's defiance of the law and did not want the TUC itself to face legal action under the new employment legislation. Murray organised a special meeting of the General Council that overruled the Employment Policy and Organisation Committee decision, and the print strike was called off amid bitter recriminations. NGA general secretary Joe Wade commented that 'the TUC's General Council's decision means not only has the NGA been sold down the river, but in future any trade union in a dispute which involves the use of the employment legislation by employers will not receive TUC backing' (Dickinson, [22], p. 178). In the New Year the NGA reluctantly decided to purge its contempt of court to regain its funds, and four months later, after nearly a year on strike, the strikers acknowledged defeat.

During the first six months of the 1984 miners' strike, as in the dispute in 1972 and 1974, the TUC was not directly involved apart from providing moral support and a hardship fund. Memories of 1926 and the sense of betrayal nurtured by many miners for generations was one obvious reason why the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under its left-wing militant leader Arthur Scargill kept the TUC at arm's length. But Scargill also believed that if a formal call for assistance was made and he allowed the TUC into the conflict then it would mean the NUM losing control as conditions were imposed from outside – such as the demand for a ballot, or picketing guidelines, or a hand in negotiations in which the General Council would be far more amenable to seeking a compromise settlement of the dispute (Adeney & Lloyd, [1], p. 130). Instead Scargill bypassed the TUC to seek support by direct approaches to certain individual unions (such as the NUR, ASLEF, NUS and TGWU), albeit with some close allies on the TUC left, such as Ray Buckton of the train drivers and Jimmy Knapp of the railway workers. However, somewhat late in the day, after the failure of mass picketing to close down the Orgreave site, more and more attention was focussed on obtaining support from trade union leaders, and at the TUC Congress in September 1984 the NUM sought direct help (Taylor, [54]).

The miners' strike posed the TUC leaders with a dilemma. Murray, who could hardly disguise his contempt and irritation with Scargill as the strike dragged on through the summer, commented that the miners' strike was 'against the Coal Board, the government and the TUC' (Beckett & Hencke, [6], p.122). On the other hand, a defeat for the miners would gravely weaken the trade union movement and further undermine its bargaining power. 'We don't want Arthur to win, but we can't let the miners lose', one TUC leader told the press (Callinicos & Simon, [8], p. 144). The General Council eventually formally pledged itself to achieving a miners' victory by issuing a statement at the Congress requesting affiliated unions not to move coal or coke across NUM picket lines and to not to move oil which was substituted for coal, but there was very little done to implement the policy agreed in practice. Moreover, there was a price to be paid by the NUM in exchange – letting the General Council into the direction of the dispute. As The Economist (8 September 1984), on the basis of an assumption the miners' defeat was now inevitable, commented: 'The Trade Union Congress took the first shambling step, six months too late towards this defeat when its moderate executive gathered the miners into the bear hug of "total support" – support which it has neither the capacity nor the intention to deliver'.

Rank-and-file miners' anger at the perceived unwillingness of the TUC to take responsibility for attempting to encourage solidarity industrial action was dramatically expressed at a meeting in Aberavon in south Wales addressed by the new General Secretary Norman Willis in November 1984. Calling upon miners to accept the latest offer and condemning the violence on the picket lines and the refusal of the NUM leadership to repudiate it, a noose was dangled over his head. But Willis later continued to make strenuous efforts to broker a deal between the NUM and the Coal Board, drawing in government ministers as well, albeit any moves failed to win either the NUM or government's approval.

When in October the High Court sequestrated the entire funds of the NUM and appointed a receiver to take charge of the affairs of the union, thereby threatening its very survival, Scargill called for 'the most massive mobilisation of industrial action our movement has ever known ... there is no other way to stop the courts attempt to destroy the NUM' (Smith, [50], pp. 350–51). But the TUC leaders, while promising to continue to support the NUM, ruled out any such action and studiously avoided any risk of the TUC being held in contempt of court. The strike ended in March 1985 with most NUM regions voting to return to work, with Scargill critical of the TUC's failure to act on the commitments made at the 1984 Congress, 'seen by the Government as a green light to intensify its attacks on the NUM. Had the guidelines[...]adopted by Congress been even partially implemented, the pressure upon the Coal Board and the Government would have been intense, and a negotiated settlement inevitable.'[4]

Another major industrial dispute in which the TUC demonstrated its refusal to become embroiled in defiance of the law occurred in early 1986 at Rupert Murdoch's News International printing plant, with the sacking and lock-out the 6,000-strong Fleet Street workforce – composed of members of the unions NGA and Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT) – and the moving of all operations to new non-union plants in Wapping, east London and Kinning Park in Glasgow. When the print unions mounted solidarity action in response, writs were served against SOGAT and the NGA for attempts to black News International publications, and against the TGWU for ordering their members to refuse to cross print workers' picket lines. Then two further court writs were served against the NGA and SOGAT alleging 'unlawful picketing' of TNT drivers and for picketing outside the Wapping plant. In February 1986 SOGAT was taken to the courts charged with breaking the employment legislation. In accordance with TUC policy, SOGAT refused to attend and the union then had their entire fund of £17 million seized and a fine of £25,000 awarded against them (Lang & Dodkins, [31]; Trow, [65]).

