HE death of Jack Tanner, former
president of the TUC and of the AEU from 1939 to 1954, is a vivid reminder of the manner in which the most militant trade unionists can succumb to the pressures of capitalist society. To many in the labour movement he will be best ‘remembered as the director and driving force of the insidious, anti-Left organisation IRIS (Industrial Research and Information Service) which ‘exposes’ the activities of communists and left- ~ wingers in the labour movement in a McCarthyite fashion, Yet in his younger days he was very much the militant himself. He was a member of the Social Democratic Federation and went as a shop steward to a congress of the Communist International in Moscow in Although he had a bitter polemic with Lenin over the question of Communist tactics in the trade union movement, Tanner presided over a meeting of Left-wing groups in Britain during the same year, which inaugurated the British Communist Party. Tanner developed over the years into an extreme rightwinger. His career should be a sombre warning to those who reject rank and file action in the labour movement, preferring to ‘pressurise’ trade union leaders.