Tories, barons, bosses & union leaders. Eric Hobsbawm on how to spot the difference
The Tories persist in calling trade union leaders barons or bosses. They were at it again yesterday when their latest piece of anti-union hate was unveiled in the Commons. The reality is that they have very short memories. The Thatcher Governments of the 1980s passed legislation to make sure that trade union leaders are democratically elected by members, in a postal ballot, whether that happened to be the tradition of particular unions or not.
By contrast actual bosses- Chairs and CEOs of companies are not elected but appointed. Large shareholders may sometimes force a change but it wont go out to a shareholders ballot.
Eric Hobsbawm in Images of the Left noted a caricature of a boss. ‘Most bosses were not only conceived as males but were males. It does not follow that all capitalists were fat with top hats and cigars, though these were attributes readily understood as specifying one particular form of wealth and privilege’.
By contrast union leaders Hobsbawm argued were ‘one of the few prominent citizens of Britain whose accent can be immediately localised is that of the trade union leaders’ (the Formation of British Working-Class Culture)
Its quite a simple guide although perhaps still too difficult for many Tory MPs.
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