Norman Willis engaged in 'shuttle diplomacy' (Melvern, [40], p. 167) between the print unions and News International. But when SOGAT's London branches turned down Murdoch's 'final offer', the response from the union's new General Secretary Tony Dubbin, was that the dispute had to be stepped up with help from the TUC and the labour movement. One significant feature of the support the print unions sought from the TUC was action against the activities of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU) whose members it was alleged had played an instrumental part in the secret recruitment of staff for Wapping, but whose union officials had done nothing to stop them. After a TUC investigation, the General Council ruled that the EETPU's activities could be construed as 'detrimental to the interests of the trade union movement' and contrary to the principles and policies of the TUC (Ibid., p.199).

But the TUC were confronted with the dilemma that if they directed the EETPU, on the threat of suspension, to order its members in Wapping to stop performing work previously undertaken by print workers, they would be asking the union to act unlawfully under secondary action legislation. But if the electricians were not given such a directive, there was very little they would be able to do to bring the union into line. The General Council decided by a majority of one vote it could not issue an unlawful directive, as it was feared this would lead to an injunction by either the EETPU or News International. So instead of 'instructing' their members at Wapping to stop work, it merely 'informed' them they were engaged on work normally done by members of other unions and not to conclude any agreement with News International or enter into unilateral talks with them, otherwise they would be suspended from TUC membership. The unwillingness to take a more robust stance was widely condemned for its ineffectualness and for leaving the print unions isolated, eventually to go down to another defeat.

If in all the above cases (dockers and the Industrial Relations Act, Grunwick, Stockport Messenger, miners, and News International) the TUC has repeatedly stepped back from supporting open defiance of the law in the face of the potential implications of fines and sequestration of union funds, the 1926 General Strike also illustrated in sharp relief the problem the TUC has had of trying to avoid being placed in a situation in which it could be seen to be challenging the power of government and the state. Arguably, the TUC has institutionalised the traditional divorce between economic (trade union) and political (Labour Party) activity, reinforcing the limits within which workers' struggles are confined. Thus, the idea that the unions or the TUC might attempt to utilise industrial militancy for political ends to challenge the government and state (as left-wing militants advocated) was emphatically rejected in 1926. Already in 1919, despite the threat by the Triple Alliance leaders of the miners, railway and transport workers' unions to strike in support of the miners' demands for nationalisation, the union leaders had balked at the prospects of precipitating a constitutional crisis and bringing the government down, resulting in 'Black Friday'. Yet ironically, the 1926 General Strike by its very nature posed a fundamental contradiction to the TUC's stance of supporting the miners as if it were merely a trade union dispute without political overtones.

Not surprisingly from the outset, the government treated the General Strike as a constitutional and political issue. 'It is not wages that are imperilled', declared Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin solemnly, 'it is the freedom of our Constitution'. Trade union leaders were 'threatening the basis of ordered government and going nearer to proclaiming civil war than we have for centuries past' (Postgate, Horrabin, & Wilkinson, [45], p.37). The General Council was frightened to accept the challenge that the strike was both industrial and political, and therefore the British Worker (the daily paper set up by the TUC during the strike) carried the declaration (7 May 1926): 'It is not seeking to substitute unconstitutional government. Nor is it desirous of undermining our parliamentary institutions ... The council is engaged in an industrial dispute. In any settlement the only issue to be decided will be an industrial issue, not political and constitutional'.

Bullock ([7], p. 286; pp. 320–323) has argued that the TUC General Council had not sufficiently thought out the consequences of the course on which they embarked. However much the TUC and unions might protest that they were only acting in defence of working class interests and had no intention of raising a constitutional issue, no government could fail to regard industrial action on such a scale as a challenge and deploy the full resources of the state into play. The object of the strike was, after all, to force the government to intervene. This was the way the threat of 'extended industrial action had worked in April 1925 leading to 'Red Friday'. In fact, the TUC leaders were very consciously aware – even prior to its commencement – that the strike would inevitably become a political issue. Thus on the eve of the strike General Secretary Walter Citrine expressed pessimism about the consequences of the growing trend by workers towards 'centralised mass action' with solidarity 'no longer a sentiment but a basis of policy'. The extension of strikes to cover workers not directly involved would mean the elected government and state would be forced to intervene because of its responsibilities to the well-being of society as a whole – leading it to ally with the employers as it sought to maintain essential supplies and services. 'The government is forced to engage in strike-breaking or abdicate its functions as a government', Citrine admitted, cautious to avoid a confrontation with the state that it could not possibly hope to win and which might lead to humiliating defeat (Taylor, [54], pp. 30–32).

