"WITH A HEAVY heart and a clear head", the formula used by Bill Morris to sum up his reluctant defence of Clause Four, is the way many TGWU activists will vote for him as General Secretary.
The contest will prove crucial to the politics of the labour movement for several years to come, and will dominate the forthcoming TGWU conference.
Morris is running for reelection against nara-line nght winger Jack Dromey, darling of the media.
Though Dromey is famously married to Shadow Cabinet hack Harriet Harman, he is politically in bed with Tony Blair.
Blair likes Dromey's willingness to accept rock-bottom pay deals for his members, his new realist politics and his vicious hostility to the left. Dromey shares Blair's religious bigotry and also sends his son to the opted-out, anti-union church London Oratory school.
In contrast Blair sees Bill Morris as a weak leader, unable to deliver the kind of policies that would keep the Bill Morris: hated for Clause 4 defence TGWU in line behind a right wing Labour government. While Dromey, like NUT leader McAvoy, could be expected to work ruthlessly to sabotge any decisions he finds politically unacceptable, Morris faithfully cast the block vote the way the delegation decided.
Blair's office began 'confidentially' promoting Dromey and denigrating Morris with journalists even before the TGWU delegation brushed aside Morris's own objections, and finally opted to cast their vote in defence of the old Clause Four.
Dromey has exploited this issue to the hilt, complaining that Morris did not, as he would have done, ride roughshod over the union's system of democratic policy-making and put the Clause Four issue to a membership ballot.
Dromey, who cut his teeth as a front man for the union bureaucracy in 1970s unionisation battles at Grunwick and Garners Steak Houses, has hierarchy of non-elected posts. Unlike Morris, he would retain his job even if he loses the election. Going further, and getting nastier, he has branded Bill Morris a liability to the Labour Party.
But the split is not a straightforward stand-off between right and left. Morris has donned the mantle of the left and the right.
He has again committed himself to fight on for the union's policy of a minimum wage of f4 per hour, despite Tony Blair's refusal to specify a figure in advance.
Although Bill Morris has the support of all the major groupings on the left, including Tribune and the Morning Star, while Dromey's support comes from the right wing media and Blairite mafia, Morris also leans on right wing support inside the union.
Six of the TGWU's eight powerful, unelected Regional Secretaries, some of them extreme right wingers, and a dozen of Dromey's fellow unelected national trade group secretaries have supported Morris, who has at the same time enlisted the CP-influenced Broad Left.
Despite this bizarre line-up, Morris has come close to witch-hunting, attacking liance of extremes", allegedly OULOOK: What combining the far left and Labour modernisers. Wo Fight For p 8 In office, Morris himself has related more to the right wing than the left in the union. POST & TELECOM: He has made no effort to spread the bitter battle of new union faces Badgerline busworkers, con- the future p 4 fining the union to a prolonged and expensive experiment in running a free bus service. CPSA: swings Nevertheless his period of office has also seen the TGWU left p 2 challenge the reactionary proposals put forward by the Borrie Commission for Social Justice, and set out a positive World-wide alternative.
Morris is also the only national union leader to have DENMARK: fighting supported struggles against immigration laws, and was transport clearly influential in the call- privatisation p 6 ing of the first-ever TUC demonstration against racism.
If he wins re-election, the left will find itself frequently in conflict with Morris, fight- Now Labour ing for real policies to build the Laws p 8 union, reach out to layers of low-paid unorganised workers, and fight back for union FRANCE: state of But should Dromey win, a the unions p 6 bleak vista of witch-hunting and right wing policies looms. Vote against Blair's man, vote and more... for Bill Morris. It's the best we can do in the circumstances.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK Union Special, May 27 1995 page 2.