Postscript
Style
P. J. Kavanagh
There is not much more dispiriting than watching the TV highlights of a (the day international cricket match (th highlights of a series of artificial nig" bizarre as it were, and the players wearing clothes). But saddest of all is to listen '- Bob Willis, the England captain, talll afterwards. He is always miserable ano, "e" England's captain, usually has reason to be, but somehow he makes it infectious. Tvto• other week, not only did he depress Me ,_ tiehreincga.rpet, he sent me to bed He was talking after England had been routed by New Zealand in the last of t; one-day games. He was also talking ati t d end of a tour during which New Zea'irst furiously Mu. had won the Test match series, for thed time ever — in one match bowling
out for the lowest score this nE century' lit Zealand is a small country and h
as the "gale to be proud of its cricketers hunthhiliraci highly paid professionals of a much the country and, in his review of the tour, the England captain never once tnentioned :N how dlyitd team. me m . Ieithaol italicise s let that ntotSorlovwi iy h bad manners, it was in a bad manner, it lacked Style. Not much is written about Style in human relations, because it is difficult to define, but it is of infinite importance. Call it, for the sake of this argument anyway, a formalised generosity to opponents, however reluctant, that has become a habit of the soul. A few words from Willis and the New Zealanders would have liked England even more (despite every discouragement) than they already seem to. Perhaps he did say something generous elsewhere, but in that television interview there was clearly nothing further from his mind.
I raise this question of Style, and its im- Portance, because our present Government la is beginning to show alarming signs of the ck of it. The British public is patient, Perhaps too patient, but during the Sixties and Seventies it became clear that it was fed LIP with being pushed around by the unions. This was one of the main reasons why Mrs Thatcher was voted into power. The unions themselves now acknowledge this. But it Was not the unions that the public disliked. No one is such a fool as to think he is better off unprotected, left to the whim of employers. What they disliked was the way some Powerful unions were run and some of the men, all the way down the line, who ran them. They, disliked the element of ar- bitrariness and spite in some of the deci- sions taken in their name, the sense of old battles being fought over and over in out- moded terms; they also disliked the sheer flalnvenience these battles caused in their y lives. Bolingbroke says somewhere that it is not the absolute tyrant the people have to fear but 'the little tyrant of the have to the people had seen enough of these little tyrants of their places of work to vote in
an (almost, a replaceable) absolute tyrant to do something about them.
_ So far so good, for a while. But now Mrs Thatcher has been seen to be behaving like one of these little tyrants herself. What has been wrong with her behaviour (we no bUger believe her spokesmen are anythingt rt mouthpieces for herself) over the lacked Style, ;-ueltenham GCHQ business is that it has in the sense defined above, in P.,.,r.eeiselY the way the unions lacked it. here ; 's no point in arguing the rights and wren
of the business. When 'national
on is mentioned a black fog descends ,n us all. Good governments should men- tion it as little as possible, perhaps never. Pliut the union concerned has made every ossible concession, and still she h thy not Otidged. It is a union most in sympaas with her general aims. Now she leaves it ir hew. general angry and incredulous. This is a reagaedY because people did want her to wrcicln readjust a balance that had gone hopelessly
g
un' they did want her to humble the of self-satisfaction. or at least reduce their hypertrophy hself-satisfaction. But they did not want elr st7to humiliate the unions. They did not spite and arbitrariness and absence of wi,.e removed from one uarter to anoth ' 4°1 is higher and evenq more powerful.er
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