The problem was that although the strike involved up to 2 million workers and had a significant impact on the national economy, it did not have a decisive impact. The government's prior contingency arrangements in stockpiling coal, utilising road transport and mobilising a civil volunteer force, alongside the fact that the weather at that time of year (May) was favourable (Bullock, [7], pp.320–323) suggested to many observers, including the TUC itself according to its secretary at the time (Milne-Bailey, [41], p. 231), that the government could maintain the supply of essential goods and services and thus hold out against the strikers for many weeks. From the TUC's point of view, the real consideration was whether anything could be gained by prolonging the strike, or would it be better to call it off? Milne-Bailey (Ibid., p.231) argued that those people who talked of cowardice, treachery and betrayal were divorced from the reality of the situation if they imagined that prolonging the strike meant the possibility of forcing the government to resign or concede better terms or of so alarming the public that pressure would be brought to bear on the government to effect a more favourable settlement.

Yet arguably, the only way in which the strike could potentially have been rendered more effective in the short term was by intensifying and extending the strike by undermining the emergency civil contingency organisation of the government by mobilising mass pickets of all transport hubs (Symons, [51], pp.230–231). Such activity would have been a direct political challenge to the power of the state which could have involved clashes between strikers and the police (which were already occurring and even leading to the formation of Workers' Defence Corps in some areas) and even the intervention of armed troops (Bullock, [7], pp. 320–323; Taylor, [54], pp. 30–38). This was a prospect viewed with horror by the General Council, whose principal objective became not how to make the stoppage more effective, but how to keep it within bounds. Unofficial initiatives from the 'Councils of Action' that were established across the country, drawing together delegates from unions, trades councils and political parties in the localities, were distrusted for going beyond the official machinery of the individual unions, as well as for having the potential to make day-to-day decisions over transportation and distribution that challenged the power normally exercised by the state.

As J. H. Thomas told the House of Commons on 13 May: 'What I dreaded about this strike more than anything else was this: if by any chance it should have got out of the hands of those who would be able to exercise some control, every sane man knows what would have happened' (Symons, [51], p. 211). In other words, it was in recognition of the very real inherent dangers of the challenge to the state – and the even greater risks of any escalation of the strike – that the TUC inevitably believed it was necessary to retreat and to call the strike off.

As we have seen the 1972 threatened one-day national strike to free the imprisoned London dockers was a highly significant victory, with strikes and solidarity action that were clearly political (whatever TUC leaders on both right and left might have argued) spectacularly defeating both the government and the 'rule of law'. Yet minutes of the TUC General Council reveal leaders were extremely wary of allowing industrial militancy to be used for political ends to challenge the government, fearing that 'a one-day protest could lead to protest beyond a day and to a general strike', that going for the Industrial Relations Act's repeal 'would transform a one-day stoppage ... into a political strike', and the danger that even a one-day strike 'would be regarded by any government as a challenge to its authority to ... the right of Parliament to create legislation and to ensure that it was carried out' (Darlington & Lyddon, [20], pp.169–175).

The role of the TUC General Council, like that of trade union officialdom more generally, is more complex than the simple 'officials always playing Brutus' caricature which has often been levelled by the left (Mcllroy, [38], p. 145). Certainly, there have been periods when the TUC have opposed practically all strikes, as from 1940 to the mid-1950s,[5] and after the defeat of the 1984–5 miners' strike and onset of General Secretary John Monks' notion of 'new realism' there was the assumption that strikes were outmoded, counter-productive and unlikely to be successful. But as we have seen, the TUC have often been willing to formally support industrial disputes by individual affiliates, and on occasions even coordinate much broader forms of strike action. It is because it has historically performed such a dual role – often accommodating to employers and the state, but also sometimes challenging their priorities – that the General Council cannot simply be viewed as 'fire extinguishers of the revolution' (Anderson, [3], p. 277). But the balance between the dual roles has clearly varied between different historical periods, contexts, and individual leading officials, depending on the relative contradictory pressures placed upon them and the actual course and dynamics of workers' struggles.

