Trade Union Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, my consternation over the Bill centres on two crucial elements. The first is that a Bill that will have, de facto, so much significance for the constitutional balance and commitment to social justice and human rights in this country should be pushed through with so little proper and full consensus-building and consultation. Something of this significance for our social fabric demanded a great deal of careful preparation, building widespread understanding of and commitment to what was being proposed. That did not happen.

The second thing that dismays me—although it hardly surprises me with this Government, I am sorry to say—is that in support of this they are advancing all their dogma about what democracy means and how many people must have voted and what proportion must have voted, when they have barely a quarter of identifiable electorate support in this country themselves. It is just extraordinary that a Government governing in that situation do not have the temperament or the sensitivity to see the need for consultation.

I have been a member of a trade union all my adult life. I refused to get into my first job between university and national service until I had joined a trade union. I joined the Transport and General Workers’ Union and I worked as a garden labourer for the GLC—a very important learning experience so soon after university. Why had I come to this position? Because I had been through a politically formative experience in the Second World War and in the period immediately after the Second World War. Subsequently, of course, in my adult life I went through the politically informative experience of the Cold War, when I was at the Ministry of Defence.

What had I learnt from that? I had learnt about the tremendous contribution that the trade union and Labour movements, working together, had made to the strength of Britain. I had learnt about the strong contribution made to the success of the Second World War coalition Government by the fine, courageous Labour Ministers who served in that coalition. It has become evident from all the writing—biographies, autobiographies and the rest—that in the work of the coalition they had, personally, not unlively relationships with some of their Conservative colleagues, including the Prime Minister, but good relationships with them. I think particularly of Ernie Bevin. I did not agree with Ernie Bevin on quite a lot but, my God, what a statesman he was. How he overshadowed so many others who served in his aftermath—an extraordinary man. Then there were all the others who brought their trade union experience to that Administration.

Then I saw the strength of the post-war Attlee Government, so much of whose success depended on the partnership between the trade union movement and the Labour Party, which was open, transparent and absolutely fundamental to purpose. I came to admire all that terrifically and therefore felt certain that in whatever I did with my life I wanted to build on that kind of experience and that kind of understanding of what society could be and should be. I realised then, and it grew into my whole being, that being together and working together could produce far more strategically and in the long run than struggling and fighting aggressively, individually, one against the other, in what has become the culture of the market and unbridled consumerism.

In 1979, when we went out of office, I was asked by good friends, “But what have you really learnt in your years as Minister?”. I said, “I’ll tell you one thing that worries me profoundly. We are hurtling towards an age in which tactics are becoming the total enemy of strategy”, because in those post-war years—and of course in the war years—politics had been about strategy. What did we want to do with our society? Where did we want to go with our society, and how were we going to do it? My God, there were fantastic arguments but they were arguments of great statesmen about vision, purpose and values. When I look back now, in 2016, I feel that even more strongly but I am also deeply worried by the force of counterproductivity, which is the inevitable consequence of an overconcentration on tactical gains and victories.

Locally, nationally, regionally and internationally, the first reality of life is that we are locked together in total interdependence, whether we like it or not. The success of government in our age will, I venture to suggest, be judged historically by the success that we make of meeting the challenge of this interdependence and of devising policies and institutions which meet that reality. I know that “Neddy” was not a great success in its first endeavour in the 1970s, although it has been downgraded far too much, but we should never have deserted that principle—the idea of having a council, a forum in the nation, where all aspects and corporate realities of our society come together and work together.

I fear that the Bill, as others have argued so well today, will lead to confrontation and antagonism, and that it will not assist the establishment of a happy and fully productive nation. I see and fear an accelerating trend to centralise state control in the service of the free market and its centralised power, facilitated by too many organisations of shallow character with little fundamental critical analysis, and by media which reflect this sad reality. We have a lot of work to do on the Bill but I urge—unlike some in the House, I realise—that we be very careful. I am totally convinced that morality in politics is about compromise. It is about the exacting and difficult task of judging between the constructive, dynamic and positive compromise and the bad compromise. I hope that, in consideration of the Bill, in no way will we be lulled into an attitude that will facilitate a bad compromise. There are fundamental issues by which we have to stand.

I finish with a quotation I have kept close to me for many years. I know that every Member of the House will know it. It is from that immensely courageous Protestant pastor in Germany, who died in the concentration camp. We need to think very carefully about what he said:

“First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me”.