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But the climax of support for the campaign came with the Seamen's Strike. When Mr, Wilson appointed the Pearson Commission to provide a propaganda justification for not meeting the Seamen's most moderate demands, the union's schelerotic research department did nothing about the matter. (Perhaps the training of the NUS Hesearch Officer in the witch-hunting bureau, IRIS, fitted him better for other work: in any event, the NUS nat~ jonally published no serious reply to the Pearson Report.) At this point militants in Hull took over, by publishing 'Not Wanted on Vi e', a brilliant reply to Pearson which incorporated all the aggressive responses _to the incomes policy which had been elaborated in the Workers! Control seminars. Ina forthright chapter, the Seamen demanded that before Pearson's evidence could be accepted, the shipowners! books must be opened to union investigation. Their point was reinforced by the fact that a Government Committee on Company Law Reform, set up by the Tories, had recommended in 1962 that the shipowners’ exemption from even the normal obligation of companies to publish information about their reserves, was totally inexcusable, It was in this context that the Nottingham seminar met on June 25th-26th 1966. It marked a major breakthrough, attracting the widest support of all the seminars so far held. Delegates attended from all parts of the country, and the 19 delegates from Scotland - not to mention observers from Norway, the United States, and Poland ~ showed that distance was no object. There were also large contingents from London, Manchester, Hull, Nottingham, Birmingham and Coventry, Yorkshire, and Wales and the West Country. Six Universities - Hull, Nottingham, Essex, Oxford, Swansea and Loughborough - were represented, As a cross section of the Labour ‘ovement the attendance was equally impressive: Labour Party, Communist Party, Independent Labour Party, Young Socialists, Fabian Society, Centre for Socialist Education, Edinburgh Trades Council, Glasgow Left Club, Arab Revolution, and a long list of Unions — AEU, ASSET, AScW, AUT, DATA, ETU, NALSO, NASDU, NGA, NSMM, NUM, NUR, NUS, NU.Students, NUT, POFU, SCEBTA, T&GWU, TW, USDAW. Over 150 delegates were present in all, as well as visitors from the Nottingham area. The socialist journals participating included ‘The Week', 'International Socialism’, ‘Labour Worker', 'The Socialist Leader', 'Humberside Voice', and 'Voice of the Unions'. Many industries were obviously well represented amongst the long list of unions involved, but there were also individual delegations from specific sections of industry, and the detailed contributions which they were able to make to the Conference were of especial value. The Bristol~Siddeley Engines Joint Shop Stewards' Committee. sent a. four-man delegation, and there was also a delegation from the Redbourn (Scunthorpe) Works of Richard, Thomas & Baldwins. The Conference agreed, on the first day, to separate into eleven Study Groups as follows :- Health & Safety Delegates in Industry; Labour Demccracy; Incomes Policy; Package Deals; Workers' Self Management in Yugosis.i2z, Poland and Scandinavia; Workers' Education; The Steel Industry; ucoxs; Mines; Busmen; The Aircraft Industry.
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The first, plenary, session of the Conference heard a number of representative speakers: Walter Kendall, editor of Voice of the Unions, opened with a brief but graphic summary of the record of work done up to date, and introduced a platform consisting of Michael Barratt Brown, Ernie Roberts and Tony Topham, Michael Barratt Brown, a member of the editorial team of Plebs, stressed the need for a concentrated attempt to work out practical proposals which could be communicated and connected with the day-to-day struggles of the unions, and serve to enlarge trade union powers now. The whole strategy of encroaching control, which raises the serious problem of now to mobilise the unions to prevent their incorporation in management schemes, and to assert their power over and above the interests of property, had by now been widely understood, so that little time was spent on what Michael Barratt Brown called 'pie-in-the-sky' schemes. However, the precise way in which control demands are formulated, and the mamer in which they are set out as stimulants to independent socialist thinking by the workers, and as barriers to the assimilation of the unions into neo~capitalist disciplinary designs, still require very careful study. This was emphasised by Ernie Roberts wno rede a stimulating analysis of the by now ell-known platform set out by Jack Jones of the T&G, showing the dangers of accepting productivity bargaining et its face value. Tony Topham, in setting out the major questions for the seminars, stressed this problem: at all times the demand for control must leave the unions free to attack management, which will remain an intractable force until private property itself has been overcome, and tre transition to full self-management on the basis of a democratic plen can be made. As Valter Kendall insisted, in papers circulated prior to tne Conference, even then the unions have a vital independent function, wricn should be separate from that of industrial administration, after tne opening session, the Conference split into its seminar groupings, the reports on which make up the bulk of this brochure. A detailed report on the movement for industrial democracy in Scandinavia was brought by er, sake anker-Ording, who represented Norwegian engineering workers. Doctor Golebiowski, of Poland, also brought a report on Workers' Councils in Poland, which is carried with the seminar reports which follow.
Seminar still further into the mainstream of the Labour Movement. The resignation of Mr. Cousins from the cabinet, and the developing fight against the completely neo-capitalist incomes policy, cries out for an integrated socialist alternative policy, and for a strategy of advance based on the conviction that the transition to socialism in Britain is not only possible but imperative, if the gains made by the Labour Movement in the past century and a half are not to be wiped away, and the descent into corporatism is to be avoided.
++ tee ee et This Report supplements the Bulletin of Preliminary Papers for the ‘iorkers' Control Conference ~- a 40 page booklet comprising the basis for discussion of the various Study Groups. The Bulletin, already issued to Conference Delegates and to subscribing members of CSE, is separately available from 'The Week', 74 Mansfield Road, Nottingham. (Price 2/6d post free).