Britain's answer to Jimmy Hoffa: Alan Law and 'The Rule of Law'
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Filling in thousands of members' union ballot papers himself; helping to get union branch officers who crossed him sacked, then breaking a strike in their defence; and instructing members to scab on the national drivers' strike in 1979 — those were some highlights of the career of Alan Law, TGWU full-timer for road haulage drivers in the Midlands.
Tony Corfield's book 'The Rule of Law'* gives one account of this. Here is another.
TONY Corfield's 'The Rule of Law' is a more or less biographical account of the career of Alan Law, the Transport and General Workers' Union Birmingham road haulage secretary, from his appointment in 1958 to his controversial early retirement in 1979.
Although the book is presented as an important contribution to the history of trade unionism at grass roots level, it certainly does not live up to it. Neither does it live up to its self-description as "an important contribution to the study of industrial relations in Britain".
This is particularly true because Tony Corfield is dealing with an important subject, but ends up whitewashing some of the worst abuses of democracy seen in the TGWU in recent years. In so doing he offers nothing to those carrying out the crucial fight for democracy and accountability in the TGWU and elsewhere in the labour movement.
Tony Corfield projects a view of Alan Law as a tough no-nonsense organiser who made an outstanding contribution to the trade union movement but made 'mistakes' and had 'lapses'. This view must be challenged both for the sake of historical record, and for the sake of the struggle for democracy today.
It is true that Alan Law presided over a very important development of trade union organisation among haulage workers in the Midlands (in a period of a major general rise of trade unionism in the area). An evaluation, however, must be based on what kind of trade unionism he promoted, and how he used the power placed in his hands.
The inescapable fact is that Alan Law's trade union career stands as a monument to the cynical abuse of the considerable power vested in an appointed official in a major trade union like the TGWU.
If Alan Law built an 'impressive' trade union structure, it must be judged in an all-round way, in relation to the principles he built it on. The fact is that any objective view shows it as a structure purpose-built to facilitate his own personal power base, and everything which flowed from that.
American-style
It is undeniable that Alan Law projected American-style 'business unionism' to a very developed degree. That it was from a regional base makes it no less dangerous. He was, for example, militantly apolitical, he was an open admirer of former US Teamsters' leader Jimmy Hoffa, and consequently he held democracy, and the democratic procedures of the union, in total contempt if they conflicted with his own plans and aspirations.
Tony Corfield's view of Alan Law is very different to mine. He subtitles the book, 'A study in trade union organisation and method' — note the 'and method'.
Incredibly, while Corfield mentions some of Law's worst crimes, his overall assessment is that "Alan Law's actions were never arbitrary"; that "his hold over his members derived from mutual self-interest, not tyranny"; and that "his exercise of power was ordered and rational".
He says that none of Law's failures can "dim the tactical brilliance of his role as a bargainer, or diminish the magnitude of the change he made in trade union attitudes and organisation". "He personified trade union power and the artistry in using it".
Perhaps Corfield's most astounding statement — to those who knew Alan Law — is this: "He succeeded in taking his members another long stride along the path of industrial democracy".
To challenge this view requires a detailed account of some of the major events Tony Corfield leaves out, giving more elaboration to those he has skimmed over, and correcting the sections where he has justified, in various ways, the indefensible actions of Alan Law.
This makes a review of the book quite difficult. In fact, it makes it somewhat of an alternative biography, since it is necessary to tell the other side of the story, to look at the real Alan Law.
To justify my case, therefore, let me begin with Alan Law's notorious dual position as full-time official and also holder of the lay position of branch secretary for the 5/35 branch. This is diplomatically referred to by Tony Corfield as a 'constitutional anachronism'.
It was a set-up which gave Alan Law exactly what he wanted, absolute power over the members he was dealing with. Normally, if members have a complaint about an official, they go to the branch.
But Law controlled the branch as secretary.
Full-time officers are supposed to carry out the policies decided by the lay committees, including the branch. Again, Law as secretary controlled the branch which was supposed to control him.
