TONY Perrin's play The Union shown on BBC-1 on Tuesday of last week had two aims.
First it exposed the crooked role of the Stalinist leaders in the Electrical Trades Union which led to the ballot rigging scandal of the early '60s. Conclusion: keep the reds out of power.
Aim number two was to make us grateful to the crusaders who saved democracy in the union. Thank God for Les Cannon, Woodrow Wyatt, Catholle Action, the British media and of course Frank Chapple.
Conclusion: Frank knows what he is doing when he defends his union against Commies and Trots and fights the Bennite hordes in However, It is nol enough to dismiss Perrin's play as nothing more than red-baiting.
The Communist Party ran the ETU virtually as an aditions got short shot. adjunct of the party.
Socialist Challenge 5 March 1981 Cannon, pany took over.
Choices had to be made.
their jobs, their cars, their expenses.
I was in the ETU then, new masters.
and Cannon and his mates Marxism Stalinism ruled.
Trotskyists did show us Chapple's democracy. there were other forces to alas the media, leaders, easy to swop one For those trained in the The courts decided that electricians' union. the ballot for the general secretary's job had been rigged. Haxell and Foulkes were expelled from the ETU.
Chapple, and comThey banned Communists from holding office, whereupon a bunch of cynical time-servers tore up their party cards and kept and The day before they served Haxell; now they would serve their The union set off at -breakneck speed for the There was a crackdown on oppositon just like in the old days At present time there are even fewer elections in the EE!PU than there were when Of course, Perrin did not Nor did he explain that Cannon and company were the children of Stalinism who found it very bureaucratic regime for But then if you are a member of the Frank Chapple fan club it is very hard to dramatise an objective history of the events in the