Chapter 34 Austin Plant - Plant Family History Group

CYRIL THOMAS HOWE PLANT, BARON PLANT (1910-1986)
Taken from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Cyril Thomas Howe Plant, trade union official, was born on 27 August 1910 in Leek,
Staffordshire, the only son and elder child of Sidney Plant, manager of a Co-operative
Society Shop, and his wife, Rosina Edna Thomas, who previously ran a grocer’s shop.
He was educated at Leek high school, where he was head boy and captain of the
cricket team. In 1927 he began work as a sorting clerk in the post office in Leek,
where his interest in trade unions began. In these early years he was a keen local
amateur association football player, and later became a referee, developing an interest
in football that he retained throughout his life.
In 1934 Plant was successful in the limited competition for entry to the civil service
clerical class. He joined the Inland Revenue in the collection service as an assistant
collector. He quickly became a delegate to the conference of the newly formed Inland
Revenue Staff Federation. He was elected to the executive committee of the
federation and in 1937 became honorary secretary of the collection section. At this
time the federation was still an unsettled alliance of former collection, inspectorate,
and valuation divisions. Plant developed, and later finely tuned his skills as mediator
and conciliator, helping to bind the union together. Later his skills as a ‘fixer’ were to
be of great service to the international trade union movement. He was appointed in
1944 to a full-time federation post as assistant secretary and then deputy general
secretary. In 1960 he succeeded Douglas Houghton as its general secretary. There
were by then relatively few opportunities for the federation , through Plant, to obtain
improvements significantly in advance of the rest of the civil service and he directed
much of his energies and abilities into broader areas of trade union and related
activities.
Plant was a member of the Trade Union Congress general council from 1964 to 1976
and served on its economic and international committees. His expertise on fiscal and
economic subjects gave him far greater authority and respect than usual for someone
from such a small union, and this was buttressed by his willingness to offer his
colleagues good advice on income tax matters and frequent tips, some good and some
less good, on horse-racing, which was a passionate interest of his. He was chairman
of the TUC in 1975-6. He also fulfilled many TUC duties, including membership of
public bodies such as the Community Relations Commission (1974-7), the
Monopolies and Mergers Commission (1975-8), and the departmental committee of
inquiry into police pay chaired by Lord Edmund Davies (1977-8). After retirement in
1977 he became parliamentary adviser to the Police Federation and assiduously
defended its interests in the House of Lords. A police band played at his funeral.
Plant was active at International Labour Office (ILO) conferences from 1965
onwards, and the ILO gave him a major platform to press for the development of trade
union rights and improvements in working conditions, particularly of public service
employees, throughout the world. He was a member of the governing body of the
ILO from 1969-1977. He played a powerful role in the programme, financial, and
administrative committee, a body which exerted great authority over finance and
allocation of resources during the difficult period when the USA withdrew
membership and subscriptions. In the international context Plant displayed the many
virtues of British trade union leaders in international settings. He grasped the
importance of obtaining agreement and consensus from delegates, and his mastery of
the complexities of procedural provisions allowed him to produce solutions that were
acceptable to all. He spoke with eloquence, wit, and authority, earning respect from
employers and government delegates alike.
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