Who watches Woodcock?
THE PRESS . DONALD McLACHLAN
I must not, I know, talk politics in this column; but before I offer my humble advice to the newspapers, may I ask them and the politicians one question? Why do men like Mr Silverman and Mr Michael Foot, and those who report their quarrel with the Prime Minister, lump all our freedoms together under the word 'democracy'? History shows that democracy, however fierce it may be in its defiance of autocracy, is no great friend of personal freedom; indeed, it is often intolerant and nearly always impatient. Will our Mem- bers of Parliament and leader-writers please say 'freedom of speech' when they mean that, 'responsibility to constituents' when they mean that, and 'legal and constitutional rights' when they mean that? Half Europe lives under peoples' democracies, and we know how free they are. When we use the word 'democracy,' let us write the world 'parliamentary' in front of it, however slovenly we remain in our speech.
That leads me on to the trade unions—where democracy flourishes in strange forms—and the men who have to write about them. I must say that my heart leapt up when I beheld in the Sunday Times the headline, 'Why Barbara Castle kissed the signalman.' Erotic possibilities apart, this was just what I wanted to know: how did the Minister in fact settle the freight- liner-train question after three years' stalling by the Nun? Was it female guile that gave Transport success where Labour had failed? It turned out, as I read the excellent 'inside' report by Messrs McCrystal and Southan that victory had been prepared for Mrs Castle by the man from Esso, Mr Leonard Neale, who is now industrial relations adviser to the British Railways Board. But I learned, too, that in twenty-eight and a half hours of argument the Minister 'was rough; but then suddenly when she was sounding too rough, she would become very feminine.' According to another witness—and I find this most illuminating— 'she only called us comrades once. The rest of the time she called us gentlemen. It made us very suspicious.'
We all have our doubts about 'inside re- porting' which begins, as this piece does, with the pouring out of Scotch and gin 'between 8.45 and 10 on Thursday night,' but this was the genuine article. And the point I am trying to make (the fashionable commentators' cliché) is that industrial relations, indeed the whole trade union world, need much more detailed coverage of the kind given to politics, crime, sport and show-biz. The Labour correspon- dents, industrial reporters—call them what you will—may know what is going on behind the scenes in these seminal days at the TUC or in the great union federations or in such flourish- ing pockets of power as DATA and Assn-, but they tell us very little about it. (The Sunday Times piece was written by the chief reporter and a colleague who covers crime and race relations.) Those industrial or labour correspondents I have consulted on this point declare that edi- tors do not want background reporting about unions and their affairs: the leaders are re- garded as dull dogs—forgive me, I mean dull fellows—and the public is said to be interested only in hard news about strikes, when they happen, and about disputes, when they begin and end. That attitude, I fancy, is a relic of the days of newsprint shortage; it is certainly not tenable at a time when the TUC is assum- ing vast new responsibilities of the kind I associate with the corporate state, and when a new bureaucracy is about to be formed to serve the House of Bosses. There is little doubt in my mind that the real problems of personal freedom and economic planning are to be found there and not in Whitehall.
But editors' attitudes are, I fancy, only half the explanation; the plain fact is that the specialist reporters covering this world are overworked and that they cannot write all they would wish to write about the men and offices who give them their news. It is signifi- cant that the Financial Times, which has the fullest coverage of the union world and its industrial counterpart, employs seven men and makes a clear distinction between the report- ing of labour affairs and the coverage of in- dustry (as distinct from finance). The quality dailies, both national and provincial, which aim at a coverage at least half as good, have generally fewer than half the men to do it.
One man may have to cover in his day's calls the TUC, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, individual unions and federations which are in the news, particular strike situations full of tricky charges and counter-charges, a rushing stream of hand- outs; he or his assistant may also have to cover the increasingly important Confedera- tion of British Industry (which is not, inciden- tally, all that happy at being covered by the industrial correspondents' fraternity), the Prices and Incomes Board, developments in employers' policy, whether in Whitehall-directed groups like Neddies or independent ones, and other stories that may take the news editor's fancy. I believe the strain is unreasonable and that their effort needs reorganising if we are to be anything like adequately informed about the world of George Woodcock.
Take the events of the last fortnight. Does any newspaper reader know how the General Secretary pulled off his coup d'etat against the Government on the one hand and against the individual unions on the other? Who was for and who was against this sudden accretion of power to a body which not so long ago used to make a virtue of its im- potence? Who are the backroom boys who really run the innumerable commit- tees which occupy union leaders, and what part will they play in vetting wages and salaries? If anyone tells me that these ques- tions are not now, or never will be, interesting to ordinary readers, I can only point to the development of so-called City journalism. Not so long ago, City editors would declare that they must stick to figures and facts: per- sonalities were dangerous. Now we are told the opposite: that writing about personalities brings in advertising and that biz-biz is respectable even, and most especially in Times Newspapers Ltd.
Unfortunately one cannot expect any such rapid revolution in coverage of the u.nion world because it cannot, so far as I can see, bring in more advertising. It might, on the other hand, be one of the circulation draws
of the future. Let me conclude with a sug- gestion to Lord Donovan's Royal Commission on industrial relations: that they should in- vite a few industrial and labour correspondents (and news editors) to tell them how informa- tion to the public is obtained and selected; and there would be no harm in asking one or two editors whether any of their leader- writers have made a special study of the sub- ject. If there is such a person, I nominate him at once as leader-writer of the year.
Previous page
