Wednesday, 12 August 2020

John Tocher and the limits of commitment

 

A large room in the Mechanic’s Institute in Manchester, birthplace of the TUC, bears John Tocher’s name, a recognition of his status as one of Manchester’s outstanding trade unionists. A leading member of the Communist Party for many years, he was a prominent member of its trade union cadre.  Hobsbawn argued that, being unable from its earliest years to win affiliation to the Labour Party, the Communist Party concentrated on building this cadre

But for this I doubt whether the CP ... could have played so disproportionately important a role in the trade union movement as it did from the 1930s to the 1970s.[1]

What follows explores Tocher’s commitments and achievements, asking why he left the Communist Party in 1976 and why it is so hard to know his reasons.

A committed comrade

Born 1926 in Surrey, Tocher was an apprentice engineer before joining the Army Air Corps, and then the Special Operations Executive, SOE, which parachuted him into Norway on a mission to sabotage bridges.[2]  He completed his apprenticeship in the giant A.V.Roe aircraft factory, in Chadderton near Stockport, then producing Lancaster bombers, in the 1950s making V bombers.  Soon elected shop steward, he became convener before he was thirty. [3] In 1949 he joined the Communist Party which had a strong base in the aircraft industry, quickly becoming a successful CP factory branch builder.[4]  As convenor, with nine hundred members, he led a number of strikes.[5] His article ‘Attacks on shop stewards are blows at you’ published in the Metal Worker, the party’s rank and file engineering paper brings out a key element of his politics,

‘Above all, he [the shop steward] is carrying the responsibility in the main for improving the lot of the working class, at their place of work today.’

Tocher goes on to quote from Marx supporting involvement in workplace struggle

the alternative rise and fall of wages, and the continual conflict between masters and men resulting therefrom are, in the present organisation of industry, the indispensable means of holding up the spirit of the labouring classes, of combining them into one great association against the encroachments of the ruling class, and of preventing them from becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well fed instruments of production.[6]

There is no evidence of any criticism on his part of the CPSU’s Twentieth Congress or the invasion of Hungary. Along with the great majority of the CP’s engineers, he stood with the leadership, loyal to the Soviet Union even after he left the Communist Party. Meanwhile on issues such as nuclear weapons he spoke out sharply as with the resolution he sent on behalf of the AVRO JSSC.  This

‘demand[ed] that the Labour Party conference decisions are acted upon and carried out to the letter by the Parliamentary Party...[and] that if the present Leader of the Labour Party is not prepared to carry out Conference directives he must be replaced immediately by someone else.’[7]

Elected delegate to the AEU’s national committee, its policy making body, in 1957, he consistently spoke out on behalf of the left,[8] reporting back regularly to shop floor reps.[9] It was ‘Johnnie Tocher’ who gave an up-beat speech opening the January 1959 Engineering and Allied Trades Shop Stewards conference organised by the party controlled Engineering and Allied Trades Shop Stewards National Council. 

 

With sharp struggles ahead we need fighters in every union job, men who will carry out union policy and battle no matter what the employer's press says.[10]

An active member of the Communist Party’s North West district committee and secretariat as well as being treasurer of the party’s T.U. advisory to the British Soviet Friendship Society, in 1963 he was elected onto the Communist Party’s national executive.[11]

The Broad Left

The party made a key shift in its industrial strategy at its Easter 1961 Congress. From its long-established ‘rank and file-ist’ orientation it shifted to building broad left alliances within union hierarchies, in particular emphasising the election of left officials. The change was easily carried through in Manchester where a broad left had been operating since the early 1950s. In the main this was due to the local strength of the CP and the friendly ex-member Hugh Scanlon, former convenor of the giant Metro Vicks plant in Manchester who left the CP in the mid 1950s.[12]  It was as a Broad Left that Tocher was elected as AEU Stockport district secretary 1964.  This was followed by election as Manchester AEU divisional organiser 1967, covering four districts and, two years later, secretary of the North West Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions.  The Confed, as it was known, covered twenty five engineering unions, co-ordinating both regular negotiations with employers and large scale industrial action.  In this important role he was now a member of the circle of leading comrades in engineering, from 1965 working closely with Bert Ramelson, the CP’s industrial organiser.[13]

