Trafford Publishing: It Occurred to Me Or, How Did I Get Here?

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It Occurred to Me Or, How Did I Get Here?

by Peter D. Carr

160 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0007; ISBN 1-4120-2083-2; US$17.69, C$20.34, EUR14.53, £10.17

The author lucidly describes his key role in political and economic strategies that have influenced the actions of government, both nationally and internationally over thirty five years.

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About the Book About the Author Excerpts Catalogue Information

About the Book

Peter Carr writes with candour and humour of attempts to reform the chaotic collective bargaining system in the 1960s and 1970s.
A posting to Washington in the diplomatic service provided a valuable insight into parts of American society. He met and dealt with some of the great American labour leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and George Meany, the politically powerful head of the American Federation of Labour.

About the Author

On Mr. Carr's return to Britain he took on a post in the Northeast and played a crucial role in the development of a policy for inner-city rejuvenation.
From there he found himself at the head of the Health Services in the Northern Region during a traumatic period of Health Service reform.

Excerpts

LEADERS GREAT AND SMALL
The Labour Counsellor's post in the Embassy offered an interesting opportunity to meet and debate with some legendary American union leaders. It also brought me into contact with some lesser mortals. Some of the union leaders were social revolutionaries around which major changes in American society had generated. Legendary figures tend to be either old or gone so I count it as good fortune to have met A. Philip Randolph at his Ninth Avenue apartment ona previous business trip toNewYork: he died the year after I arrived to work there. Randolph, the first black to lead a union, founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and from that base he emerged as a formidable civil rights campaigner. It was his victory in gaining recognition from the Pullman Company in 1937 that gave black American workers a national example of the rights they could win through collective bargaining. He organised the great march on Washington in 1963, which led to the watershed legislation in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A friend in the American labour movement arranged the visit and I treasure the memory of that brief but stimulating discussion with Randolph of his life and his continuing ambitions for America's black population. He was in his 80s at that time, protected by his house- keeper Fannie Cornes and though not in good condition, full of wisdom and dignity. I have travelled through Union Station in Washington many times since and am always compelled to pause at the fine statue of Randolph that stands in the concourse.
The 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, at which the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. made his moving 'I have a dream' speech, is established as an historic turning point in American civil rights. Five other leaders of various black organisations came together with King to promote and organise the event. The principal promoter of the March, A. Philip Randolph, chose Bayard Rustin as the main organiser because of his long experience of nonviolent campaigning. Rustin was a brilliant debater and gifted organiser though openly homosexual, a socialist and a pacifist. Those latter three characteristics did not endear him to many in the American labor and civil rights movements and Randolph had to engage in considerable persuasion to secure Rustin in the central organising role. I spent time on a number of occasions with Bayard and gained a valuable insight into the way the 1963March was promoted and managed.He proved to be masterful at the enormous task. The efficient smoothness of the event, drawing together 500,000 individuals and families from all parts of America, and its peaceful and cheerful atmosphere owed something to the nature of its organiser. Of those Big Six, as they became known, I am privileged to have met and talked with Randolph, and with Congressman John Lewis who was only twenty three at the time and is happily still with us as I write.
I had long debateswithHarry Bridges the International longshoremen's leader who organised the West Coast dockworkers.Harry had just retired when I met him, having built his union into a major bargaining organisation. He had achieved that strength against a history of niggling opposition from the AFL-CIO which had expelled the union from the federation, essentially as a punishment for Harry's left wing politics. In truth Harry loved to make outrageously radical statements. To some extent he had that old-fashioned romantic and myopic view of the Soviet Union; though he had no time for cold war politics and was never a political conspirator. Judge a man by his friends they say - and Harry always had employers, academics, wealthy businessmen and media people as his close friends.
