Politics
The Big Bang theory
One of the unwritten rules of our mysterious Lobby system is that 'spokesmen' and 'authoritative sources' must always speak through it in a specially gritty let's-face-it tone of voice. Thus in the Observer last Sunday: ' "Some people in the Labour movement are saying we have got to get this over," said an authoritative Labour Party source last night. "It's the Red Adair approach. They say we've got to go for the Big Bang." '
How did Red Adair get in on this? He is paid to stop Big Bangs, surely. Perhaps he is thought to be some past fighter for left-wing causes, like the Red Dean. Even if we leave Mr Adair out of it, translators of Lobby-ese still have to construe the 'Big Bang'. Mr Ron Todd, heir apparent to the Transport and General Workers Union, and one of the 'they' who, according to the authoritative source, say that the Big Bang is what Labour has got to go for, has done his best to explain: 'If by the Big Bang, people mean that we have come to a situation where many people believe that it is going to require major disruption by the trade union movement to bring this Gov- ernment to its senses there might be some logic in that'. So even Mr Todd doesn't seem absolutely sure. As with the original Big Bang theory about how the universe began, the subject is surrounded with obscurity and muddied by disagreement.
Those who would make the Bang big are confronted with several problems. There is the difficulty that the Bang might bring the penalties of the law — most pro-Bang men are ready for this, but even they realise that the results are expensive and unpre- dictable. There is the fact that many union members will refuse to contribute to any Banging that goes on, so the explosion will not actually be very deafening. And there is the drawback that many trade union leaders and Labour politicians are anti- Bangers and will remain so. Or, as they might put it to the Lobby: 'It's the Reggie Maudling approach. We've got to go for the Big Sleep.'
For Mr Kinnock the question is. in moral and political, though not party, terms, one of the easier ones that he has to face. No Leader of the Opposition, even if he also leads the modern Labour party, can public- ly condone the breaking of the law. If he did, he would forfeit all possibility of becoming Prime Minister, Besides, there is no reason to believe that Mr Kinnock would like to condone it, even if he could. The programme for the RSC's recently ended Barbican production of Julius Caesar gives us an inkling of his beliefs on such matters. Billed as 'Labour spokesman for Education', Mr Kinnock gives his answer to the question: 'Were the conspir-
ators right to have assassinated Julius Caesar for the public good, in order to prevent the creation of what seemed to them virtual dictatorship?' He says:
Brutus had the answer — '0 that a man might know the end of this day's business ere it come' . . . If ends ever justify means, the murder of an otherwise unstoppable tyrant by despairing democrats or desperate pat- riots is surely the most righteous of actions. A coup d'etat by an envious gang of scheming generals and hypocritical aristos doesn't fall into any such category of heroic decency. Even in a barbaric age, Julius Caesar was no Hitler. None of his conspirators whether wingeing or wittering or wilful was a Von Staffenberg [sic[. They killed with the dag- ger, lived by the sword and told Cassius' Big Lie — 'Liberty, freedom and enfranchise- ment'. Not justifiable homicide. More out of the sartago and into the ignis. And how.
Of course the trade union movement is not, in Mr Kinnock's eyes, an envious gang of scheming generals etc, but nor is Mrs Thatcher Hitler. (Mr Scargill, we know, thinks otherwise.) Through the character- istic Welsh wordplay and would-be jaunty tone, and the rush to Lewis and Short to look up the Latin for 'frying pan', emerges a clear, if not absolute prejudice against taking the law into one's own hands.
This does not mean that Mr Kinnock will find it easy to reject Big Bangery outright, only that it will be easier than supporting it. As so often since the beginning of the miners' strike, his choice is between a dangerous frankness, which publicly criti- cises Mr Scargill and his followers, and an unedifying evasiveness which tries to dis- tract attention from the main issues. At the Labour Conference, Mr Kinnock can either say baldly that the law must be obeyed — and throw in, for good measure, a call for a ballot on the strike — or he can try to be so windily eloquent in his assault on the trade union laws that the Left will not notice that he is recommending no action at all. Naturally Mr Kinnock will prefer the second course, and naturally his equivocations will be detected. A confer- ence vote for a Big Bang (as opposed to a few days of action) would ruin him, one against would not do him much good.
The point is that trade union reaction to the miners' strike is essentially Labour's difficulty. It could therefore be Mrs Thatcher's opportunity. If the Big Bang turns out to be a small pop, then the unions are humiliated. If it really is quite large, Mrs Thatcher will have a good excuse for calling on the laws of which she is still so shy. Any anxiety that writs against the miners will somehow evoke public sympathy need not apply to writs against train drivers who refuse to transport com- muters. If it comes to Banging, Mrs Thatcher can out Bang her opponents.
In the meantime, perhaps we can address the question raised by Mr Enoch Powell in his ill-reported Parliamentary speech on the miners' strike last week — is the 'absurdity' of the miners' strike the result of a failure of leadership by the Government? Mr Powell thinks that all miners —Yorkshire as much as Nottingham- shire — have a perfectly reasonable under- standing of the realities of their industry. They are not fanatical followers of Mr Scargill, indeed, he is rather unlike them, but he is their 'useful projectile' to throw against Government and Coal Board. It is because management and, in the later stages and the last resort, the Government have failed to retain their confidence that they think they might as well help destroy their industry by striking.
It is hard to agree with Mr Powell that all miners are reasonable. I should have thought that most miners, like most people in most jobs, are only reasonable when they have to be, and one of the troubles about workers in a nationalised industries is that they very seldom have to be. Coal, in particular, is so wrapt in the late scholasticism of labour relations and ener- gy theory that it has become almost im- possible to retain clarity. But it must be true that most miners wish their industry well and wish to cooperate in its success. In which case it follows that a Coal Board and a Government which have apparently con- vinced two thirds of them that they are seeking its failure have fallen down on their job. The way that the Government has chosen to work with the Coal Board is one i of the oddest things in modern politics. It s agreed that the two must be of one mind, never at odds. But it is also agreed that neither will give a lead to the other nor work out with the other what to do. It is as if two people on a tandem kept pedalling forward, knowing that neither could man- age without the other, but never discussing where they were going, never warning each other of large hazards looming ahead, just doggedly pedalling. A further complication is added by the distance between Mr Peter Walker, the Energy Secretary, and Mrs Thatcher. Mrs Thatcher, as one would expect, deals with the Coal Board through him. He tells her that the NCB does not wish to take the union to court and she Is not sure whether to believe him. Senior Coal Board officials say that Mr Walker has forced them not to use the law. The is endless dispute about the level of coal stocks, Number Ten touting figures that show that we are all right until Christmas 1985, some Coal Board men saying that the chances are against pulling through the coming winter. If there is to be a Big Bang this autumn, it will not be from enemY raids but from the fools who have been chucking lighted matches round their own ammunition shed.
Charles Moore
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