Unions without muscle

Peter Paterson

The automatic assumption that you have to go back to 1926 and the collapse of the General Strike for comparative pur- poses whenever the trade union movement is in trouble does not apply to the disasters and reverses suffered by the unions in 1982. In fact, it is necessary to refer only to 1981, and then draw the rueful conclusion that the past year has, if anything, been even worse than that.

The unions find themselves in the midst of a recession with no overall strategy, no effective leadership, and no faith that the political alliance with Labour is capable of restoring to them the power and the in- fluence they have lost. If, as everyone now expects, 1983 proves to be an election year, no alternative game plan exists for the possibility of another Conservative victory, aparty from Mr David Basnett's ill-advised and hollow threat of insurrection.

Comments of that kind, redolent of the TUC's big bad wolf days when a promise of union support or a threat of non- cooperation were matters of political impor- tance, are no longer relevant. Like partners in an unhappy marriage, the Labour Party and the trade unions are too distressed to help each other. For Labour to campaign on a platform of restoring union legal im- munities to where they were before Mr Prior and Mr Tebbit whittled them away, and to give them the role in government they tasted and enjoyed so much when Mr Foot was at the Department of Employ- ment, would hardly be popular with the voters. Nor, the giant having been weaken- ed, would it necessarily suit the interests of a future Labour administration.

For one thing, the unions have little to offer the Labour Party. The kind of plann- ed economy envisaged by Mr Shore requires the planning of wages, and that is some- thing the unions not only will not but can- not deliver. They are ready to make plenty of other promises — to participate in an an- nual 'national economic assessment', to help run the firms their members work in by policing planning agreements, and the rest — but they know they cannot promise wage restraint, however desperately Labour wants them to.

Nor, in private, are the unions particular- ly happy about other planks in Labour's platform. They are frightened of a with- drawal from the Common Market because it will cost jobs, and they are wary, for the same reason, of what they see as an over- eagerness to disarm. And as Labour becomes greener around the edges in the hope of mopping up the conservationists, there are union fears that the nuclear power industry's future may be in jeopardy.

Nevertheless, the decision has been taken that Labour will get all the union financial backing that can be raised in the run-up to the election, even if there is an absence of faith behind the cheque books. If that doesn't work and Labour faces a further five years in opposition, there will at last emerge the agonising reappraisal of the for- mal link between party and unions which both union leaders and politicians have talked about for years. For although the money will be forthcoming, there is a sense of guilt about spending it on a cause which is already seen as lost, particularly at a time when falling membership has reduced unions' incomes.

In any case, if the Tories carry out their threat to change the law governing the political levy, making it necessary for trade unionists to opt in rather than out, this may be the last time that union money can have the kind of influence that allows the movement's leaders to consider themselves entitled to be on the board of the corporate state. There are already plenty of Labour politicians who would prefer State funding for political parties to union and company largesse.

None of this, however, represents the real world in which the unions are having to exist: rather, it is an escape from reality into the dreamland which has brought them to their present pass. Power brokers are laughable figures when they no longer have

`In a spirit of goodwill, I didn't mug anyone over Christmas.'

any power; what they have to face up to is that unemployment has severely damaged union organisation and weakened assumed standards of discipline and loyalty, and thus robbed them of political influence.

Not a single large-scale industrial action has succeeded in 1982. Many wage settle- ments have fallen behind the cost of living. Two new national leaders emerged during the year, and both failed to halt the cycle of defeat. Arthur Scargill was humiliated by the rejection on the part of the miners of his call for a national strike over wages and pit closures. And Rodney Bickerstaffe, Alan Fisher's bright successor at the National Union of Public Employees, was one of the leaders of the Health Service 'strike' which collapsed on the rock of governmental stub- bornness after eight months of desultory action which achieved hardly anything.

This was also the year in which the scan- dal of the bloc vote erupted publicly at the annual conference of the Labour Party, forcing the disgrace and resignation of Sidney Weighell of the National Union of Railwaymen. Clive Jenkins and Arthur Scargill were blamed by most of the other union leaders (and Mr Jenkins, as the more senior, is unlikely ever to be forgiven) for Mr Weighell's downfall, and for handing to the Labour Left and the Conservative government a useful stick with which to beat the unions. For the Left is still am- bitious to infiltrate and 'democratise' the unions in the same way as they have the con- stituency parties, while the Government means to press on with yet another instal- ment of labour law reform, under the Teb- bit slogan of 'giving the unions back to the members'. The scandal over the bloc vote helps both causes to prosper.

Looking back over the life of this govern- ment, the greatest failure by the trade union movement has been its inability to resist the step-by-step dismantling of the legal status which once protected it. The rhetoric has been powerful enough — at one time it seemed there was a queue of union leaders begging for martyrdom — but the perfor- mance has been feeble. Mr Prior started out timidly enough, and even Mr Tebbit had his moments of doubt: now he is emboldened to go even further by the discovery of how easy it all is.

The next instalment will deal with ballots, perhaps making it mandatory for a secret vote before strike action. It will be hard for the unions to resist, if only because that is what many of their own members have been demanding. But if, in 1983, they are look- ing for some firm ground on which to make a stand, they may find it in the proposal to require all union leaders and members of their national executive committees to sub- mit themselves for periodic election by secret ballot.

Trade unions, whatever their shortcom- ings, are still voluntary associations — in- deed, by attacking the legal basis of the closed shop the Government is acknowledg- ing this characteristic, and is seeking to perfect it. Some already have the elections Mr Tebbit wants to make general. But like

budgerigar clubs and allotment associations and women's institutes, unions are entitled to govern themselves by their own rules drawn up and approved by their own members. It is not the business of govern- ment to order people to tear up their ex- isting rule books and subject them to a new set written in Whitehall. If the unions can grasp this libertarian point the new year could well prove to be the elusive moment they have talked about for so long to so little effect. Mr Tebbit might then discover that he is no longer flogging a dead cart- horse.