A showdown on wages?
Sir: Your engaging Mr Davenport—ever youthful, if no longer yoting—charges me simultaneously with cynicism and com- placency. Cynicism because in the Times I dismissed a runaway inflation as 'a nursery bogey'; and complacency because, in his words, I 'pretend that it will all come right if the Government applies fiscal and Fried- manite measures firmly enough to create a mild recession' (22 August).
But on the first point he grants me my case, stating that 'a runaway wage inflation it a social revolution'. That's what I said and that's why it won't be allowed to happen in this, the most conservative and class-bound of countries. Hence it is 'a nursery bogey'.
On the second point he bites his own tail. His alternative to relying 'complacently' on a recession is far less draconian. 'One can only hope' he suggests, 'that when the showdown comes both sides will use their common- sense.' Yet he himself ridicules Mr Robert Carr for the same naivety, observing that every time you tell the unions they have been taking more out of the till than they have earned they will merely smile and feel that they have been smart'. He thus pours contempt on his own 'only hope'. Is he trying to be alarmist and naive at once? For years the author of The Split Society has been trying to show that an ever-expanding `mixed' (i.e. capitalist) economy can be com- bined with stable prices and social unity. We now have none of those three things. A mild recession might open the way to the fiat two. I doubt whether even a revolution would yield the last. If the best that Mr Davenport can offer from his aeons of experience and study is 'commonsense on both sides', I shall not fear the stones which he throws at me from within his own glass-house.
Peter Jay PS: I have not, alas, been to Oh! Calcutta!
Economics Editor, The Times, Printing House Square, London ec4
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