Branch secretary of a branch of 4,500 was also a very lucrative job, entitling Law to 15% of membership dues — well over £300 per week at today's dues levels, something like half that when he was secretary.
This money is paid because branch secretary is a lay, unpaid position. It is administration money, paid to volunteer secretaries to meet the expenses of a very considerable job. Law, of course, was a paid official, and the branch was administered by staff paid by the union — in this case, his daughter.
Tony Corfield recognises that the dual positions gave Law power. But he puts it rather differently. He says it gave him the executive authority he needed to do the very good work he was doing.
This is simply not the case. Any doubts about why Alan Law wanted absolute power, how he exercised it, and on whose behalf, can be dispelled by a few examples.
It can be shown by how he reacted when that power was challenged, as at Autocar in 1974.
At Autocar there was what Law interpreted as a challenge to a small segment of the network of personal supporters he had developed in the haulage firms in the Birmingham area. His reaction to it was incredible.
Tony Corfield ducks right out of the Autocar issue because, he explains, he is writing about Alan Law from the point of view of the 5/35 branch, which was his main base, and Autocar had its own separate branch.
But the general conclusions he has drawn are from Alan Law's role in the Midlands road haulage industry, which goes far beyond the 4,500 members in the 5/35 branch, important as that branch was and is. Law was responsible for 1400 other members covered by a number of branches.
Voted out
Sections like car transporters (such as Autocar) and tanker drivers were a major part of Law's involvement, although they were not in the 5/35.
The 'problem' arose at Autocar when the membership voted out of office the chairman and secretary of their branch. It was simple enough. The drivers were dissatisfied that nothing was being done about wages and conditions at Autocar, and they exercised their democratic rights in an election.
Normal and democratic or not, this was totally unacceptable to Alan Law. The secretary voted out was Billy Birmingham, a member of the TGWU General Executive Council, and the chairman voted out was Stan Moore. Both were very important to Law's apparatus. Birmingham had controlled Autocar for Law for 15 years.
Law, therefore, was determined that the decision would be reversed.
The new officers took over during the oil crisis, on January 1 1974, and were immediately faced with lay-offs. They called a branch committee meeting to discuss the situation.
That meeting never took place. As soon as Law learned of the lay-off situation, he intervened and arranged a meeting with Autocar managing director Norman Parker, himself, and the new branch officers.
Significantly, Parker was formally one of Law's men in the TGWU. Parker promptly said that he wanted 44 drivers laid off, and Law couldn't agree quick enough.
What the new branch officers, Phil Morris and Pat Healey, failed to grasp at that stage, was exactly why Law was so quick to accept the lay-offs.
They got the message a few days later, when Parker announced that he wanted 22 of the 44 laid-off drivers to be permanently switched to another depot. Morris and Healey were both in that 22. The other depot, needless to say, came under a different union branch.
If Morris and Healey did not sign papers agreeing to the transfer by 7pm on January 11, said Parker, they would be sacked. When they turned to Alan Law for support, they were told, "Mr Parker is a clever man. The management could be right".
Strike
On January 17 Law wrote to Phil Morris to say that Autocar management would not consider reversing their decision. So on Monday January 21 Morris and Healey met the Autocar membership, and they voted for an all-out strike.
Already Law was intervening to stop the strikers gaining the support of the Birmingham Car Delivery Council, which covered the five branches for the car delivery industry. This body was crucial if the strike was to be spread throughout the Birmingham area.
On the day after the strike began, the strike committee wrote to invite the members of the Car Delivery Council to their meeting to be held at Transport House at 7.30pm that Thursday.
The room had been booked through Law's secretary/daughter, who confirmed that it would be available. At 11am on Thursday morning, an invitation was delivered by hand to Alan Law. Four hours later, his daughter phoned to say that the room was no longer available.
Underestimating his opponents, Law assumed that this would be enough to ensure that the meeting would never take place. He wrote a letter to the members of the Car Delivery Council and had it delivered by the hand the following morning.
