Trade unions may be falling back out of love with the European Union, writes David Talbot

At its conference in Brighton in 1962, Labour’s leader, Hugh Gaitskell, led the calls to reject Britain’s proposed entry into the European Economic Community. His call for the party not to turn its back on ‘one thousand years of history’ endeared him to many constituency activists who viewed both him, and the EEC, with suspicion. Conference that year passed a resolution calling the EEC a ‘great and imaginative conception’ before laying down five tough conditions of entry.

The speech may have reverberated around the hall but Gaitskell had deeply disappointed some of his closest political allies, not least in the trade unions. William Caron, leader of the Amalgamated Engineering Union; Sam Watson of the miners; Ron Smith, general secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers; Anne Godwin of the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union; and WJP Webber, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association all strongly supported Gaitskell. But, apart from Gaitskell’s aborted attempt to revise Clause IV, no other area of policy would cause such a rupture between the leader and his trade union base. For, while most of the trade unions favoured entry, it was Gaitskell – almost alone among the leadership – who did not. Thus began the convoluted relationship between Europe, Labour and the trade unions.

At the time, Labour’s debates about the EEC were purely academic. Britain simply had no chance of entry. Although the officials of individual trade unions saw the importance of involvement in Europe, there was certainly no evidence of a trade union ‘project’ at this level. Given this limitation, union representatives saw the development of trade union cooperation across national frontiers and an emerging trade union role within the EEC as extremely positive. But by the time Harold Wilson held a referendum in 1975 on Britain’s membership of the EEC, the debate within the party had shifted. While the Labour government argued that voters should have a say on the decision of its Conservative predecessor to take Britain into the ‘common market’ in 1973, the referendum was also designed to resolve intense internal party conflict on the issue. Majority trade union opinion, which had but a decade before expressed conditional support for membership, had hardened into complete rejection, and the Trades Union Congress campaigned for a ‘no’ vote.

Most trade unions remained hostile until the 1980s, when the ‘social dimension’ of the European Community became far preferable to the neoliberalism of the Thatcher government. With limited strength and effectiveness at national level, trade unions began to regard engagement with Europe more positively. Support for Europe was also strong among Labour modernisers who were in the ascendant in the party by the late 1980s. But while the Labour party began to moderate its anti-EC posture after the disastrous general election defeat of 1983, the union movement as a whole only began to shift its official position with Jacques Delors’ watershed speech to the TUC in 1988. As has happened so often in the history of the trade union movement, policy shifts that were once bitterly contested were ultimately embraced with minimal debate.

It is arguable that the unions’ positions towards Europe owe far more to pragmatism than to settled, ideological considerations. This, as Owen Tudor, head of the TUC’s European Union and international relations department, argues, is typical of the trade unions’ ‘transactional’ approach to Europe. For instance, the TUC general council overwhelmingly backed Maastricht and opposed calls for a referendum. Despite qualifications and internal divisions, it also supported EMU entry. Over time, however, most trade unions have moved from one end of the spectrum to the other – particularly as the nature of the European project has changed.

A leftward switch in the leadership of two of the largest unions – Amicus in 2002, the TGWU in 2003, now both amalgamated to form Unite – has resulted in a broadly more critical position on the EU. In addition, the strongly pro-EU stance of John Monks, the former general secretary of the TUC who left in 2003 to head the European Trade Union Confederation, was qualified by a rather more pragmatic approach by his successor Brendan Barber. The Delors social agenda which focused on creating a basic framework of minimum employment standards across the EU has now gone about as far as it can. EU enlargement makes more ambitious harmonisation of employment standards an unrealistic goal. This poses an acute dilemma for Britain’s trade unions. Their members feel threatened by low-wage competition, while many retain the small ‘c’ conservatism inherent in natural Labour supporters. The question now is how trade unions see their role and can make themselves relevant to the modern labour market.

Some are hardening their views. In July, Unite said that Labour’s current stance on the EU referendum would be an ‘electoral millstone’ at the next general election. It urged Ed Miliband to commit to holding a referendum. The call, however, was not in itself Eurosceptic. The union reaffirmed its pro-EU credentials and Len McCluskey’s call to arms seemed far more to do with internal British politics than any supranational considerations. The GMB has not yet called for a referendum but Paul Kenny, its general secretary, has all but warned that it is inevitable. The GMB joined the RMT in 2007 in calling for a referendum on the European Treaty. And Unison, the public service union, also declared that it would campaign for a ‘No’ vote if a referendum were to be held.

What is clear is that public attitudes towards Europe are typically complex and contradictory. This means that they are politically malleable. Reflecting the workforce as they do, it follows that trade union positions towards Europe can vary too. Nonetheless, having assented to the underlying belief that the EU can be a positive vehicle for their ends, unions have rarely shown the will to mobilise offensively around an alternative vision for Europe.

There remains a consensus among the trade unions that economic integration should be complemented by a strong ‘social dimension’. But what is far from certain is what that phrase actually means in practice, how to go about it at a supranational level, and, in particular, how it should be defended against the challenges inherent in a neoliberal approach to European economic integration. In short, there is a danger that the general deregulation and liberalisation within the EU could result in a logic of competitive deregulation, leading to an undermining of national employment conditions and social standards. In matters relating to employment, labour law and working conditions, and the right of association and collective bargaining between employers and workers, the EU plays a central role. And, as a common market, its underlying principles – the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour – threaten the viability of employment regulations that rest solely on national foundations. These inherent difficulties have been exacerbated by the financial crisis and the onset of austerity, which has slowed the drive towards a ‘social Europe’, thus weakening the unions’ support for the EU.

The starting point for the position of British trade unions has always been a fundamentally pro-European attitude. To defend their vision of a social Europe, trade union action will continue to be required. Nonetheless, as the European project evolves and faces new challenges, the unions’ vision of a social Europe increasingly resembles a fata morgana.

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David Talbot is a political consultant

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Photo: fdecomite

You may also be interested in this event at Labour party conference:

What did the EU ever do for workers?
7.30-8.45pm, Monday 22 September 2014
Lancashire Room, Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5AN