The CBI: a new estate?
George Gale
The Trades Union Congress, our present chief estate, did not distinguish itself this year. Last year it pulled, then held, itself together, ready for Mr Callaghan to go to the country. But Mr Callaghan, instead of telling them what they had strenuously organised themselves to hear and to act upon, sang a silly little song, called off the expected election, stood firm upon an incomes policy of five per cent, wobbled through his and our winter of discontent at the hands of public sector unions, and slithered to ungainly defeat in May. This left the TUC, like the Labour party, discouraged, discomfited and disunited. Having lost its government, it has not yet found its role, just as the Labour party, having lost its power, has not yet found its purpose.
For many years the Conservative party has been having party conferences modelled upon Labour party ones; but they have been lightweight affairs, partly because of the platform's effortless superiority when it comes to rigging debates and votes, and partly because the delegates represent nobody but themselves. The Labour party conference is made ponderous with political weight because when trade union bosses raise their cards and distribute their votes numbered in millions, they have that number of people in the country and more who are prepared, albeit often unwillingly, to do their bidding; and because constituency party delegates when they raise their voices and distribute their opinions, are coming increasingly close to instructing members of Parliament how to vote and, with the unions, are in the process of claiming to instruct Labour government how to rule. Tory conferences are altogether more frivolous, unused to having an estate to represent.
We now have another conference emerging, blinking somewhat in the bright lights of television, and seeking our attentions. Somewhat in the manner of the TUC, the Confederation of British Industries now holds an annual gathering, complete with platform, emblazoned motto — 'Britain Means Business', resolutions, debates, even votes with tellers and confusion about the counting. The CBI represents many thousands of companies employing about 12 million people: roughly the same number are members of unions affiliated to the TUC, and to a very large extent the men employed by members of the CBI are those whose votes are counted at the TUO, In broad terms, the CBI can claim to speak for the employers of the country, •with the exception of the Government, much as the TUC can claim to speak for the workers. The CBI in conference cannot, however, claim to speak with much authority or weight, since its conference decisions do not bind the Council of the CBI. Nonetheless, and increasingly so, the CBI conference is attended by the country's chief industrialists and employers, who are quite consciously, and sometimes very selfconsciously, setting themselves up as a kind of counterweight to the TUC. They are doing so in direct response to what they regard as the excessive weight exercised by the unions. They have called themselves forth to redress the balance. They are putting themselves forward as a new estate of the realm.
And they are not doing so without skill. This year I have watched TUC, Liberal, Labour and Conservative conference proceedings thanks to BBC 2, freed from the irksome necessity of travelling to places like Brighton and Blackpool. I have also this week observed in like manner the deliberations of the CBI; and I have no hesitation whatever in saying that in the quality of the speeches made, in the genuine seriousness of many of the contributions, in the comparative absence of cant and hypocrisy, in the quantity of reason exercised and displayed, more sense was heard at the CBI in Birmingham than in all the other conferences put together. .
Hardened observers of the other conferences will recognise that this is no great claim I am making on behalf of the CBI. Indeed, it would be pretty disastrous if our industrial leaders were not able to speak with more sense than the common run of delegates to the TUC and the party conferences; for the delegates to the CBI are mainly men who have made it to their particular pinnacles by their own efforts and abilities in running businesses, whereas delegates to party conferences and the TUC are mainly those whose efforts and abilities have been chiefly concerned with making themselves delegates. They are professional ranters as opposed to professional runners; and I would expect more competence in speaking and more use of reason in argu ment among those who run things than among those who rant about them. Generally, too, the level of education and of intelligence displayed at the CBI is higher than that evident at the party conferences and the TUC, which again is to be expected. What, however, is not at all necessarily to be expeCted is that most of the men speaking at the CBI conference whom I heard this week spoke with more sense and reason, not only than the rank and file delegates at the party conference and TUC, but also than the ministers and the ex-ministers and the general councillors of the TUC. The quality of the floor at the CBI was greater than the quality of the platforms at this year's TUC and party conferences.
