Callaghan ‘wanted union barons out’
JAMES Callaghan secretly urged officials to find ways of ousting left-wing trade union leaders causing trouble for the government “by one means or another”, according to newly-released official papers.
Files released by the National Archives show that as home secretary in Harold Wilson’s Labour government, former Cardif South MP Mr Callaghan was deeply concerned about the rise of a new generation of “politically motivated” union leaders.
In particular he singled out Jack Jones, the general secretary of the giant Transport and General Workers Union, and Hugh Scanlon, the leader of the engineering workers.
In response to his call, senior officials suggested undermining those with suspected communist leanings through “inspired leakages” to the press.
The details are disclosed in a note of a meeting between the cabinet secretary Sir Burke Trend, the head of the Department of Employment Sir Denis Barnes, and James Waddell, a senior Home Office official, headed “Communism in Industry”.
Dated March 5, 1969, it is marked “Secret and Personal” with only one copy to be retained. It notes: “Sir Burke Trend recalled that the Home Secretary apparently had in mind that it might be possible by one means or another for the more ‘politically motivated’ trade union leaders – in particular Mr Scanlon and Mr Jack Jones – to be supplanted by others more orthodox; and it had been envisaged that further consideration might perhaps be given to this possibility.”
The officials were reluctant to act, fearing it could revive the controversy which erupted three years earlier when Mr Wilson denounced the leaders of a strike by seamen as “a tightly knit group of politically motivated men” leading to accusations ministers were using MI5 to spy on unions.
They did, however, suggest one possible course of action, noting: “Sir Denis Barnes said, however, that detailed exposure of Jones’ behaviour from time to time, perhaps by way of inspired leakages to the press, might be useful and productive.”
The proposal appears to have come to nothing – something Mr Callaghan may have looked back on with regret when, 10 years later, the strikes of the “winter of discontent” were widely blamed for the fall of his government.
The files also show how, in 1974, the BBC director general Charles Curran invited the IRD to brief the Board of Governors on “the influence of subversive movements” in the field of broadcasting – although, with a general election looming, officials were doubtful about the idea.
“A leak that HMG was briefing the BBC on subversion might rebound in some perverse way related to the ‘reds under beds’ aspects of the last election period, and at any time it could be distorted into allegations of attempts to bring political influence to bear on the impartiality of the BBC,” one warned.