Tocher’s politics

He was most definitely not ‘just a union activist’.  Unlike many other party comrades in engineering, he never stood as a Communist in local or national elections; he was nevertheless active where he lived: for example, in the Wilmslow Council Tenants Association where he called his local council’s proposal to increase rents ‘immoral’.[14] Like all new recruits he got a political education[15] as a Marxist. October 1968 found him speaking at a Stockport CP event on ‘Marxism and the British Labour Movement’.[16] Together with others, January 1972 he signed a Manchester Connolly Association telegram to Edward Heath condemning the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry and calling for troops to be confined to barracks.[17]  Later in the 1970s he became an active supporter of the Anti Nazi League.

In a carefully written apology to John Gollan for not attending the Executive Committee because of a family bereavement, February 1966, he emphasised the importance of avoiding open polemic over the Sino-Soviet split. He goes on to discuss different roads to socialism and argues that there are valid reasons for supporting the pro-Chinese position

I sincerely hope our Party will not enter into polemics on this question at this stage. I believe we must concentrate on the "British Road to Socialism" in this country.  Other countries will find their own road in their own way depending on the circumstances they find themselves in.  It is not correct of us to say Communism can come through the ballot box in a general way - many countries have not got a ballot box - They will reach Socialism through revolution. It is still a fact up to date that Communism had only been established and maintained through revolution.

This of course does not mean that Communism cannot be established through the ballot box, but not in all countries. In fact, the road to socialism in many countries can only be on the basis of preparation for revolution.

I am of the opinion that our movement must embrace both roads to socialism in our international thinking.  In this country we have decided what road we are taking and, let's be honest, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So let's direct our efforts on the establishment of socialism in this country along the road we have decided upon.[18]

Roberts Arundel

As the broad left strategy was put to the test with Wilson’s statutory incomes policy and his attack on the Communist Party during the seafarers’ strike 1966, Tocher found himself facing the aggressively anti-union boss of a textile machinery company in Stockport, Roberts Arundel.  The dispute arose after the company refused to discuss the employment of women workers at a lower rate of pay than male workers who had been doing the work until a few months earlier before being made redundant.  The dispute lasted eighteen months from late 1966 to the spring of 1968.  Despite ever heavier policing in support of the employer, the picketing, blacking, solidarity strikes and repeated demonstrations, one of which saw every window in the factory smashed, forced the employer to negotiate a settlement with the union.[19]  At one point ground staff at Manchester airport successfully forced their employer to send back a Roberts Arundel shipment due to be flown by KLM with the threat that if it went out no KLM plane would ever fly out of Manchester again.[20]  Determined to stop Tocher, the Chief Constable of Cheshire, tried unsuccessfully to have him charged with conspiracy, sending a file of police witness statements accompanied by a detective inspector, to the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions who in turn consulted the Attorney General.  Interviewed by the police, Tocher had acknowledged that he had circulated the details of the mass pickets and that ‘mass pickets can cause intimidation – they are supposed to do this.  This is the idea of mass pickets.’ The inspector noted, however, ‘There is absolutely no evidence that Mr Tocher ever personally used violence or intimidated anyone.’[21] Tocher was in fact a consummate conspirator using secret meetings to organise the mass pickets.  He also got information about company suppliers and customers by helping Paul Casey who had been a ‘union spy’ inside the factory back over the wall one night to get documents from the office.[22] Always unsectarian in his relations with the rest of the left, he was happy to take up the offer from Colin Barker, a local member of the International Socialists, to write a pamphlet supporting the Roberts Arundel strike which Tocher reprinted and circulated widely.[23]

The scale of the solidarity engendered by the strike built support for the already well organised left in the area.  John Boyd, the right wing candidate for the AEU presidency, had been expected to win and indeed he did in every area except Manchester whose huge majority for Hugh Scanlon assured his election.[24] Now with a national profile after the Roberts-Arundel dispute, in which he was indisputably the leading figure, Tocher became party chairman at the beginning of 1970 though not, according to his letter to Gollan accepting the post, before consulting the party district secretary and getting the agreement of his wife.[25]