For once, it seems that bad, instead of driving out good, is driving good to the surface. I have no desire to suggest that the CBI has suddenly emerged as a new fount of wisdom, a new source of common sense, a new repository of reason from which all folly, prejudice and unreason have been removed. I am, however, advancing for consideration the view that the CBI, in being put forward by some of its leaders as a new estate, is speaking with much sense and. responsibility, and that, if it continues to do so it will inevitably acquire from that sense and responsibility an authority it has hitherto lacked.
The closed shop debate affords an example. The CBI is against the closed shop as a matter of principle. The question before it this week, in broad terms, was whether it should remain opposed in principle, or press for action, legislative and industrial, against it. The platform pleaded caution: sir Alex Jarrett, of Reed International, advised the conference against the resolution from Taylor Woodrow, saying however, 'If you want to take action. . . if you want the closed shop to be totally outlawed, vote for the resolution.' The delegates voted 324-321 in favour of the resolution.
This was, then, an impressively conducted debate, showing the CBI emerging, but not yet emerged, as an estate, This !emergence is part and parcel of a new attitude hardening among industrialists. The unions have forced them to re-assert themselves and to recognise that the power of employers and of management is in danger of being subsumed under trade union power. They have stOody idly bY while this process has been taking place, merely noting that the role of the govern ment of the day, in seeking to impose one, incomes policy after another, has itseit assumed one of the chief functions of the employer. But the Thatcher government has taken itself out of the way of wages, sild indeed also of industrial disputes. It is now the government which is, very deliberatelY indeed, standing idly by. Industry has n° choice but to recover its nerve, if it is not tft collapse. It has to start managing again' has to start issuing orders. It has to spew.' with the voice of authority. There was much recognition of this duriing the CBI conference at Birmingbalu Town Hall. We see signs of it elsewhere. Sir Michael Edwardes's direct appeal to British Leyland workers, over the heads of the shop stewards, was an attempt to make management possible, and as a device it has been brilliantly successful. It won't make cars; but it will make it more difficult for a small number of politically-motivated men to prevent Leyland workers from making cars. The Talbot strike collapsed when the French management refused to budge. Only at the last moment — when faced with the near-certainty of the closure of the Ravenscraig steel works — did the unions cobble together some kind of agreement to operate Hunterston.
Industry has a long way to go. Industrialists and trade unionists too often struggle for power when they should be struggling for wealth; and too often trade union leaders have won the power, while employers and employees have lost the wealth. Undoubtedly there has been a failure of nerve on the part of employers and managers. It is a failure of nerve very broadly paralleled by the same failure which characterised previous governments. The present government may have no very high hopes or very real confidence; but Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues at least realise that the wealth of a nation is not produced by governments and directives. She and they are getting out of the way, too slowly perhaps and none too surely, but removing themselves nontheless. They are thrusting responsibility for our industrial performance where it should properly rest; with the industrialists and the trade unions.
Now, whether the industrialists like it or not — and to be fair, most of them are not complaining that they, are now out in the cold — they are exposed, with government protection largely removed. It is what they have said they have wanted: to get the government off their backs. And free collective bargaining is what the trade unions have said they wanted, too. Both sides of industry lia;:ie got what they have been asking for. It is up to the industrialists, first and foremost, to seize and to hold the power to manage. That is their function. They must assert themselves. There is no reason to suppose that the great majority of trade unionsists will not respond. Both sides, after all, want the same: more wealth. It is up to the new estate to provide it, as it used to do, before it lost confidence, before it was attacked, before it had no need to assert itself, when to hold the purse-strings was Power enough. The trade unions were themselves a response to the excessive Power of capitalists. Now, the excessive Power of the trade union estate requires What amounts to a new estate of industrialists and managers to countervail. I think we are beginning to get this. If we do, then this week's conference of the CBI at Birmingham will not only have contained more sense and reason and intelligence than the three party conferences and the TUC put together, but will also prove to be altogether more important and beneficial.
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