With the sad death earlier this year of Bill Wedderburn, and now the passing away on Sunday of Bill McCarthy, the UK has lost arguably two of its most impressive, outstanding experts on labour law, industrial relations and the of the role of trade unions within these.
Despite the almost luminary position that Bill McCarthy came
to occupy as an industrial relations academic, and also principal adviser to
successive Labour governments – his input well established historically in
those seismic shifts in UK trade unionism, the Donovan Commission report of
1968 and the flawed policy of Barbara Castle, In Place of Strife – his roots
were much more common to those of us in the trade union movement.
Bill came to Ruskin College in 1953 supported by his union
USDAW. He met his wife, Margaret Godfrey whilst at Ruskin and they went to
become stalwart activists in the Oxford Labour Party.
Whilst Bill went on from Ruskin to pursue a career which
dominated the industrial relations landscape of the 1960’s-80s’ he never came
to conveniently ignore (as many others did) his trade union origins.
As a student at Ruskin in the 1980s Bill’s book, the
magisterial Trade Unions, was seen as
of such fundamental importance to building the knowledge base of new students
that it was set as mandatory reading before we even set foot across the
threshold. His written and advisory output over 40 years in academia and government circles
was prolific but within this he retained his deep, abiding interest of what it
was that could retain at a grandscale union strength and influence in
collective bargaining and industrial relations machinery; but absorbed also by
the minutia of the union rule book.
There is a wonderful obituary to Bill McCarthy in today’s
Guardian, supplemented by a personal reflection from Geoffrey Goodman.
Taken
together the coverage represents a fine critical analysis of the role of an
individual during a period of fluctuating fortune for British trade unions; but
one in which without the imprint of Bill McCarthy our current position as trade
unionists in the UK could not have been the same.
The Guardian obituaries are here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/19/lord-mccarthy
As a mark of respect for Bill's work in support of British trade unions he became one of only two honorary fellows of Ruskin College, and at the next meetings of the College's Governing Executive and Governing Council, there will be a minute's silence.
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