Political commentary

For their own good

Colin Welch

Amuch as any Victorian mill-owner the ogre Tebbit would seem to need good stout gates. His recent concern about them appeared most natural.

Father, father! The men! They're head- ing for the drive!

Compose yourself, Abigail. Sugden, secure the gates at once.

In fact, so I hear, this capitalist hyena and face-grinder is well enough liked by the union bosses. They call him 'union-basher' for the record. They accuse him of `provocation', using the word much as the Junta does. They will boycott his 'consulta- tions'. But all the same they find him con- genial. He speaks their language, understands their jokes, knows what they're on about, more than any slumming paternalist patrician like James Prior could; and so he should, a former officer of the airline pilots' association. They also admit in private that he has a case, and that what he proposes is not as bad as they had feared. (Michael Leapman in the Daily Ex- press recently devised comic retribution for King Hassan of Morocco's rudeness to the Queen: the King was to be placed at a ban- quet between Princess Anne and Norman Tebbit. Ha-ha: but I would think them unlucky rather than him.) As for union members, Mr Tebbit comes upon them more as Campbells to Lucknow than as wolf on fold. He bears gifts, not so much liberation, to be sure, as the right to choose their jailers, to, withhold what is in effect docked from their pay and to have a say in their own destiny. He offers to give the unions back to their own members. He hopes to win trade unionists' votes as well as everyone else's. Tories calculate that at least one third or two fifths of our ten million union members vote Tory anyway. Paul Routledge of the Times describes this as opting 'deferentially' — an annoying word, suggesting vacuous subservience, when in fact it is predominantly the more intelligent and enterprising workers, not the stupidest, who opt thus.

Mr Tebbit's proposals are tentative, designed to provoke discussion. And so they have. In particular, the plan to substitute 'contracting in' for 'contracting out' of the political levy is denounced by Mr Basnett as 'a blatant attempt to cut off the Labour Party's sources of finance while keeping those of the Conservative Party in- tact'. The Economist has predicted that

"contracting in" would cut annual receipts from the political levy by at least 50 per cent and bankrupt the Labour Party. For a Tory government to legislate along these lines would look like an effort to gain political advantage (and would be).' It would also look like 'legislation from a party which benefits because no individual shareholder may withhold his sliver of a company's contribution to the Conservative Party.'

Points taken; yet it is easier to sell shares than to 'contract out'. And of course the greater the difference between what is col- lected under 'contracting out' and what would be collected under 'contracting in', the greater and more scandalous the abuse to be corrected. The percentage of unionists paying the levy would probably drop under `contracting in' from 82 to about 20. In Co. Durham, furthermore, 99.9 per cent of the shot-firers at present pay the levy, but only 37.2 of the miners. Such a discrepancy can hardly be explained by varing degrees of socialist fervour. Rather does it indicate, like the vast fall of revenue expected under `contracting in', the power of ignorance, in- ertia, 'administrative difficulties' and coer- cion, refined or blatant, to extract money from those with no wish to be rid of it. Before we abandon hopes of 'contracting in', we should recall that it worked well enough from 1927 till 1946. Nor really can Labour openly declare itself so repulsive as to be unable to raise funds except by force or sleight of hand, whatever it may in its heart ruefully concede.

Mr Tebbit further suggests secret ballots before strikes. Well, the water workers held one, which decided four-to-one for all-out action. It is also more difficult to stop what ballots have started. Does one have to go through the whole long, tedious and expen- sive process again, in reverse?

Mr Tebbit also suggests that union of- ficials should be elected and re-elected by secret ballot, and once recommended that presidents and general secretaries, rather than operating 'for life' or until retirement, should face re-election every five years though this he seems inexplicably to have 'This is going to put the tnagic back into our marriage.' dropped. After some such reforms Mr Teb- bit would hope to see leaders more 'truly representative of their membership', who would co-operate with employers to ensure greater profitability, better pay and more secure employment, and perhaps even create his 'ideal sort of trade union'. I do not doubt that properly elected officials would be better than the present barons and MPs for Old Sarum. Yet I think they might nonetheless disappoint Mr Tebbit. Why?

Still the unions would be operating for the most part in a sort of legal limbo, in an Alsatia where normal law does not operate, in which contracts are not binding, in which union leaders and members are not respon- sible for wrongs and damages done in the course of a dispute and in which union members, especially minorities of members, have no settled rights beyond what the _ ballot box would intermittently confer.

In such a situation, in which cause and effect, injury and redress, are arbitrarily sundered, it may still be perfectly rational to elect wild, grasping, fanatical and ir- responsible leaders, and at least excusable to elect foolish or incapable ones. In neither case is the penalty obvious, swift and salutary. What does it matter who represents you if nothing he says is binding and nothing he does is actionable?

The remedy is not to make laws which apply only here or there, but to bring the unions thoroughly back into the general law which governs everything and everyone else. Make them responsible for their ac- tions, and they will have to find responsible leaders or pay the penalty. They would choose leaders as carefully as we choose a doctor or lawyer. Successive governments have shrunk from this remedy; it eludes us still. It is difficult to do; we may never see it; but it is not unjust and above all it is not right-wing. Both the Webbs and Harold Laski were in favour of a regular legal status for the unions, with balanced rights and obligations. They thought it would- benefit them enormously.

It is true, as a Spectator leading article put it last week, that 'the law never invented trade unions' and probably cannot `destroy' them. But the law does not regulate only what it has invented. It did not invent murder, or companies. Nor is a proper purpose of the law to 'destroy' the unions: far from it.

And indeed, if we are tolerable to each other in our daily life, the law has done much to make us so. If the unions have become intolerable and odious, their im- munity from the law is largely to blame. If their leaders were wise and wished to be respected and loved, they would beg Mr Tebbit to open the gates and bring them back within the law. But licence has doubtless corrupted their judgment and character: it alwas does. So we have sooner or later to impose upon them, for their own good, the blessing they hate and fear. Outlawry is not commonly regarded as a privilege.