The Industrial Relations Act

Following his election victory in June 1970, Heath quickly introduced his Industrial Relations bill to control shop floor militancy.  With matching speed, Tocher organised a meeting of 900 Manchester area engineering shop stewards, 30 November 1970, who voted for a strike a week later, 8 December. The Guardian quoted ‘a spokesman for the Confed’ i.e. Tocher estimating 60,000 to be on strike as 3,000 marched through the city.[26]  As Confed secretary he organised a train to the 150,000-strong TUC demonstration against the bill in London, 21 February 1971, which was followed by official strikes on 1 and 8 March 1971 and a further demonstration in Manchester, 18 March, a week before the bill received its third reading. The Guardian reported 1.2 million stopped work nationally on 1 March with 150,000 on strike in the Manchester area and ‘Trafford Park [the north west’s largest industrial estate and location of Metro Vicks] virtually at a standstill.’

At the November 1971 Communist Party congress, full of optimism generated by the CP led work-in at the UCS shipyard in Glasgow, it was Tocher who, as party chair, made the closing speech. The Morning Star article headed ‘Communists set for big class battles’ reports a speech measured in its language

Closing the congress, Party chairman John Tocher said it had drawn up a policy which would help the working class in fighting the many battles before it... the only lasting solution to unemployment was socialism.  He urged stepping up the pressure to get rid of the Tory government.[27]

The Manchester engineering factory occupations and the decline of the Broad Left

In forcing the Heath government to do a U-turn, abandoning its ‘lame ducks’ policy of refusing to bail out bankrupt companies, the UCS work-in established workplace occupation as a tactic.  When the union executive failed to give a lead over the national engineering pay claim, it was Tocher who seized the initiative.  Using the head of steam built campaigning against the Industrial Relations Act, he organised over thirty factory occupations in the Manchester area in the summer of 1972.  However, lack of support from Scanlon made it impossible to stop occupied factories settling one by one.  Some occupations were brief, leaving their workforces relatively satisfied with their settlement. In most cases, solid resistance by occupied employers - who were being funded through a national levy organised by the Engineering Employers Federation - meant that most occupations settled with little to show for their efforts.  A strong shop floor backlash followed this failure. Twelve months later, standing for re-election, Tocher was returned as divisional organiser with a majority of just 250 in a poll of over 16,000.  Fellow member of the CP national executive, Bernard Panter, lost his position as AUEW Manchester district secretary. The Broad Left in engineering whose driving force had always been the Communist Party had stumbled badly.  It’s difficult not to infer that Tocher’s decision to come off the CP national executive at the November 1973 Congress reflected a certain disillusionment.  This will have been reinforced by concern over the AUEW’s introduction of postal balloting in 1972 against which the Broad Left, including Tocher himself failed to mount an effective challenge. [28]   The Broad Left’s paper, Engineering Voice, reported

John Tocher agreed that the postal ballot is here to stay. The collective left progressive movement must ensure the system works equitably and openly.[29]

The rule change undermined the democracy based in branch meetings which had been the basis of the left’s strength.  Everyone could see that the change gave the media, always a supporter of the right, a greater scope to intervene.

The Social Contract, failure of the British Road to Socialism and Tocher’s resignation

Heath’s humiliation at the hands of the UCS workforce, miners and dockers in 1972 and miners again two years later leading to defeat in the February 1974 general election should have meant that this was a moment of opportunity as never before for the British Road to Socialism.  Indisputably the long predicted economic crisis was happening. The FTSE index fell 32% in 1973 and 53% in 1974, the pound fell from $2.30 to $1.60 in the two years from January 1974, inflation and unemployment both rose. The October 1974 Labour manifesto promised ‘a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people’. The Labour left Tribune group counted 60 to 80 MPs as members. As Alfred Sherman, ex Communist, now right wing guru, put it ‘Britain had a ruling class that was no longer capable of ruling.

