THE PRICE OF FUNK
Labour's rejection of Murdoch's offer means bloodshed
THE man I blame for Sogat's disastrous ballot decision to turn down Rupert Mur- doch's terms for a settlement is Neil Kinnock. He is also the man who will have most cause to regret its consequences. It was obvious from the start that the NGA compositors would reject any deal, for they are the biggest losers in a general accept- ance of the new technology — they have nowhere to go but the last ditch.
With the Sogat workers, on the other hand, the vote could have gone either way. Considering they had struck themselves out of their jobs, Murdoch's cash offer might have been called generous. What they found it much harder to stomach was the total elimination of their job rights. But enough might have been prepared to wear even this, if the Labour Party and the TUC had given them some kind of pledge to keep the Gray's Inn Road going.
I believe that at one stage Kinnock was keen that Murdoch's offer of the plant for a Labour Party paper should be accepted. After all, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure, absolutely free, what is in essentials an up-to-date printing and publishing operation. But Kinnock allowed himself to be talked out of it. When it came to the point he lacked the guts to take a risk. Of course the editorial and commercial difficulties would have been formidable. But it is precisely to overcome difficulties that men aspire to be Prime Minister. That is what leadership is all about.
If Kinnock funks a challenge like this, why should he think himself fit to govern the country at all, let alone push through the radical transformation in which he professes to believe? This sad little episode tells us all we need to know about the present-day Labour Party: its deep, in- grained pessimism, its negative, destruc- tive approach, its whining underdog lack of enterprise and adventure, above all its sheer helplessness in the face of the tough real world of practical problems. 'I have a go, ladies, don't I?' sings John Osborne's Archie Rice. Labour never has a go. It is the party of no-can-do. Kinnock may come to regret his cowar- dice. Murdoch will not increase his offer. The Gray's Inn Road machinery will be sold and moved out once current contracts lapse. The premises will change hands and very likely be rebuilt for non-printing use. The dispute itself is unwinnable by legal means. There is no way in which News International can be prevented from print- ing and distributing all four of its papers except by force. And even that cannot be exerted except by methods that the public, most of the Labour Party and even many of the union leaders would find unacceptable. The mass picketing at Wapping has clearly failed. It is hard to see any new means by which it can be made to succeed. Despite the NUJ Sun vote, journalists are unlikely to stop the papers.
More pressure, I suppose, can be put on the TGWU drivers and the EETPU techni- cians who work inside the plant. But they and their unions think Murdoch made a fair offer which should have been accepted. Why should they change their minds and sacrifice their jobs for a group they regard as greedy, unreasonable and abusive? More pressure can also be put on the Sogat and other wholesale workers involved in distributing the four papers. But this too will not work except possibly if it is backed up by large-scale violence. Last week's horrifying fire at the paper storage plant, which looks like arson, shows that some people on the Left are prepared to go to any lengths to strike terror into their fellow-workers. But the recent experience of the miners' strike, where the opportuni- ties for violence were more common, and those willing to use it more numerous, suggests that such a tactic does not produce industrial results. On the contrary: it exacts a heavy political penalty.
The Labour Party and the TUC in general, and Kinnock in particular, now face a summer of conferences in which they will be asked to do the impossible: to take steps which will force Rupert Murdoch to give in. Kinnock has already done what little he could. He has allowed the TUC to dictate to him what journalists he should see, at any rate in theory. The gesture has merely covered him in ridicule. Other Labour Party moves — banning the four papers from public libraries, for instance — are unpopular and probably illegal. These efforts seem spiteful and childish to ordinary people and have no effect what- ver on Murdoch's position. More serious from Kinnock's viewpoint is that the Left, on the one hand, will try to force him to give unequivocal support to an industrial cause in which he does not believe, while the Conservatives, the Alliance and the media will put pressure on him — as during the miners' strike — to disavow a level of violence which will now, I fear, rise sharply. At a time when he ought to be consolidating the political gains he made earlier this year, by a measured display of judicious statesmanship as Prime-Minister-in-Waiting, he is back 01 his Arthurian nightmare. As Milton might have put it, new printer is but old Scarg111 writ large. Not that anyone is disposed to rejoice at Kinnock's coming difficulties. Mrs Thatch- er, who sees most of the economic indica- tors set fair for a third election victory 10 two years' time, does not want a long- drawn-out and bitter dispute, increasingly dominated by the fascist Left. Murdoch and his people have no intention of yield- ing to force but they do not relish the endless tension of violent picketing, which must sooner or later end in murder. Mur- doch's competitors are frankly worried by the vote. While it frees Murdoch from the financial burden of a settlement, and 0 increases his competitive advantage over them, it makes their own plans for reduc- ing overmanning more difficult to achieve, even when they have been agreed (as at the Mirror and Express groups) in theory. , My own hope is that the police respond with overwhelming and effective force to any attempt to raise or spread the violence, that the hard-liners find they have overesti- mated their physical strength, and that the dispute then quickly fizzles out. But there are too many on the Left howling for blood for such an outcome to be likely.
Previous page
