AS STATE employees, members of Civil Service trade unions were particularly exposed to the witch-hunts of the cold war years.  

The emergence of the United States as a hegemonic force after World War II saw Britain mortgage its economic and political future to US capital. The price for aid was an austerity programme, coupled with unconditional support for the cold war through active participation in Nato. Pressure was also applied on the new Labour government to curb the rise of militant trade unionism and the increasingly influential shop steward movement.

With the backing of right-wing trade union leaders and the national press, the government initiated a series of anti-communist witch-hunts. They were assisted by employers who sacked and blacklisted workers, while the judiciary delivered its legal backing to the wave of victimisation and reaction.

When socialist and communist trade unionists, who had built a strong base in the Civil Service unions and elsewhere from the 1930s, opposed the US-inspired austerity measures, they were labelled as “abject and slavish agents of forces working incessantly to increase social misery.”

Their unions were also placed under intense scrutiny by prime minister Clement Attlee, resulting in purges of communists from the Civil Service. Not all attacks were external. As the cold war intensified, a highly organised right-wing faction formed in the Civil Service Clerical Association (CSCA), the largest Civil Service union. Describing themselves as “moderates,” they openly challenged the union leadership, under the banner of the Conference Campaign Committee (CCC).

The CCC opposed the NEC’s proposal to reaffiliate to the Labour Party as they claimed it was an attempt to use it to attack the party leadership’s cold war stance, most noticeably its pro-US foreign policy and its austerity programme. They found willing allies among the union’s full-time officers and Labour Party moderates, including future TUC general secretary Vic Feather. The wider Establishment, particularly the press and media, gave widespread publicity to the group’s red scare tactics.

The right wing demonstrated an organisational efficiency and determination that shook the NEC and the wider left. They communicated directly with branches, published propaganda attacking the executive which they claimed had placed politics above members’ concerns. When the CSCA executive fought back and published a record of the union’s achievements, the CCC published electoral slates listing their candidates prior to NEC elections, which were held at the national conference based on branch nominations.

At the 1948 conference, they made considerable electoral gains and in the next few years achieved a working majority on the union’s national executive. The stage was set for blatant disregard of union democracy and witch-hunts against their own members.

Events in the CSCA were linked to the government’s determination to channel Civil Service activists away from political activity. The 1949 Masterman Committee, although drawing a distinction for industrial civil servants for whom it recommended political freedom, tightened the rules for clerical workers, even for the lower grades. Anyone who wished to stand for Parliament had to resign.

Witch-hunting drives in the Civil Service unions would prove remarkably enduring. Under pressure from a series of spy scandals, in 1961 prime minister Harold Macmillan established the Radcliffe inquiry which identified communists in Civil Service trade unions as a danger to national security. A ban on suspected communist union officials entering government premises or negotiating on behalf of Civil Service workers resulted in half-a-dozen full-time union officials losing their jobs.

The Civil Service itself was also undergoing significant change during the 1960s. The continuing development of the welfare state meant another phase of expansion accompanied by a growth in union membership, particularly among women and young workers, and a drive for union mergers. Another feature of the post-war period was the dispersal of Civil Service work away from London. Accompanied by a marked proletarianisation of the Civil Service workforce, this geographical shift helped in building effective trade unionism.

A decade later Britain’s national decline was obvious. Nineteenth-century ruling-class reformers had created a Civil Service capable of administering the most powerful capitalist nation on Earth, but from the 1970s onwards governments placed public-sector cuts and privatisation at the centre of their programmes. Despite the right wing’s overall bureaucratic control, they were unable to stop determined industrial action by members. Even prior to the economic downturn, the adoption of a strike policy in 1969 by the newly renamed Civil and Public Services Association (CPSA) indicated the development of a more militant consciousness among the union’s largely working-class membership. This encouraged the development of a cadre of militant socialist activists in broad lefts.

Meanwhile, the right wing had rebranded as the National Moderate Group, acting as a surrogate for big business and state interests in the union. Against the backdrop of the neoliberal reaction, a relentless struggle would continue over the next decade to defeat collaborationist methods and build a fighting union capable of defending and representing members’ interests.

John McInally, long-time vice-president of the PCS, is author of the newly published book A State of Struggle (Manifesto Press), with an introduction by Mark Serwotka. It traces the history of the Civil Service trade union movement, detailing the sharp battles between the rising Broad Left and the State-backed Moderates, the struggle to build a fighting democratic union, the pensions battle, the conflicts with both Labour and Tory governments and the role of PCS as a beacon of resistance to austerity, cuts, discrimination and imperialist war. Part III of this serialisation will appear next weekend.

To buy the book visit the Morning Star shop at shop.morningstaronline.co.uk; and to attend the book launch at the Marx Memorial Library, London, on November 12, 6.15pm to 8pm, go to https://tinyurl.com/JohnMcInallyBook.