Yet the Communist Party’s 1974 general election results were disastrous. Jimmy Reid, the best hope of electing a Communist MP in nearly quarter of a century, only just managed to hold onto his deposit.  The Tribunite MPs made no impact. Together with almost the whole of the TUC General Council, backed by a 95% vote at a special conference,[30] Scanlon moved into alliance with Wilson, helping enforce the TUC’s ‘policy of voluntary pay restraint’.  It must have hurt Tocher to see how Scanlon now moved between Whitehall and Congress House supporting a government whose prime minister the Economist was soon calling 'the best conservative prime minister Britain could get.' Nor were the problems exclusively national.  Bert Brennan, convener of Metro Vicks, who had signed Tocher’s nomination papers for re-election as divisional organiser, was fined by the Manchester district for allowing 10,000 to work overtime at the normal day rate.[31]

After two years of global recession marking the end of the post-war boom, 1976 was crunch time.  The IMF was called in and at Labour Party conference Callaghan made his famous ‘end of the cosy world’ speech.  It was back to fundamentals, no more 'confetti' money, an attack on the post-war full employment, welfare state consensus, the start of neo-liberalism in Britain. From mid 1975 working class living standards fell more sharply than at any time since the 1930s. At the same time the Communist Party’s membership was falling, its factory branches disintegrating, and its Broad Left strategy in ruins.   Not until February 1977, did the CP controlled Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, in decline since at least 1973, mobilise against the Social Contract.[32] A younger generation within the party were challenging what they saw as its excessively ‘workerist’ approach and commitment to ‘free collective bargaining’, arguing for a socialist incomes policy.  Their vision of a broad democratic alliance included the women’s liberation and anti racist movements.  Less than eighteen months earlier Jimmy Reid had helped with the Manchester launch of the CP’s October ‘74 election campaign speaking to 700 supporters in the Free Trade Hall.  In February 1976 Reid resigned saying ‘members of the party have acted contrary to the working class’; his quarrel was with ‘the dead hand of dogma’.[33]  Reid’s exit was followed by three other engineers, all once members of the national executive: Cyril Morton, from Sheffield, Bernard Panter and Tocher, the only one of the four never to have stood in either a parliamentary or local election. The press was told his resignation was for personal reasons, having reduced his activities because of ill health.[34]

Aftermath

Though the Broad Left was never able to beat the right-wing as it had in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Tocher, now a member of the Labour Party, remained a committed supporter, organising candidates in the Manchester area.  He stood as Broad Left candidate for President in 1985-6 getting 95,000 votes against the right winger Bill Jordan’s 110,000.  In the jobs massacre in the 1980-81 recession, much worsened by Thatcher’s monetarist policies, he played a leading role in a number of battles against redundancy.  These included the 21 week strike over victimisation of stewards and convener at Adamsons Containers in 1979 and the six week occupation of the Gardner diesel factory in October-November 1980, both of which were successful. There was also the unsuccessful sixteen week occupation of Laurence Scott Electromotors against closure in 1981.  In 1986 he challenged Ferodo over cutting the workforce’s pay. A court decision forced Ferodo to pay £750,000, equivalent to £2 million today.  The judge having heard Tocher’s evidence commented he could well understand why he had been a candidate for the presidency of the AEU. A 1985 letter in the Times from a fellow official described him as ‘probably the toughest negotiator in the AUEW.’[35]

Tocher continued working as an official as he always had, insisting that he alone represent the workforce in negotiations.  For example, during the Gardners dispute, he only brought in the convenor and chairman at the final meeting with the employer and sharply criticised the SWP’s ‘out of control’ methods of organising solidarity with the strikers.[36]  He was nevertheless unsectarian towards the SWP giving a lengthy interview to their monthly[37] and inviting a number of them to his retirement ‘do’ shortly before he died on 17 September 1991, eight days before he was due to finish. At no point was there any sign of less than comradely relational with former comrades nor any break with those who had moved on and "up" such as the ennobled Hugh Scanlon who spoke at his retirement party.  Rather at the commemoration of his life in Manchester Town Hall 1991, Benny Rothman and others talked of betrayal of the principles that had inspired his cohort of Communists. The commitment to the principles had survived, the organisation had not.

Why leave?

