TONY Benn, opposition spokesman for industry and technology, had an interesting proposition for trade unionists when he addressed Glasgow’s May Day rally in 1971.

It was about time, he declared, that the union movement should be granted weekly 15-minute television programmes, free from bullying interrogators.

Such programmes would allow unions to speak directly to their members without having their case edited by self-appointed pundits and producers.

Surely, Benn added, the trade union movement, with a membership of almost 10 million, was entitled to at least 15 minutes of the nearly 200 hours’ output the BBC had each week, and a similar time on other networks.

“If that meant giving the same time to the Confederation of British Industry as well, at least we should be hearing from managers who are also experiencing the complex problems of human relations in industry,” he said.

Read more:

Herald Diary

The Heath government’s campaign against trade unions had been enthusiastically taken up by many newspapers and radio and TV commentators. It was astonishing that workers did not yet have the means to speak to their fellows through the mass media, and instead had to contend with a one-sided picture of the nation’s industrial problems that was regularly presented to them.

The right of direct access by ordinary people to the community as a whole was going to be the key to the future of a democratic society, Benn added.

That year’s rally at Glasgow Green followed one of the largest May Day processions in the city since the war, with an estimated 10,000 people marching through the city.