EVER GET the feeling that not all trade union leaders are on our side? Damn right. Some of them are literally bought and paid for by the bosses.
Throughout the eighties, a company called Industrial Research and Information Services Ltd (IRIS) gave a rightwing general secretaries six-figure annual hand-outs from big business to fund internal union machinations, with senior Tory peers acting as the link men.
Significantly, many key players naa pivotal roles in tne miners' strike of 1984-5. Bill Sirs general secretary of the steel workers union was a director of IRIS at a time when local-level deals between the ISTC and the NUM were essential to maintain the supply of coal to British steel mills.
Another known IRIS supporter, Ken Cure of the AEU, sat on Labour's national executive committee during the entire dispute, while Sirs was on the general council of the TUC. Through these two men IRIS had access to the internal deliberations of the highest bodies in the labour movement - essential intelligence in the strikebreaking effort against the enemy within.
Top firms
Among the companies indirectly paying for IRIS through tax-deductible charitable donations were: Allied Lyons, Bass, Boots, BP (partly state-owned), Cadbury Schweppes, Cunard, GKN, Glaxo, Grand Metropolitan, Guinness, Hanson Trust, ICI, Metal Box, NEI, P&O, Rugby Portland Cement, Scottish and Newcastle, Unilever, United Biscuits, Whitbread, TI Group and United Newspapers.
IRIS was originally an offset of Common Cause, an unstable coalition of former socialists opposed to Stalinism, union officials brassed off by the activities of left activists, Tory rightwingers and military men; all on a platform of shared anti-comminism.
One of the prime movers was C.A. Smith who represented the Independent Labour Party, a leftwing breakaway from the Labour Party, in talks with Leon Trotsky in the thirties.
But anotber leading member PEUKT Stand While miners and Women Against Pit Closures fought for jobs, IRIS-sponsored bureaucrats sat on TUC and Labour leaderships was Major-General Richard Hilton, a former military attache in Moscow, who later joined the National Front.
Probably formed in the late forties, Common Cause was officially launched in 1952 and still exists today. Most of the left wingers quit in 1956, prompting those remaining to establish IRIS to bolster their credibility in the labour movement.
Offices were initially based at the National Union of Seaman's HQ in Clapham, in those days virtually a company union. The following year IRIS published an influential pamphlet, The Communist Solar System, with a foreword by Labour's great nationaliser, Herbert Morrison.
IRIS was funded by Common Cause until 1963, when it became autonomous. Papers recently released under the 30 year rule explains for the first time how this was achieved.
A massive state subvention followed a personal approach to the then Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, from Lord Shawcross, who as Hartley Shawcross was a Labour cabinet colleague of Morrison's in the 1945-51 governments.
Shawcross quit parliament in 1958 to become a director of Shell. He was chairman of the Press Council under the last LaAlthough IRIS was financially backed by Shell and Ford, Shawcross said it nevertheless lacked "sufficient funds". Could the government provide money?
'Supermac' then detailed Home Secretary Henry Brooke to consider the request, and discussed the possibility of bringing conspiracy charges against Communist activists and introducing anti-union legislation after the next election.
IRIS was given f40,000 from the intelligence services budget, worth something like half a million pounds in today's money. In a thank you letter to Macmillan's successor, Alec DouglasHome, the following year Shawcross indicated that IRIS had raised £35,000 from the company donations, making it an extremely well-to -do operation indeed.
IRIS became a limited company in 1968. Records at Companies house show that directors have included former general secretaries of NALGO, USDAW, AEUW, NAS/UWT, ISTC and the old seafarers', agricultural and woodworker's unions, frequently linked as members of the TUC general council.
Also on the list is Ray Gunter, Wilson's Minister of Labour from 1964-1968 and, briefly, minister of power in 1968. Gunter became notorious during his earlier stint as chairman of Labour's powerful organisational sub-committee, using the position to block leftwingers getting selected as parliamentary candidates.
It is likely that some of the others mentioned in this period were Labour and Conservative MPs, although the names are too common to be certain.
More recent converts to the IRIS cause include Bill Sirs, general secretary of ISTC from 1975-1985 and a member of the TUC general council throughout his term of office.
Sirs joined the IRIS board at the start of the miners' strike in January 1984, going on to become its chairman. According to accounts filed with the charity commission, Sirs was given a payment of £3,000 from the Industrial Trust, the charity which acted primarily as a fundraising conduit for IRIS, in the 19901991 financial year.
Also on the board was British steel director Sir John Boyd, general secretary of the engineering union AEUW between 1975-1982.
Keeping up the supply of coal to Britain's steel mills during the pit strike was a top priority for the government. Both Sirs and Boyd were in obvious positions of influence.
The Industrial Trust was established in 1985. Trustees included Tory peer Baron McAlpine of Moffat, who has extensive business connections in nuclear power, and Lord Robens, who as Alf Robens was a former Labour minister and chairman of the National Coal Board in the sixties.
On the Trust's council were Glaxo chief executive Sir Austin Bide, BP managing director Peter Cazalet, Bass chairman Derek Palmar and Sir Duncan McDonald of NEI.
Front
The trust was basically a fundraising front for IRIS. In its first year the trust raised f131,871. Some £116,000 went directly to IRIS. Similar sums followed in subsequent years.
This funding probably exceeds the fundraising capacity of every trade union broad left put Thanks to unwelcome - albeit ineffectual - attention from the Charity Commission, direct donations from the trust to IRIS stopped in 1988-1989. Most of the money raised went instead to the Kennington Industrial Company, which simply passed the bulk of it on to IRIS.
Somewhat incredibly the Charity Commission eventually found that "on balance" the trust had used its funds to carry out its stated objectives, and that "there is no evidence of any connection between the trust and the Conservative or any other political party". TURE With the decline of union militancy and the collapse of Stalinism there is no longer the same urgency for business to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to combat the red menace on the shop floor.
But there can be little doubt that the same functions are today being carried out by a new outfit pledged to exactly the same anti-labour movement ends.