The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

XX FOREWORD

. effectively challenged in Parliament than the policy of any capitalist organisation of employers can be challenged to-day. Labour members who are returned to the House of Commons at the expense of the Unions by working-class votes and paid a supplementary salary by the Unions as members of Parliament, will be as powerless to protect the interests of their organisations whose members are employed under these corporations as the group of miners’ M.P’s are to protect the workers in the coalfields under capitalist ownership. Our Labour members, in fact, who are consenting to the creation of these corporations, are not only voting away their own usefulness as Union watchdogs: they are legislating against the workers’ control of industry. And if anybody alleges that the principle of workers’ control will be safeguarded by the inclusion of one or two prominent trade unionists among the commissioners we can only say we do not agree. We take leave to say further that anybody who thinks the appointment of a Trade Union representative on one of these boards is a step towards workers’ control understands neither the meaning of workers’ control nor the purpose of Trade Unionism.

Parliament, then, is pursuing two mutually contradictory policies in relation to the governance of economic affairs. On the one hand, under a Tory régime, Parliament betrays alarm and resentment over the existence of powerful bodies like the Trades Union Congress claiming a decisive influence in industry, and meets that claim with