Stevenson implies in his brief biography of Tocher that the personal reasons for leaving the party were the attacks he received in the 1985/6 election campaign which

.... clearly took its toll on Tocher’s health, if not his spirit. Nonetheless, as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party, he was singled out throughout the 1980s for special attention by the gutter press. He resigned from the Party only because these attacks on him resulted in harassment and began to seriously affect his young family, arising from a second, late marriage.[38]

There are two errors here: Tocher chaired the executive 1970-1971 and he resigned in 1976. Given his record of political commitment and since we know so little of his personal circumstances, it makes better sense to start with the party’s failure in the mid ‘70s on both electoral and industrial fronts.  The party cadres’ years of work building alliances with top officials proved unable to prevent the wholesale move to the right by Scanlon, Jones and others.  The party congress November 1975 saw a balancing act by the new general secretary, Gordon McLennan, trying to keep the links with left figures and show determination to seize the opportunities presented by the crisis.[39]

For Tocher the problem wasn’t ’the dead hand of dogma’.  He supported the party line including the call for an alternative economic strategy challenging the proto-neoliberalism of the Callaghan government. The rise of a young guard in the party critical of what they saw as a misplaced faith in workplace organising’s capacity to produce socialist consciousness was the basis for comradely argument, not for leaving. Similarly he would have rejected their belief in incomes policy arguing instead for the free collective bargaining needed to build the strength required to implement an alternative economic strategy.[40] The problem was the party’s failure to keep its roots in the class.  As he put it in 1978

When the left starts winning it becomes arrogant with people. I’ve noticed this with district committees and individuals and the like, instead of maintaining a grassroots position they start telling people what to do.  But you can’t rule by committee, you can’t inject militancy into an establishment. Obviously leadership is very important, but you mustn’t forget the people whose views you are reflecting – what they’ll go along with and what they won’t.[41]

It is hard not to see an element of self criticism here: Tocher consistently exercised the authority of his position as the senior regional official as, for example, during the Gardner’s occupation.  He would go along with shop steward committee decisions further than most officials but they needed to know the limits of their authority. In the run up to the Gardner occupation in 1980, Tocher agreed to ‘support minority disputes against enforced redundancy ... crucially important because thereby the stewards knew that a dispute was going to happen, one way or another, and this helped pull vacillators to our side.’  He also agreed the strike committee could co-opt rank and file members when required.’[42]  While he had comradely relationships with members of organisations which rejected this view, such as the SWP, he never shifted on this point.  When Mick Brightman, an SWP member, was asked by Tocher in the early ‘80s to stand for election on the Broad Left slate, Tocher added ‘Of course, you would have to leave the SWP.’ Brightman pointed out that Tocher would have rejected any such proposal if had been asked to stand on condition of leaving the CP and the matter was dropped.[43]

Why so hard to know the reason?

The lack of a written ‘footprint’ is not hard to explain.   The party he joined in the early years of the Cold War was spied on from all sides, taking precautions was party policy as with the 1951 ‘Vigilance’ campaign for tighter security.[44] The minutes of the industrial advisory committee meetings, to which Tocher will have made an important contribution, were later shredded to protect the individuals still working.[45]  There was always the hostility of employers and those assisting them such as Winston Churchill, MP for Stretford,[46] who wrote at one point about helping to ‘get JT.’[47]  There was ‘a canary’ in the form of a right wing district official in the union offices in Salford in the 1980s. It can be argued that for much of his time there was little pressure to write.  In the early years, the fluent pen of Frank Allaun, later that of Bert Ramelson, both covered his patch.  Finally, Tocher was a very private individual, keeping his personal life separate from work and politics, a night owl, sometimes drinking alone in pubs.[48]  His personal modesty - it can be argued that this fitted the party’s idea of the model comrade[49] - also adds to the difficulty in writing about him.  Whatever personal reasons there were, there is no reason to think he had changed his view that the public debate of differences within the party was to be avoided.  Rather there was a continuing loyalty to those who had not left and a determination not to give the class enemy any opportunity to exploit his decision to leave.


This article was originally published in the North West Labour History 42, 2017-2018



[1] Socialist History Society, 1996 conference, ‘Getting the balance right: an assessment of the achievements of the Communist Party of Great Britain.’

[2] Frow E & Frow R, Engineering Struggles, 1982, p457, give 29 September 1925 as his date of birth.  Quite possibly he lied about his age in order to get into the forces a year earlier.