The letter was a witch-hunt, and began by referring to "the unofficial element amongst our Car Delivery Organisation". It went on:
"This body has been acting in a subversive fashion for a long time now, but it has been kept ineffective by the combined efforts of the responsible people within the Branches. Now an opportunity has arisen for them to come out into the open and show their hand".
He continued:
"The membership at Autocar are being deliberately misled and used, and will be cast aside when they have served their purpose, mark my words".
Unfortunately for Law, Phil Morris and Pat Healey were not so easily taken in. They had not trusted Law's daughter and had booked a second venue in case Transport House was suddenly 'unavailable'. The meeting had been attended by all the members of the Car Delivery Council.
Moreover, it had voted to give full backing to the strike, and decided to approach Brian Mathers as regional secretary to urge that the strike be made official.
When no reply was received, the secretary of the Council, John Cassidy, telephoned to ask why. Law gave the answer — and it came as a considerable shock.
Cassidy was told that the Council no longer existed. It had apparently been defunct since 1968.
Protests that Alan Law himself had only recently been corresponding officially with the Council cut no ice. It had been retroactively disbanded. Law said that he was going to form a new body, called the Birmingham Car Delivery District Committee.
The crunch came in the third week of the strike. On February 4 the strike committee and the management met together with a conciliation officer. The strike committee pressed management for a return to the 'status quo'. Autocar's managing director Stanley Alton told them that the company would be happy to agree, but Alan Law had told them that if they did he would cut off their fuel supplies.
(Is Tony Corfield still prepared to tell us that Alan Law's actions were 'never arbitrary', or that his exercise of power was 'ordered and rational', or that 'his hold over his members derived from mutual self-interest, not tyranny'?)
That was not all. On Wednesday February 6 the Autocar strikers picketed the Longbridge plant as a part of a day of protest. The picket was directed mainly against Law, with placards saying, 'Law's Wages — Who Pays?', 'No Brother In Law', and 'We Want Justice'.
Law agreed to see them. He handed around a tray of lamb chops, a bottle of scotch, and three bottles of rum, and paid them £10 each. Needless to say, they remained angry and bitter.
Tony Corfield had no right to leave out this disgraceful episode when passing judgment on Alan Law. But that is not all.
Ballot-rigging
In November 1977 Alan Law was caught ballot-rigging on a massive scale. He filled in almost all the 4,500 ballot papers issued to the branch himself, for each of three elections: national trade group committee, regional committee, and General Executive Council.
This was revealed by scrutineers in November 1977, who disqualified the branch returns for what they bashfully described as 'block voting'. The right word is, of course, ballot-rigging — a criminal offence.
Tony Corfield says that Law should not have been surprised that the 'regional authorities' took the matter seriously. In fact they did nothing of the sort.
At that time they took no further action at all. It took two angry but misguided militants, who — after months of frustration trying to get it raised within the union — made a formal complaint to the police, to bring it to the notice of the membership.
Given the urgent need for democratic reforms inside the TGWU, not least of the ballot procedure, Tony Corfield does no service by treating the episode lightly. He assesses branch opinion as not regarding the ballot-rigging as a serious offence, and points to the fact that the same candidates were elected on a re-run ballot.
Inquiry
Tony Corfield should have made it clear that this is beside the point. Members are supposed to fill in the ballot papers themselves. In fact Tony Corfield's assessment of opinion appears to be wrong, since a meeting of 500 5/35 members demanded a full regional inquiry into the incident — which was refused.
Alan Law himself was absolutely unrepentant. He simply said he had not had time to send out the ballot papers (despite being a full time official, with a full-time staff, doing a lay officer's job and getting a lay officer's administration allowance). He said he would do the same again in the same circumstances.
This is way out of step with Tony Corfield's general assessment of Law. In fact he quotes from an article Law wrote in the T&G journal Highway in March 1977.
"Too many people allow too many other people to make decisions on their behalf (!), without wanting their own voice to be heard, without demanding their rights to be heard, without insisting that their points of view be taken into consideration".
