Another voice
The decision not to work
Auberon Waugh
When one has spotted a great historical movement and pinned it down like a butterflY in a glass case for all to admire, one tends to be upset and disappointed when some event occurs which seems to deny its validity or even to reverse the historical tendency it has so acutely isolated. I would be being less than honest if I did not admit to feeling a little hurt last week when initial reports from the Longbridge factories of British Leyland seemed to indicate that the workers there, had Come to Their Senses and were prePared to co-operate in various arrangements Which would have made their employment more productive and even, eventually, economically viable.
Apart from the natural pique of a commentator who has been proved wrong, I felt that the British workers concerned were humiliating themselves in an unworthy cause. Making cars is well known to be one of the most unpleasant occupations imaginable. The noise and the repetitive nature of the work would probably be enough to brutalise the minds of those engaged in it even without the knowledge of its anti-social aspect. Anybody can see that too many cars have already been made; every new car on our crowded British roads will diminish the satisfaction of existing car-owners, however much pleasure it might bring to a new driver. Ever since derrrocracy extended the list of `carriage folk' to include every resident of the British Isles, nature itself (let alone our balance of payments, crippled by oil Purchases) has been crying out for something to redress the balance. With that instinctive deference to the natural order Which is the true mark of a gentleman, or so It seemed to me, the British workman had recoiled from participating in any such process.
Then we saw the hideous, sub-human face of Mr Derek Whittaker, managing director of Leyland Cars, talking of a `total commitment' on the part of 13,000 Longbridge workers to a new productivity deal which would enable £120 million to be invested in their future employment. All my life I have been surrounded by women—and even men —of comfortable middle-class background Who have talked in sorry, sentimental voices about jobs for the lower orders, as if jobs were things which had to be created with great ingenuity and unselfishness and at whatever inconvenience to the community. It does not occur to these people that a pair of hands will naturally employ itself to its own advantage, and their main worry should be to discourage anti-social or criminal uses of this faculty. But the argument about jobs is always used to justify some further outrage against nature or communal repose: the countryside must be razed, vast new roads driven through everyone's houses, hideous buildings erected in order to create jobs.
I have never supposed that the uncultivated minds of the industrial working class, further brutalised by processes of mass production which appear inevitable whether under socialism or capitalism, could give a fig for the countryside or for beautiful buildings, or even many figs for cleanliness of the environment, fresh air or respite from noise. Proof of this sad fact can be seen—or rather smelled—in Bridgwater, an otherwise agreeable country town in Somerset situated about eleven miles from where lam writing. There the requirements of some industrial process used by British Cellophane make the whole town smell permanently and very strongly of dead rats. This smell has been there for as long as most people can remember, but the workers do not seem to mind and the surviving middle class of Bridgwater has resolutely set its face against trying to improve the matter— because of the jobs, you see. But if the tendency I have spotted is correct, all this is about to be swept away. My observation, which I have pinned trembling on the board like the rare and beautiful butterfly it is, is that the British working class has made the great and historic decision that it really doesn't like working at all, and is quite prepared to face the consequences of not working—or at any rate, of not working very much. Up to now, the history of British Leyland has confirmed this theory. Indeed our noble car-workers, along with ship-builders and one or two others, are Exhibit `A' in my argument.
Then, quite suddenly, it seemed that everything was to change. Thirteen thousand stout men and true of Longbridge, in the Midlands, were about to spit on their hands, roll up their sleeves, practise the Boy Scout salute and start working productively for their own and the common good. Must I recant ? Must I release my pretty butterfly, with many apologies for having detained It? Mercifully, my agony did not last more than twelve hours. Not all the men have made any such promise. Nearly 3,000 of them—including a high proportion of skilled workers—have refused to give any undertakings on productivity, or to be bound by any undertakings agreed by majority decision. Since, in the latest, most efficient interdependent systems of industrial production, it seldom requires more than 200 on strike to break the chain and put everybody else out of work, one can only describe this demonstration by 3,000 men— nearly a quarter of the total workforce—as a splendid response, at any rate in terms of obedience to Waugh's Observation. I have
never claimed that the entire working class has decided to abstain from servile or productive labour, only a sufficiently large proportion of it to make the decision effective for the entire working class.
All we have seen at Longbridge is a brilliant public relations exercise by the fiend Whittaker, eagerly swallowed by every industrial correspondent of the British press, to window-dress the next £120 million of good taxpayers' money thrown into Leyland Cars. Nothing has changed. Disruption and lay-offs will continue as before, although my bet is they will become more frequent as the Waughites in the workforce scent victory. The only thing that has really hap pened in the whole pantomime is that once again a handful of middle-class sentimentalists have stepped in and postponed, for just a little longer, the moment when the British working class begins to appreciate the consequences of its historic decision not to work.
In point of fact, there was never any danger of Waugh's Observation being repudiated. Things have gone altogether too far for any dramatic development of that sort. The butterfly is dead, preserved in its beauty for all time, and anybody seen trying to give it the kiss of life can be written off as a fool or an exhibitionist. The consequences of this historic decision are all that remains to be studied.
In a thoughtful address to the British Association which went largely unreported a few weeks ago, Mr Jeremy Bray took the first, faltering steps along this path of inquiry. Bray is Labour MP for Motherwell, a man whom, I am ashamed to say, I never met or took an interest in during my five years as political correspondent for this and other publications. He argued as his contri bution to a symposium entitled `British Technology—Off Target ?' that the people of Britain were plainly, from their behaviour, seeking a post-industrial society at the same time as their leaders were still hankering after an efficient industrial society. He thought we should abandon the doomed objective of efficiency and think again. There are deeper needs within the human soul than anything contained in the Good Life of Television advertisements and Sunday colour supplements.
Yes, but what are they ? During Edward Heath's immensely popular three-day week, when the nation achieved orgies of produc tion it can never hope to match now, the working class, as a whole, sat around wait ing for the pubs to open. I think it an excellent idea that people should have more time to cultivate their reflective side, take an interest in the world around them, even catch up on their reading. Two excellent novels appeared last week, one by Kingsley Amis, the other by Nina Bawden. Is it too much to hope that later offerings from these two gifted novelists will be as eaftrly awaited in Longbridge as they are in Combe Florey ? Perhaps it is, but time alone will tell.
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