[3] It later became Hawker Siddeley and then British Aerospace.

[4] Draft report to the EC re factory branches, 9/10 March 1968, CPGB archive, CP/CENT /IND/1/1

[5] Manchester Guardian, 27 August 1955, 30 August 1955, 1 Sept 1956.

[6] Frow and Frow, op.cit, p275-276.

[7] Letter from AVRO JSSC to Labour Party Secretary, Transport House, London, 25 Oct 1960, Labour Party archives, GS/AEU/407

[8] Manchester Guardian, 4 May 1957, 30 April 1959, 2 May 1962, 2 May 1963, 28 April 1964, 2 May 1964.

[9] Stockport District shop stewards quarterly, June 1957, 14 May 1958, AEU Stockport District, special shop stewards meeting, Chair Bro. J. W. Tocher, WCML, TU/ENG/6/G/97AF

[10] Metalworker, February 1959.

[11] Guardian, 16 April 1963

[12] Callaghan, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict, The CPGB 1951-68. 2003, p246; Andrews, Endgames and New Times, The Final Years of British Communism, 1964-1991, 2004, p.107; McIlroy et al (eds), The High Tide of British Trade Unionism, Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, 1964-79, 2007, pp233-237; Armstrong, The history and organisation of the broad left in the AUEW (Engineering Section) until 1972, with special reference to the Left in Manchester, 1978.

[13] Seifert and Sibley, Revolutionary Communist at Work: A Political Biography of Bert Ramelson, 2011

[14] The Guardian, 6 April 1960

[15] Raphael Samuel notes the advanced political economy classes for cadres in Manchester in 1947. See Samuel, ‘Lost World of British Communism, Part 3, p76

[16] Stockport Communist Party branch newsletter, October 1968, WCML, AG/CPGB/ Box 20

[18] See appendix below.

[19] Colin Barker, IS in the 60s: two thousand workers with bricks: the Roberts-Arundel strike, https://rs21.org.uk/2015/08/05/is-in-the-60s-two-thousand-workers-with-bricks-the-roberts-arundel-strike/2015; Arnison, The Million Pound Strike, 1970, p30-34

[20] Colin Barker, op.cit., 2015

[21] The National Archives, Kew/ DPP 2/4459/ TOCHER, John (District Secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union): s7 Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875. Incidents arising in the course of a trade dispute involving a company named "Robert Arindel Ltd", Stockport. No action

[22] Colin Barker, op.cit., 2015

[23] ‘roberts-arundel the story of the strike’, n.d (1967).

[24] See Armstrong, op.cit.

[25] CPGB archive, CP/CENT/SEC/05/02

[26] Guardian, 9 December 1970, p22. The ‘spokesman for the Confed’ who is quoted will have been Tocher.

[27] Morning Star, 17 November 1971

[28] The name was changed to Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, AUEW, in 1971, following a merger with the draughtsmen’s union, DATA and the steel construction workers union, CEU.

[29] Engineering Voice, January/February 1972.

[30] Guardian, 17 June 1976, p1

[31] Guardian, 28 January 1971, p20

[32] John McIlroy, Alan Campbell, Organizing the militants: The Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, 1966-1979, BJIR, Volume 37, Issue 1, 1999

[33] Reid, Reflections of a Clyde-built man, 1976

[34] The Times, 26 August 1976, p2

[35] The Times, 11 May, 1985, p9

[36] Brightman, letter to author, 25 April 2016

[37] Socialist Review, September 1978

[39] Higgins, Spectator, 22 November 1975. A cynical view which nevertheless captured the problem

[40] I have failed to find any record of his views on the rise of the women’s movement and of socialist feminism within the CP.

[41] Socialist Review, 1978

[42] Brightman, op.cit.

[43] Brightman, op.cit.

[44] Callaghan, p10

[45] Andrews, p105

[46] Grandson of Winston Churchill, prime minister

[47] Engineers Charter, n.d.

[48] Brightman, op.cit.

[49] As when he has the press report him as ‘spokesman for the Confed’. Only when he was a candidate for AUEW president did his name appear regularly in the press. See above footnote 16, p5