You ask, (in your reviewer's contribution to the controversy with Bob Potter of Solidarity, Week No. 24) for a more subtle analysis of the ambivalence of union leaders. Would you agree that the following quotation from a recent speech at Bristol by Frank Cousins, (quoted in The Record, May issue) is an interesting confirmation of ambivalent attitudes?
"We have said that in the new age of automation, in this new era of technological progress, if they'll give us security, re-training, high rates. of pay, and fewer hours of work, we'll show them how to get all the output they need to pay for the benefits we are entitled to demand, If we do not get these things, if they think that automation is merely another bonanza for the stock exchange speculators, then we shall fight them every ineh of the way." -
The first sentence suggests a degree of 'class collaboration! ("we'll show them how..." etc.) and also the inhibiting notion of 'fair' shares between work and property ("the benefits we are eMtitled to demand"), But the second embodies genuine militancy in the context of the class struggle! Standing with many other pronouncements by Cousins, - in particular the TUC speech your reviewer cited - it can hardly lead to the conclusion that he ig “fully integrated into the structure of capiteligm," as Bob Potter evidently believes.