THE
CONTEST IN THE AMAIGAMATED ENGINEERING UNION
By Ken Varney
London
The elections in the Amalgamated Engineering Union have attracted considerable interest in Britain. The outcome will indicate whether the country's second largest union has shifted to the left in a way comparable to the huge Transport and General Workers Union.
The outgoing president, Sir William Carron, is a notorious "anti-Communist" who also serves as a governor of the Bank of England. Among his "achievements" is construction of an apparatus inside the union to fight "Communism and Trotskyism."
Carron decided to retire. As successor he is backing John Boyd, a wellknown right-winger who wholeheartedly supports Harold Wilson's wage-freeze policies.
Of the twenty candidates who stood in opposition, only three commanded sufficient support to survive the first ballot. These are Reg Birch, North London organizer, a former member of the National Committee of the Communist party who was expelled from that organization because of his Maoist sympathies; Hugh Scanlon, Lancashire organizer, a member of the left wing in the Labour party who enjoys a reputation of being somewhat militant; and Len Edmundson, Northeast England organizer who commands considerable support in the Newcastle and Teeside areas. Edmundson stands politically somewhere between Scanlon and Boyd.
In previous elections, Reg Birch
ran close to Carron and he was considered
to have a good chance in the current con-
test. However, the Communist party, which
exercises considerable influence in the
union, decided to back Scanlon.
In the first ballot, Scanlon re-
ceived the same number of votes as Boyd,
some 35,000. Birch got approximately
11,000 and Edmundson about 7,000.
As no candidate had a clear major-
ity, it was necessary under the union
rules to hold a runoff between Boyd and
Scanlon.
The bourgeois press has sought to
influence the outcome in behalf of Boyd.
The campaign of the gutter press has
included such sensationalist items as a
cooked up story that Birch would swing
behind Boyd. Despite this pressure, Scan-
lon appears to be in the lead.
If Scanlon wins the election, it
will be regarded as a victory for the
left. It should be noted, however, that
Scanlon has persistently refused to go
on record in favour of ending the "anti-
Communist" posture of the bureaucratic
hierarchy. He clearly wishes to maintain
an opening to the right.
However if the AEU registers a
shift to the left by electing Scanlon,
the effect could be considerable since it
would alter relations in the Labour move-
ment to the disadvantage of Wilson and
his grossly procapitalist policies.
BRITISH CP