Trade Unions

Part of Orders of the Day — Finance Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 19 June 1974.

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Mr. Adley:

I should like, first, to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Oxon (Mr. Hurd) on a very constructive contribution to the debate. I echo something that he said, that is, that when I am visited by trade unionists, as I frequently am at my surgeries, they do not come complaining about the Industrial Relations Act. As the Secretary of State for Employment knows very well, many of my constituents work on building Concorde and are very concerned about that. Some of them visited the right hon. Gentleman recently, and I accompanied them. Therefore, it is totally false for anyone to suggest that the rather sterile arguments that we have so often back and forth across the Chamber represent the views of millions of trade unionists in this country. A very small number of them are actively interested in the political arguments that we spend so much time discussing.

In opening the debate, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made what for him was a very poor speech. He has an extremely high intellect. One can only assume that his failure to spend any time discussing the merits of new Clause 4, and the time that he spent in political banter, was an indication that a man with a mind as sharp as his could find so little to say about the clause, that he had to indulge in party-political bluster.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) won the argument absolutely hands down. Certainly if I needed any persuading as to how to vote at the end of a debate, it has been provided and I shall vote with my right hon. Friend.

It is perhaps prophetic that we are discussing new Clause 4. After listening to the Chancellor, I rushed to the Library and perused Keesings Contemporary Archives. I am glad that the Secretary of State for Employment is on the Government Front Bench at present, because I want to take him back to Clause IV and the Labour Party Conference of 1959. From that conference stem so many of the wrangles within the Labour Party which have resulted in the present situation, the wrangles which have resulted in that faction of the Labour Party which the right hon. Gentleman has represented gaining ascendancy at present.

If I may briefly quote from the report on the debate at the Blackpool conference and the speech made by Mr. Gaitskell on the nationalisation controversy, Keesing says Strongly contrasting views on this subject were expressed, ranging from demands that the party should not compromise on the question of public ownership (voiced inter alias by Mrs. Castle, Mr. Michael Foot, Mr. Frank Cousins…) to assertions by MPs (among them Mr. Pannell, secretary of the trade union group of Labour MPs) that nationalisation had lost the party large numbers of votes, especially in the new housing estates. Nothing much has changed about that. Mr. Gaitskell went on to say that nationalisation "was not the be-all and end-all" of Labour policy.