Disillusion on the backbenches
Hugh Macpherson
Perhaps the strangest comments to be heard in the Commons this week were the rather plaintive requests from the government backbenches that the Government should do nothing for a change. This is a curious sentiment in a trade where action is the keyword, be it to curb the unions, set the people free, gallop through a hundred dynamic days or even dig for victory. But government backbenchers have grown tired of recent pronouncements which have steadily reversed the policies on which they were elected, and even on Monday before successfully resisting an Opposition censure motion on the Government's handling of industrial relations they sat grimly through a neat little statement from Mr Chataway giving £14.2 million to International Computers Ltd for research and development. There was hilarity on the Opposition benches at the prospect of any of the money coming back in the form of royalties or profit levies, and since the Industry Minister's statement was short enough to be giving money away at the rate of E10,000 a word backbenchers will no doubt hope that further statements still to come on future help to the company will be commendably brief.
For the last few weeks government backbenchers have grown more disillusioned at what they regard as a loss of nerve on the Government's part and now, in particular, the palm leaf offered to unions of amending the Industrial Relations Act is viewed with distaste among a considerable section of the backbenches. This Act was one of the cornerstones of the election campaign and many government supporters think it still commands enough popular support to allow the Government to stand firm on it. What many find incomprehensible is the decision to adopt an abrasive posture, for example, in curbing the cushioning effects of state assistance to strikers, and then standing back from the challenge.
If it all seems unreal to the government backbenches then they may draw a measure of comfort from the fact that the spectre of reality is not one that troubles the Opposition benches, as evidenced by their Green Paper this week. Mr Wilson and his merry men are cheerily offering the nation full employment, massive public spending, new homes for the old and mentally sick, a complete reversal of their last disastrous attempt to maintain unrealistic exchange rates, the soaking of the rich, bigger subsidies to the nationalised industries to keep the workers happy and many other bountiful acts.
The innocent citizen might well imagine that the only problem he will face in future is fighting his way through all the sticky milk and honey which will clearly flow in the streets until he asks about the • trade unions and wages. Here apparently the answer is to control prices and let wages take care of themselves. A future Labour government would have some kind of scheme which involved the publication of a fair price list. Local authority organisations would then take court action against those who overcharged and presumably — people being what they are — the odd little right-wing shopkeeper who would go to jail rather than pay the fine.
The truth of the matter is that most Labour leaders recognise the need for a dire& relationship between prices and incomes but the trade unions have told them that no deal is forth coming — which is the reason the new analysis of the problem concentrates on satutory control of prices but voluntary control of incomes. There is even the threat to publish a 'declaration of intent' between the unions and the Labour Party. Everyone has Conveniently forgotten that December day in 1964 when the then Mr George Brown wandered around clutching his Declaration of Intent and telling the world that "History is being made today." In April 1965 he proudly announced that "there is now an agreed Prices and Incomes Policy in existence" but by September of the same year was testily informing the Labour party conference: When I do something about prices I find myself attacked not by the manufacturers but by the unions who say that by stopping manufacturers putting prices up I have prevented them getting wage increases.
Mr Crosland, who took perhaps the most defensible stand on the Market issue among the Labour leadership, by saying it was a matter of priorities and came second to party unity, has again been the most realistic in facing the issue of prices and incomes. Just a few days before the Labour statement was due to be published he said "No one will take seriously any future Labour policy statement which avoids this central issue."
Being of an academic turn of mind what Mr Crosland means is that no well-informed person would accept a Labour policy statement which avoided this crucial issue. In fact most people in the land are not particularly well informed. That is why the Labour document skirts round the issue. It is also why the rich promises it contains will not be worth the paper they are written on, When Mr Heath had tea and buns with the trade unions, followed by responsible noises all round (including some made by the CBI, although what they will make of Labour's proposed statutory control of prices without a reciprocal agreement on wages is eminently predictable), he was ac knowledging that his policy of disciplining them from a right-wing stance has been just as big a failure as the Labour attempt to do so from the left. What the Prime Minister now faces is a party in the Commons which is entering the same period of disillusionment with him as the Labour Party did with Mr Wilson after he announced a wage, dividend and price freeze in July 1966. This does not mean that Mr Heath has lost the confidence of the country in any permanent sense. It does mean that the first step in that direction has been taken, for despite the cur rent fashion for decrying the importance of Westminster it is in Parliament that battles of confidence are lost and won before they ripple out to the country at a different level of argument.
The government backbenches are in fact the victims of their own propaganda.
Having watched Mr Wilson squirm under the burden of compromises which are inevitable in politics, and positively pre destined in the leadership of the Labour Party, they convinced themselves that those technicolour posters of Mr Heath proclaiming him to be the Man of Principle heralded a firm new age when compromises would no longer be necessary, Whilst more experienced hands never swallowed that belief, what few politicians, or commentators for that matter, antici pated was the extent of the difficulties which the Industrial Relations Act would encounter.
That the Act will not work as it was intended is not only an embarrassment to the Government but also to the Opposi tion. Despite the fact that Mr Wilson himself initiated legislation to exercise control over the unions he had no alternative, since he wanted to keep his party in one piece, but to lead an onslaught on the Gov ernment Bill. Former Labour ministere were, however, in little doubt that the repeal of an Industrial Relations Act which really worked would be a splendid bargaifl. ing counter to force an agreement on genuine Prices and Incomes Policy out of the unions. Mr Heath has therefore not only disappointed his backbenchers but the Opposition as well, for they, too, have bagged the worst of both worlds. That iS why the Labour Green Paper will be placed in the fiction section of most political libraries. It is also why the only people who enjoyed the tea in No 10 were the union leaders.
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