In subsequent meetings with West Coast port employers, I liked to test them on Harry Bridges' credibility and never failed to receive their endorsement on his honesty and 'straight dealing'. That union, by American standards, had a remarkably clean record - the 'mob' played no part in its administration. Harry believed he had a mission and corruption would destroy his objective. In contrast the longshoremen's union on the EastCoast had a long history of corruption and a rogues' gallery of its officials have served time in prison. Yet by contrast that union's credentials were never challenged by the AFL- CIO leadership. I had little time for its leader Teddy Gleason, a tiresome conspirator whose main qualification seems to have been his talent for staying in office beyond his natural lifespan.
Gleason had cultured a talented, good looking and personable candidate for the future succession to the union leadership in the shape of Anthony Scotto fromNewYork. Scotto, a Vice-President of the International Longshore- men's union, had been considered as a possibly Labor Secretary in the Carter administration. I met him in his New York local where he had established an impressive welfare and health insurance systemfor dockyard employees and their families. He was smart and well educated. I recall enquiring how many longshoremen there were in New York and he told me some 20,000 were on the register of whom 10,000 were in work. 'What decides who works and who does not?' I asked.He tapped his chest.
Scotto went to jail in 1979 for corruption. His conviction illustrated the manner of his union's wealth creation. The port employers claimed that for years they had been 'persuaded' to make payment of thousands of dollars into the union 'social security' accounts. In the trial the prosecution maintained that Scotto held the rank of capo in the Gambino branch of the New York Mafia. The guest list for his wedding certainly gave that impression. He married Marion Anastasia, the niece of Albert Anastasia the reputedChief Executioner ofMurder Incorporated. Scotto maintained his innocence throughout and served only a short time in prison. Some have claimed that his downfall resulted from Mafia over ambition in allowing him to be considered a candidate for the Labor Secretary post; a process that entailed close FBI surveillance. On his release from prison, Scotto and his wife went on to establish Fresco, a popular restaurant in New York city.
It would be wrong to give the impression that corruption and New York labour unions were one and the same thing. In contrast to Scotto I like to think of New York unions being typified by the talented and tough New Yorker Victor Gottbaum who led the New York government workers AFSCME. He could stop the working of that great city if he chose; though that was not his style. He was unquestionably a power broker and aspirants for political office knew where to call for endorsement. I believe he retired a somewhat disappointed man; his aspiration to lead the national union beaten down by the socialist Jerry Wurf who knew every trick in the book when it came to political gamesplay in the union.
Wurf sat on the AFL-CIO Executive Council and took on the traditional role of critic on Meany's stewardship of the AFL-CIO. It was a role previously played by Walter Reuther and in a small way by A. Phillip Randolph.
Like many non-conformist leaders before him, Randolph found life on the AFL-CIO Council to be somewhat unrewarding under Meany's stewardship. It is well known that in one major Convention Meany yelled at Randolph 'Who the hell appointed you as guardian of all the Negroes in America?' Typically, under Meany's connivance the AFL-CIO did not back the August 1963 civil rights march, though to their credit many constituent unions ignored Meany's attitude and joined the historic march. In his comments to me, Randolph, a gracious man, gave Meany the benefit of the doubt, arguing that it was more in Meany's style to promote civil rights legislation by arguing the case directly with President Kennedy.
I wondered about that theory when I met Cesar Chavez the founder and leader of the United Farm Workers Union. In essence these organisations that Randolph and Chavez had put together were as much civil rights movements as they were collective bargaining organisations.
They might have organised themselves to promote improvements in wages and conditions of work but they had broader objectives - they were concerned to promote civil dignity for blacks and for Mexican immigrant workers.
By the time I met Chavez he had been embraced by the AFL-CIO orthodoxy but he knew where his true friends were - those who came to his assistance when he had employers and state officials against him. He told me of Walter Reuther's personal support at a crucial time in the formation of the union.By contrast Meany held Chavez at arm's length for many years.Meany, a New York plumber, probably sawtheAFL-CIO as a corporate political machine to influence Congress and the White House. Unions were about wages - they were there to improve holidays and reduce hours of work. In order to achieve their primary objectives the unions needed to establish credibility within the political inner circle in Washington. They needed to place themselves in the mainstream of the American political system. Agitation to improve conditions for immigrant Mexicans, or a civil rights battle to open the job market to a black underclass, came uncomfortably close to the left wing politics that Meany so fervently disliked.