So runs part of this quote which, says Tony Corfield, "most fully expresses" the outlook of... Alan Law, who fills in other people's ballot papers without their knowledge and casts their votes for them!
I can only say about this that either Tony Corfield doesn't take his assessment of Alan Law seriously, or he doesn't take ballot-rigging seriously, since the two do not add up.
Apart from re-running the ballot, the Regional Committee decided to remove Law as branch secretary and split the branch into four in order to break up his power base. (They also got his agreement to retire at 60, a year or so later). That was enough for the Director of Public Prosecutions, who then decided not to proceed with criminal charges.
This was all very well, but the 5/35 branch was not Law's property, to be broken up as a form of punishment. It was a large, active branch in its own right, with strength, organisation, and rights, quite independent of Alan Law. To break it up was to break up an effective fighting force and weaken Midlands haulage workers in face of the employers.
Law was absolutely cynical about the break-up of the branch which he had precipitated. In order to protect Law's reputation, the Region gave the reason for the break-up of the branch as Law's increasing deafness.
Bemused branch members could not understand why this incapacity had led to the break-up of the branch. It was months later when pressure revealed the real reason, ballot-rigging.
Right to meet
Months of campaigning, with Law in opposition to them, by members of the 5/35 branch, eventually established the right of the four branches to meet together once a month, although they remained constitutionally separate branches. They continue that way today: still a strong, important branch, with monthly meetings of between two and three hundred, but seriously weakened by the actions of Alan Law.
One more example can usefully be given of Law's determination to defend his own power base — that is the national haulage strike which began in January 1979. It precipitated a major break between Law and the 5/35 branch.
A demand for £65 for 40 hours was advanced by a national road haulage conference. This threatened to override agreements which Law had in the Midlands, such as the Birmingham differential. More importantly, it trod on his patch.
He was, therefore, unlike the 5/35 branch, completely opposed to it from the outset. On top of that, he feared that it could become a political confrontation with the Government, and he wanted nothing to do with that.
The strike went ahead as a solid national action. Law's reaction to the backing which the 5/35 leadership was giving to the strike was to negotiate a scandalous deal with the West Midlands Road Haulage Association, to the effect that he would keep the West Midlands drivers out of the strike while the employers would agree to match any increase gained at national level.
This deal was backed by Brian Mathers, Region 5's notorious regional secretary, cryptically referred to throughout the book as "the regional authorities".
It caused a crisis in the strike nationally. It was a move that only a mind dominated by business unionism and devoid of any principle could have entered into.
To their great credit, the 5/35 leadership, whom Tony Corfield sees too much as a creation of and appendix of Alan Law, fought him all the way, along with other branches in the region.
Law's move created such bitterness that one branch occupied his office when they heard he would be meeting the West Midlands employers in it. Law had to switch the venue to a Birmingham hotel.
Mathers then intervened on behalf of Law, sending out in the post a direct appeal for a return to work in the West Midlands. This would be open scabbing on the national strike, which by this time was effectively confronting the Labour government over wage controls.
The tremendous strength of the strike, both nationally and in the West Midlands, meant that the treachery of Law and Mathers was doomed to failure. The drivers ignored the appeals, and remained militantly on strike.
Law, having lost the day, refused to take responsibility for the strike. It was taken over by the officer who was to replace him a few months later when he retired.
Although Tony Corfield gives a full account of this period, he partly justifies Law's treacherous role. For him, Law was protecting conditions which existed in the West Midlands, where the union was strong enough to achieve what it wanted without a damaging strike.
Tony Corfield does no service to the trade union movement in making a folk hero out of Alan Law. The issues involved are too important for that.
* Tony Corfield was formerly secretary of the TGWU political, research, and education departments; director of the Workers' Education Association social studies centre; and principal of Fircroft College, Birmingham. He is now Director of Industrial Relations Study Services. The book (R. Briery Publications, £5.00) can be obtained from IRSS, 12 Welches Close, Birmingham B31 2XT.