Political Commentary
The Tories and the TUC
John Grigg
The last Tory government was brought down by the trade unions and most people are now wondering if another Tory government would inevitably suffer the same fate. It is easy enough to say that the will of the people, or the will of Parliament, must prevail—but how? The state is much weaker, in practice, than any trade union With monopoly power in a vital industry. The union can, and at a pinch will, withdraw its labour and so paralyse the country, but the state is morally debarred from using its superior strength to force trade unionists to work or to punish them for not working.
This means that there will have to be an understanding, if not a formal contract, between the next Tory government and the unions. Indeed, there will have to be clear evidence that such an understanding is likely or the Tory Party will not be returned at the next election. Meetings at the highest level must not only take place; they must be seen to take place, and the Tory leadership must not shrink from explaining their absolute necessity to those who still favour a tough line towards the unions.
There have, in fact, been a good many private encounters on neutral ground, but furtiveness on either side is to be discouraged. My impression is that it is rather more pronounced among top Tories than among top trade unionists, though in such matters it is never easy to be quite sure.Both sides are ready to admit that inadequate personal contact both before and immediately after 1970 was the source of great evil, and at least one leading figure on the trade union side has assured me that contact is much closer now than it was then. But the public has no idea that it is so.
After the party conference season--now mercifully coming to an end—representatives of the TUC general council are intending to meet Tory leaders for a full exchange of views, and it is to be hoped that the meetings will not be of a hole-and-corner kind, but will be properly announced in advance so that the participants can at least be photographed arriving and leaving. There is no reason why either side should be ashamed of talking to the other. It would only be shameful if they did not talk.
It is important to remember that, although many trade unions are affiliated to the Labour Party, the TUC as such is not. Its function is to serve all the unions that are affiliated to it, and to negotiate with any democratic British government—or potential government—on behalf of the trade Union movement as a whole. This role may e rather better understood by the present pneral secretary, Len Murray, than it was I°Y his predecessor, Lord Feather. Mr
Murray, for instance, has never as general secretary attended a Labour Party conference, whereas Lord Feather felt no inhibition against attending. And it was noteworthy that Mr Murray did not commit himself to instant condemnation of The Right Approach on the strength of reading extracts or summaries of it in the Sunday newspapers.
Of course he is a socialist and as such more sympathetically disposed to Labour policy and politicians than to Tory policy and politicians. But there are grounds for believing that he may be genuinely concerned about at least two aspects of the present relationship between the TUC and Labour. He may, for one thing, feel that the institutionalised TUC-Labour Party liaison committee poses some threat to the TUC's independence, and he may also be aware that any suggestion of an exclusive contract between the trade unions and a single party would effectively limit the voters' freedom of choice and so reduce British democracy to a farce.
We may be sure that he would not wish to disband the liaison committee which originally came into being to repair the damage caused by In Place of Strife—that singularly ill-named initiative—in 1969-70, but which has recently acquired a far wider significance. At the same time any thoughtful trade unionist must see that such an organic link, unless balanced by regular and close contact with the Tories, could easily lead to a de facto corporative state. A TUC-Tory liaison committee strictly analogous to the TUC Labour one is out of the question for reasons of history and ideology on both sides, but something less formal—yet visible and practical—has to be evolved.
Conservatives must be very careful not to fall for the thesis that trade union leaders are a bunch of robber barons intent upon usurping the authority of Parliament and eroding individual liberty. That their movement has the power to do such things is beyond question, and it is also manifest that their power has quite often been exercised in a sinister direction. But it is grossly to misread their rather confused minds and motives to suppose that they are consciously working to substitute for our historic institutions a trade union dictatorship. They are certainly over-mighty subjects, but reluctant to accept the fact and honestly striving to do well by the country as well as by their own people. Among all the overmighty subjects in our history they are probably the most patriotic and the least bloody-minded.
They tend to have doctrinal fixations, and in that respect are not unlike many of their critics. But the most fixed and immutable of all is their belief that the law should not be used against what they conceive to be trade union rights. This was what united them against the Industrial Relations Act, though many privately admit that it contained valuable features. In general they are not monolithic, either in interest or opinion, but any attempt to interfere with their domestic procedures by Act of Parliament will provoke another orgy of collective defiance. Change will have to be brought about by persuasion rather than by legislation.
James Prior, the opposition spokesman on labour relations, is a sensible and genial man who knows the time of day and has been working quietly to convert his party to a realistic view of the trade unions. But precisely because he is so reasonable he seems to feel bound, on occasion, to give the opposite impression. Thus when the last pay deal was struck he wrote an article which damned it with faint praise, and on Monday morning, in a radio discussion with David Basnett of the General and Municipal Workers' Union, he seemed at one point to be dismissing the social contract as more harmful than helpful to the nation.
It is vital that the Tory Party should give generous and unqualified endorsement to the principle of the social contract, and should recognise that it marks a decisive advance by the trade unions towards accepting the responsibility that goes with power. Tories have every right to argue that the social contract should be less of a socialist contract than it now is, though they should also remember that they are Tories and not nineteenth-century Liberals. The ideological content of the social contract may be regarded as negotiable in the light of public opinion and opinion within the unions themselves, but whatever happens it will be necessary to have a social contract on wages. Without it no government can hope to govern.
The new phenomenon of trade union power cannot be made to go away. It has to be accommodated within the structure of the state. Tories should be applying their minds to the structural changes required. rather than hankering after a state of affairs which no longer exists and will not be recreated. Imagination has to be shown, as well as realism, and until the Tories show more of both in their attitude towards the trade unions they are unlikely to win the country's confidence, and will disappoint it even if they do. Mrs Thatcher'sspeech oii Friday will give her the chance to remedy this defect, and it may be the last chance—because events are moving swiftly.
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