In any case, on a civil rights march one could rub shoulders with all kinds of unlikely bedfellows. It was never my view of him but I was leftwith these thoughts aboutGeorge Meany following my talks with Randolph and Chavez.
The death of Walter Reuther in a plane crash took from the American unions one of its most talented and inspirational leaders. I had a friendly relationshipwith his brother Victor who gave me the benefit of his long association with Walter in the turbulent history of the United Autoworkers Union (UAW).
The UAW had a violent history not only in picket line and strike confrontations; both Walter and Victor had attempts made on their lives and in Walter's case the attempt almost succeeded.
Walter Reuther brought his union and its federation, the CIO, into the alliance with the AFL in 1955.He led the UAW out of the AFL-CIO in 1968 on a complex set of issues associated with the AFL's international activities. Polarised views on the Vietnam War also played a part. When the AFL-CIO walked out of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, its withdrawal took with it that part of the ICFTU which operated in South America, the Organizacion Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT). The AFL then established three regional institutes to promote democratic trade unionism in South American, in Africa and in the Far East.
Reuther and his liberal colleagues in the UAW were far from happy with the activities of these three institutes. In particular they were suspicious of the role played by two AFL-CIO International officers Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown. Lovestone had been Secretary General of the US Communist Party from 1927-1929 but underwent a total conversion following his expulsion from the party. From that time heworked to promote theAmerican unions as an international democratic force pitted against communist infiltration. As his close associate, Irving Brown followed Lovestone as International Secretary of AFL-CIO.Reuther and his brother Walter accused the AFL-CIO of allowing CIAmoney to be used to establish the institutes and to promote their activities. The Institutes have always taken a robustly anti-communist line. They seek to strengthen democratic unions and to promote unions that fit into a free enterprise system. In the case of the South American Institute (AIFLD), it is the degree to which it has trimmed its political judgement to fit into some brutal and undemo- cratic regimes that the main criticism of its activity has centred.
Whilst Walter Reuther had initially supported the establishment of AIFLD,he subsequently opposed the organisation when he recognised that private sector corporations would be contributing to its finances and would take leading positions on its Board. Reuther also reacted to the prospect of State Department financial support.
Since their creation in 1945, the three Institutes have been largely dependent upon a regular grant fromthe State Department, but have also received grants from major business corporations. The AIFLD board chairman at its inception was J.P. Grace, the petroleum shipping mogul. I talked to both Lovestone and Brown on a number of occasions and asked if, as trade union officials, they ever saw the source of funding as a difficulty. They always swept such a suggestion aside. They saw the world in black and white.With the whites they were engaged in a war against the forces of darkness. Of course they denied any involvement of the CIA in any of their activities and dismissed as irrelevant the arguments about corporate financing. This activity of theirs, they maintained, promoted democratic unions in all parts of the world.Yes, they said that process was in the interests of the United States government, but wouldn't one expect the American unions to play their full part in internationally extending the good practice enjoyed by American workers? In their view trade unions are an integral part of any democratic society; therefore the encouragement of democratically organised unions is the best means of promoting democracy in authoritarian societies.
I recall, during my time in Washington, an able and likeable officer of the South American Institute AIFLD, Michael Hammer, who flew with a colleague from the Institute to San Salvador. Both Hammer and his colleague Mark Pearlman were tragically shot to death soon after their arrival - in the coffee shop of their hotel. They were in San Salvador to assist landless peasants obtain the titles of land they had been granted under the government's agrarian reform. Michael Hammer was buried in a civil ceremony inWashington, Mark David Pearlman received full military honours at Arlington Cemetery. In fact he may well have qualified for that honour as an ex-military officer, but at the time I thought that in death all pretence had been abandoned.

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