Far from the or folks at home POLITICAL COMMENTARY
AUBERON WAUGH
Last year's Christmas recess was a time of un- paralleled government intrigue and acrimony.
This year's has provided breathing space for ministers to proceed with their reforming plans away from the crude and often irrelevant de- mands of Parliament. It remains to be seen which of these activities will prove more disastrous for the Government's future. But if either Mrs Castle's plans for reforming the trade unions or Mr Crossman's plans for re- forming pensions are allowed to fructify, Mr Wilson may well wish himself back in those halcyon carefree days of the South African arms crisis.
Both sets of proposals illustrate, in their different ways, the central dilemma of the Labour party now that it has lost touch with the folk from whence it came without finding a role. But because Mrs Castle's proposals are capable of an infinite process of reduction, whereas Mr Crossman's (which, at the time of writing, we have not even had leaked in de- tail) can only move in one direction, it is Mr Crossman who may first be seen dangling from the horns of the dilemma, while Mrs Castle is busily paddling up the creek and out of sight.
Mr Crossman's proposal, in essence, will be to give us all much larger pensions, graduated according to our earnings on the German model (perish the analogy) in exchange for much larger contributions, similarly graduated, but perhaps with some adjustment in the proportions to favour the lower income groups or, more exactly, to disfavour the higher ones. Thus if I or you, gentle reader, pay an extra £3 a .week to receive an extra £10 a week in thirty years' time our gardeners, still-room maids and valets de chambre may need to pay only an extra £1 a week to receive an extra £5 a week on reaching maturity, if that is the right expression. But whatever adjustment is planned can only have a punitive significanceisince we have already reached the stage where any noble schemes for increased social security benefits must be paid for by the beneficiaries (and. future beneficiaries) themselves. And it is that extra £1 a week out of the pocket of the work- ing man which is going to cause the trouble. Now, it is not my purpose to claim that the working classes will be right in their objections. although I think I can see their point of view. In actuarial terms, they will be given a fair deal, no doubt. Furthermore, by acquiescing in what is little different from a policy of compulsory saving, they will be helping the great deflation- ary movement and backing Britain, which is doubtless a good thing. But two great objec- tions present themselves. The first is that no one has much confidence in the currency. In Mr Heath's memorable phrase, we are no longer proud of our pound. The second is that even if we were all absolutely confident that a pound spent in thirty years' time would bring us exactly as much excitement, joy and solid comfort as it does today, there is very little indication that our consumer society breeds that degree of thrift.
In other words, the working classes are as feckless as they always were, except that nowadays they have better reason for it. An old age spent complaining about one's in- adequate pension and the indignity of drawing supplementary relief may not be everyone's idea of heaven, but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof and we have only the word of some politicians that things would be any better under the new dispensation. Whereas a pound's a pound by any reckoning, and to suppose that the traditional public- appetite for social security could extend to the deliberate re- linquishment of present pleasures is not so much fanciful as plain daft. No doubt a few Labour men can believe it as a conscious act of faith, just as they can believe in the perfect- ibility of human nature under socialism, but anyone with even half an ear in his con- stituency will know that it is rubbish.
Yet Mr Crossman has sold the idea to his colleagues in the Parliamentary Committee of the Cabinet (otherwise known as the Commit- tee for Winning the next General Election— they have already seen the draft White Paper setting out his proposal) as a vote winner. This must be a tribute either to his own powers of persuasion, or to their other-worldliness. Admittedly, it takes quite a lot to persuade a Labour man that social security can ever be un- popular, and they are all rather preoccupied at the moment. No doubt they think that the full implications of these ingenious proposals can be disguised until after the next election. when we shall be asked merely to vote for the bene- fits. This worked in 1966 with the famous Crossman Fair Rents scheme—an arrangement which has succeeded in raising disputed rents to something nearer their economic level with- out creating the confidence necessary to pro- duce new rented accommodation, which might have brought prices down.
But there will be far heavier guns brought to bear on this scheme. As one minister said' to me, the vote-now-pay-later principle might work if the Government had only Pravda to inform the country. Political journalists no longer suffer from the obsequious gullibility of their colleagues on the Commonwealth desks and financial journalists are about five times tougher again. No doubt there is much to be said in the ear of God for vastly increased, graduated pension schemes, despite the Sermon on the Mount, but the ear of the British voter is less sublime and it is strangely disturbing to see all these intelligent, sophisticated members of the Parliamentary Committee of the Cabinet set on such a transparent disaster course.
Mrs Castle's• proposals for the trade unions may, by contrast, be electorally beneficial—if put into effect. Even if not put into effect, Mr Wilson may well reckon that by the appearance of activity in this field he will be able to steal the Tories' clothing, just as he has done in the past on Rhodesia and the Common Market, on both of which issues he has given the impres- sion of a hard-worked'little man doing his best. Of course, only the fact that he has failed on all these issues keeps the Labour party together. It may be that the public is losing its appetite for these glorious failures, but even so this might prove less disastrous than a glorious suc- cess in any of them.
-The Government believes that a majority of
trade unionists (that is to say, people who be- , long to a trade union) favour the idea of Radical Reform. Certainly, as I never tire of pointing out on this page, parliamentary oppo- sition is not significant. Backbenchers who will allow the Government to support a policy of genocide rather than risk their seats will quite literally let the Government get away with murder. Under these circumstances, those who are dismayed by the suggestion that Parliament is nowadays held in contempt must accept the onus of demonstrating why it should not be so held. But the real opposition will come from that small minority of active trade unionists— shop stewards, branch secretaries and the whole grisly hierarchy—who may not number more than 10 per cent of the total, but to all intents and purposes are the trade union movement.
It may be quite a good idea to hold ballots before an official strike but it will be opposed tooth and nail by the trade union movement as at present constituted, and will have only a very small relevance to our problems, since 95 per cent of all strikes are unofficial, as the Donovan Commission demonstrated, and the proportion is growing. If it could be shown that official strikes with minority support were a major cause of our problems, then the Govern- ment might be justified in antagonising a very large number of its active supporters in order to push through this reform. But the Donovan Report shows conclusively that this is not the case.
Similarly, with the cooling-off period for un- official strikes. If strikers refuse to cool off, the Government will be forced to take to court either the strikers themselves (which employers can already do, if they wish) or the unions, on whose support the Labour party is financially dependent. The Government's hope is that sanctions in the background will exert a 'moral' influence as with prices and incomes, but this moral influence is a rapidly diminishing asset. One of the more welcome achievements of this Government, when it finally retires into the wilderness, will have been its demolition of the myth that teacher knows best.
The chief political significance of the im- pending row must be that if a leadership crisis breaks out in the course of it, Mrs Castle wilt have become as unpopular as Mr Jenkins, and Mr Callaghan will carry the day. As the one voice of the or folks at home, he is having a lovely time at the moment. Perhaps Mrs Castle's eventual retreat from nearly all her proposals will be seen as a personal victory for him. In a sense, I suppose, it will be, too, since apart from Mr Marsh he has only Mr Wilson's ambivalence on his side against a Cabinet united to clobber the unions. It is true that the proposals do little to relieve our actual prob- lems, which are a product of technology as much as anything else: how a few men can put many thousands out of work; how the worst cost of unofficial strikes is probably in those concessions—most particularly in overmanning —which employers are prepared to make rather than risk wildcat action which disrupts the whole production system in a way which official strikes needn't. Possibly the only proposal which is certain of a safe passage is the one to encourage trade union mergers with govern- ment funds. So the only positive result of all this sound and fury may well be the spectacle of public money being pumped into the trade unions. Now that's what we folk back home mean by reform.
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