about Phase Three of the wage laws it is the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) whos nature and role is least discussed. Yet it is an organisation of growing importance, and.its role is an essential complement to that not onl of the Government but also of the TUC An organisation ciaiming to represent the whole of British capital is relatively new. The CBI was brought to birth in 1965, partly due t some energetic midwifery by George Brown, and comprised three existing organisations -the Federation of British Industry and the British Employer Confederation (both on the whole representing big capital) and the Nation Association of British Manufacturers (more representative of small capital). It symbolised not only the increasing integration of capital and the government but also the growing dom inance of big capital. Some small manutactur ers resisted the merger and have continued to press for more attention to their problems will in the organisation.
MERGERS Of course they are spitting in the wind. Ever in 1965 small capital was forced to renounce it independent political existence. And the eight years since then have seen the most gigantic merger movement in British history. The following figures show rougbly the value of assets taken over each year in mergers and takeovers:
1955-60 1150m. average 1961-67 1400m. average 1968 11700m.
1969-71 £1000m. average 1972 22500m.
In the extraordinary conglomeration of capital since 1968 about a quarter of all industrial assets have become centralised in mergers or takeovers. By 1970 the 100 largest companies produced over 50 per cent of national output.
The history of the CBI since 1965 reech another important structural change inside British capitalion — the increasing association of industral and financial interests (especially commercial banks and insurance companies). To begin with, the CBI membership came almost exclusively from manufacturing and transport. In 1969 membership was opened Do the financial sector. The liguidity problems of many industries and the increase in the proportion of industrial investment financed by borrowing has brought the interests of nance and industry much cioser together. But the CBI is still not the uncontested voice of all British capital: the small industrialists inside it still protest a little; some financial interests stil contemplate forming a separate organisation; the retailers have their own organ isation, the Retail Consortium; and some indus trial monopolists maintain the Industrial Policy Group, a small group which saves much more full-bloodedly capitalist statements The more 'reasonable" and conciliatory style of the leaders of the CBI (Michael Clapham, the President, and the much-televised Campbell Adamson, the Director General) is a carefully selected tactie designed to let the CBI play the maximum role in the Government's attack on the working class through the fraud of triparti tism. This is the idea that the CBI speake for the capitalists, the TUC for the workers and the Government stands between as a neutral referee sometimes needing to impose emergene rules.
In fact the CBI Is not fully representative not does it have any real power apart from making propaganda; it cannot enforce decisions on its member. The centrai command of the capitalist attack on the working ciass is the Tory Fontment, which wies the CB as a useful The appazent role of the CBE in this charade, however, accords very well with the politles of the TUC. It helpe it to disguise the fully poli tical nature of the present struggle over wages and to rationalise its collaboration in the strategy of the Tory government. It is no won der that tho CBI was as much the creation of a Labour government as lt was a creation of the capitalists themselves.