Contradictory pressures from both above and below influenced the extent to which the TUC General Council has been prepared to give a lead to industrial disputes. From above there have been attacks from employers and governments which have undermined the basis for negotiation, and seriously threatened union members' terms and conditions of employment, that have sometimes encouraged active support for workers' resistance – for example the banning of trade unionism at GCHQ. In such situations, even moderate or right-wing General Council members have sometimes felt it necessary to mobilise support for strike action. However, such support has often been an exercise in 'controlled militancy' (Hyman, [27], p. 109), whereby they lead or coordinate action in a merely token or demonstrative form, in part at least in order to keep control over its main direction. Moreover, pressure from governments can sometimes, notably when Labour have been in office or when there is a threat of national strikes threatening to politically challenge the government and the state, encourage a less supportive, if not outright hostile, stance, to strike action

From below there have also been pressures on the TUC General Council to actively support strike action by affiliates and to have occasionally coordinated action across the trade union movement, from rank-and-file trade unionists, individual union affiliates, left-wing union activist networks and members of the General Council. Sometimes that pressure has been intense, for example not to have called a General Strike in 1926 would have discredited the union leadership and led, as Ernest Bevin later explained, to 'widespread unofficial fighting in all parts of the country which would have produced anarchy in the movement' (Hutt, [26], p. 134). Albeit less dramatically, in 1972 the TUC's hand became forced by the developing unofficial strike movement. Conversely, often the pressure from below on the TUC, notwithstanding repeated radical left calls for a 'General Strike Now', is minimal and ineffectual.

At the very least TUC leaders are generally conscientious, committed and hard-working individuals, motivated by the genuine desire to defend/improve their members' pay and conditions, supportive of union members' attempts to organise workers and recruit new members, playing a crucial role in the training of union representatives and promoting education for their memberships, and even supportive (sometimes at least) of strike activity. But as this article has demonstrated, invariably the TUC has only supported strike action in strictly controlled and limited fashion, generally motivated by the desire to restrict the action to a merely demonstrative or token form. Moreover, it has often played an essentially mediatory role (TUC, [64]) endeavouring to meet with employers and affiliate union officers – in recent years often through the auspices of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service – to agree a compromise deal that can end an industrial dispute, as for example in the 2002–4 firefighters' dispute (Seifert & Sibley, [48]). As a result, the often-repeated charge that the TUC has been 'relatively conservative, cautious, reactive, defensive ... over the years' (Dorfman, [23], p. 28) appears to have been borne out historically.

Apart from the TUC's internal constitutional constraints on its powers, and its loyalty to Labour and overriding concerns to avoid defying the law and challenging the government and state, there are a combination of other objective and subjective factors that can help explain why the General Council (and leading union officials generally) have often tended to behave in a cautious, if not restraining, fashion towards workers' struggles (Darlington, [18]: 59–61). It is nothing to do with the individual weaknesses (incompetence, careerism, corruption) of union officials, but rather rooted in the very nature of their position and role. Their bargaining function as the intermediary between capital and labour gives rise to powerful moderating pressures to 'keep faith' with their negotiating partner, regard each conflict as a 'problem' to be resolved within the existing framework of society, view strikes as disruption to stable bargaining relationships, and therefore act as 'managers of discontent' by attempting to limit workers' struggles and end strikes on compromise terms in ways that can be detrimental to rank-and-file interests and aspiration. Additionally, as we have seen, the traditional divorce between 'economic' and 'political' activity within the British labour movement has reinforced the process by which union officials confine workers' struggles within strict limits, specifically opposing the use of industrial militancy for political ends to change/remove governments, and to blunt workers' militancy that could be viewed as undermining the Labour Party, especially when they are in government.

Three other factors specific to the TUC also need to be taken into account explaining its constraints and conservatism. There is the fact that the TUC General Council is one step removed from rank-and-file union members and their direct pressure and accountability, which has to be channelled into their respective individual unions first and then to the TUC. In addition, there is the problem of reconciling the interests of particular unions or groups of members with the general interests of the wider union movement, 'and of deciding which set of interests should prevail' (TUC, [57]), which means its sole authority stems from a 'willingness by unions and their members to abide by decisions to which they are parties' and therefore the need to 'move at the pace of the slowest', which can act as further disincentive to challenging or militant leadership (Taylor, [52], p. 72). Finally, there is the role of the General Secretary – whose position provides some leeway for independent manoeuvre when it comes to the stance to be taken to industrial disputes – often pursuing a particular line of least resistance beyond the immediate accountability of General Council members.

Finally it should be noted that, notwithstanding their political inclinations, left-wing members of the General Council – such as Swales, Hicks and Purcell in the mid 1920s, Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon in the 1970s and the so-called 'awkward squad' of the 1990s – while on occasion have been able to influence important decisions with respect to industrial disputes, have often either been unable to win majority support for more radical leadership, or have in practice (notably in the General Strike) gone along with the more restrained decisions and actions of their centrist and right-wing counterparts.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.