ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses extensive, highly regarded sponsorship of MPs should illuminate the cloudy relationship which exists between the Party and the sponsoring unions. The fundamental goal of the union movement, collective bargaining, was now achievable—at least in immediate terms—without significant resort to political action. Some theoretical considerations are useful to judge whether trade union political commitments could, or were planned to, produce in post-war Britain either ideological or practical advance. Such access and acceptance, even while Lee and other sponsored MPs bemoaned it, was, of course, a demonstration of the new status accorded to trade unions in the highest levels of Government. However, for the man—no women were sponsored as of 1966—who entered Commons through his national union’s programme, it was often a shock to be confronted by this bewildering indifference from his sponsors. Some of the AEU-MPs did bring their knowledge to bear in the House of Commons on general trade union and engineering problems.
