In Ernie Bevin's Steps

For 18 long years, beginning with World War II and continuing through the Labor government austerity that followed the peace, British trade unions have generally cooperated with the government in an amazing display of well-bred wage restraint. But at long last, a new militancy is in the air, and a new spokesman--thrusting aside Britain's square-shoed union leadership--has pushed forward to defy the Tory government's anti-inflationary program and demand a bigger wage packet for Britain's workers. He is burly, 6-ft.-2-in. Frank Cousins, 52, whose powerful Transport and General Workers' Union (1,300,000 members) last week published a resolution for September's Trades Union Congress that "rejects the principle of wage restraint and reaffirms the determination of the trade union movement, while prices and profits remain uncontrolled, to take such steps industrially as will ensure that wages keep pace with rising costs."

Away from the Desk. No Marble Arch leftist, Frank Cousins is a solid and pragmatic unionist, convinced that his assignment is not to balance Britain's economy, but to fight for a better deal for his members. Catapulted into the key job of general secretary of Britain's biggest union 21 months ago by the sudden successive deaths of two oldtime platform stalwarts, Cousins is now shooting for national union leadership, a role that has not been filled since his old boss and idol, the late Ernest Bevin, built the T.W.U. and went on to become Labor's Foreign Secretary.

A Yorkshire miner's son who went into the pits at 14, Frank Cousins switched to truck driving when depression made mine jobs scarce. Humping meat and machinery long distances at low pay, he caught the eye of Ernie Bevin just before World War II, and became a T.W.U. organizer along the northern roads. Brought to London in 1944, he scorned the desk, never lost a chance to get out among the men, in truckers' cafes and pubs, on docks and in warehouses.

As boss of the T.W.U., Cousins has modeled himself on Bevin. He is a hard-driving collective bargainer, proud to have won his truckers a 44-hour week, yet lecturing them: "I'll go forward on a 40-hour week without reduction in pay only on condition that every man puts in a full hour's work every hour." In T.U.C. general council meetings he hacks through prejudice and opposition in true ham-handed Bevin fashion: rival leaders complain that he starts off practically every argument with the words, "My union will . . ." Along with belligerence he has shown a notable power to sway labor audiences--sometimes by what the London Sunday Times worriedly calls "feline capacity for destructive argument." When Cousins scornfully rejected Harold Macmillan's plea to address the T.U.C. last fall on wage restraint ("What does he think we are? A film festival?"), the congress loosed its loudest approving roar in years. Toward Common Sense. As deeply anti-Communist as Ernie Bevin was, Cousins is unwilling to leave the present cry for higher wages to the leftists. Last year when he was invited to address the businessmen's powerful Institute of Directors, half a dozen businessmen quit in disgust. Cousins warned the businessmen that labor is willing to make sacrifices if everyone else is, but it is "insulting to talk about equality of sacrifice to men who know full well their safety margin is a fraction of that enjoyed by others." He adds: "Great Britain is still the place where more industrial disputes are settled by common sense than any other means."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.