Another voice
Mr Prior's Yellow Paper
Auberon Waugh
It was only when 1 read the Department of Employment's Green Paper on possible changes in the law on industrial relations that I understood why the Government has been so actively promoting the false suggestion that Britain is suffering from an 'epidemic' of alcoholism — and why it plans drastic increases in the duty on drink in the next Budget, although most duty increases in this area are now fiscally counterproductive.
As I pointed out on this page at Christmas, Britain has virtually no problem of alcoholism at all. My figures weee supported, oddly enough, by those given in a letter to the Daily Telegraph by Mr Derek Rutherford, Director of the National Council on Alcoholism. He revealed that the United Kingdom suffers 4.1 deaths from cirrhosis of the liver per 100,000 of the population — easily the lowest of the seven European countries he cited — against 51.7 in France, 30.5 in Italy, 29 in West Germany. Even Denmark, where consumption of alcohol is slightly lower and prices much higher, scores 11.6. The point he was making was a different one, that consumption of alcohol is price-related, and I expect he is right. If Mr Jenkin manages to persuade the Treasury to increase duty on drink, I am quite prepared to accept that our present, pitifully low level of drunkenness will be reduced still further by such a measure.
But the real reason for all these hysterical lies about alcoholism put out by the Government is, as I say, quite different, and it could not be demonstrated more clearly than in Mr Prior's consultative document on labour relations. The simple truth of the matter is that the Government is terrified of the British people terrified of us drunk, terrified of us unemployed, terrified of us sober at work, terrified, above all, of the silent contempt with which we mark 'God's scorn for all men governing': 'It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first Our wrath comet after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.'
If Mr Jenkin and Sir Geoffrey Howe suppose they can contain the growing anger and contempt of the British people after 35 years of bad government by making it more difficult for us to drink, I can only assure them to the contrary. If they have any sense they will decide that it may be beer is best. If not, and if the Budget raises drink duty by more than 10 per cent and gives 'rising alcoholism' as the reason, I will personally lead a kamikaze assassination squad of retired Somerset majors, insurance brokers and air vice-marshals to string them up on the lamp-posts of Parliament Square. For we are the people of England, and we have not spoken yet.
But never — at any rate since Mr Wilson withdrew In Place of Strife 11 years ago — has a government's terror of its people, or its cowardice in face of that terror, been advertised more openly than in Mr Prior's Green Paper. Introducing it, he made what The Times described as an 'unexpected plea' for closer relationships between the Cabinet and organised labour and employers' associations.
There was nothing unexpected — at any rate to most people — in the spectacle of Mr Prior seeking a 'closer relationship' with the unions, even to the point of formulating a new social contract and letting them dictate large parts of economic policy, as Labour did so disastrously in 1974-79. But even I found it unexpected, I must admit, that his reaction to some fairly mild criticism from Sir Terence Beckett, of the CBI, should immediately be to share power with the CBI, too.
The purpose of this document, which makes no recommendations for future government actionyhatever, is to promote 'vigorous and wide-ranging debate'. Well, here goes. The first major error comes in the second sentence, which talks of 'the crucial need to make progress in building a better climate for improvements in industrial relations.' The crucial need is not for an improvement in industrial relations, let alone for progress in building a better climate for that end. Even if the phrase 'improvements in industrial relations' is taken as Departmentese for 'fewer strikes', they are still not the crucial need. In fact the Government has already achieved this end. There were fewer strikes in 1980 than in any year since the war. The crucial need is to stop the unions destroying the nation's economy. This need might be met by an improvement in industrial relations, or by a better climate for such an improvement, or by progress towards building such a better climate, but there is no reason to assume that this is the case, and all the evidence points in the opposite direction.
The unions, over a long period of time when anyone with eyes could see what they were doing, have already succeeded in destroying Britain's three major heavy industries: steel, cars and shipbuilding. They have all but destroyed the textile industry and are fast :et on destroying my own newspaper industry. The crucial need, as I say, is not to build climates but to stop them. This obsession with climates and goodwill has led to innumerable concessions in Tory legislation — like sections 16, 17 and 18 of Mr Prior's Employment Act 1980 which permits secondary picketing of supplies going to and from an employer in dispute and secondary picketing of business transferred from one employer in dispute to another employer. Why? What possible advantage is gained by making this concession? The unions will oppose anything which reduces their privileges; they will not, in gratitude for being left a few immunities, suddenly decide to cooperate in the modernisation of British industry at realistic manning levels. Nor is the way to stop secondary picketing to remove civil immunities. Civil law is useless to deal with problems of discipline. Secondary picketing, and intimidation in primary picketing, must both, be dealt with by the provisions of common law against Unlawful assembly, rout, riot and affray, for all of which the maximum penalties are life imprisonment and/or unlimited fine.
But Mr Prior is even terrified of the police. His Yellow Paper talks of 'what has hitherto beeen regarded as an important principle in relation to the conduct of picketing, namely the neutrality of the police.' Important fiddlesticks. The police must be told to get off their fat blue bottoms, practise their truncheon drill and enforce the law. In their terror of the lower classes, Mr Prior and his colleagues seriously misjudge the national character. The English are naturally a law-abiding, not to say deferential and timid people. It is only when you suck up to them that they become suspicious, when they are spoiled they become morose and moody.
The only certain way to beat the unions is to encourage as many people as possible to leave them. This means encouraging selfemployment — soon the only employable people in the country will be self-employed — and above all outlawing the closed shop. Closed shops are what give unions their power, but the Yellow Paper, while acknowledging their disastrous influence, is clearly terrified of tackling them. They are a 'major feature' of the present disastrous system, it explains, as if that were reason enough to retain them.
The concept of a Right to Strike is meaningless, since British law gives everyone the right to do anything and everything which is not expressly forbidden by law. But, the phrase might be useful, I suppose, as window-dressing for a new Act defining arid restricting immunities as well as defining what, precisely, is meant by a strike. But the most important thing of all is to get moving. The unions have never been weaker, time has seldom been so short. Instead, we are asked to debate Mr Prior's ignoble Yellow Paper until 30 June when the Government may be tempted to take note of what we have said. What Mrs Thatcher ought to do is sack Mr Prior immediately, appoint me Secretary of State for Employment (with a hereditary earldom as displacement fee) and then let's go.
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