Follies and confrontations
Patrick Cosgrave
There is a neurotic and shivering smell of collapse about politics in Westminster these days: almost no major politician appears capable of sensible behaviour for any twenty-four-hour stretch. What with Mr Maudling's defective memory, Mr Short's attempt to hold down the pot boiling underneath him by sitting on it, and the Prime Minister's curious outbursts of loyalty to doubtful colleagues and venom directed against his opponents, almost nobody appears capable of behaving with common sense, let alone honour or principle. And a particular aspect of this curious breakdown relates less to accusations of corruption and rumours of bad faith than to the extraordinary failure of an incoming Labour Government to save the AUEW and Mr Hugh Scanlon from the clutches of Sir John Donaldson and the National Industrial Relations Court.
It is necessary to be very clear about the circumstances in which Sir John's dying court has decided to confiscate practically the entire available assets of the second biggest union in the country. (I should point out, however, that the word `practically' covers a multitude of odds and ends: the protected funds of the union are safe from confiscation; and a number of branches have, as one seniorexecutive put it to me the other day, "Taken our money out of the bank and stuffed it up the chimney") Almost nobody in either party would readily suggest that Sir John should be allowed to go ahead and snaffle the belongings of the AEUW and that the Government should retrospectively decide to restore these assets. The question is, how have the Labour Government got themselves into the situation of allowing Sir John — behaving with undeniable and inevitable propriety, as his statement last week shows — to launch an utterly destructive attack on the second largest union in the country, at a time when they were drawing up their own plans to repeal the legislation which justified that attack? And, did anybody foresee the amazing, and perhaps revolutionary, situation that would arise when the members of the union stood to arms to defend their administration?
Further, one can see the rightness of a situation in which a Conservative government, having implemented the Industrial Relations Act, sat back and allowed the law to take its course. It is by no means certain that a government under Mr Heath would have had the requisite nerve to do so — one rather suspects that the Official Solicitor might have emerged from behind some arras or other, and saved the situation. But, if the Tories had allowed the union and Sir John to go ahead on their collision course, if the collision had taken place, and if everything Mr Scanlon and his colleagues possessed was seized to provide £47,000 for Con-Mech, all that would have been logical. The law must be obeyed, one could hear Tories saying, and if Mr Scanlon was stupid and obstinate enough neither to register his union under the Act, nor have himself and them represented at the court for at least long enough to delay Sir John's con fiscatory decision until Mr Foot got rid of the Act altogether, then so much the worse for him. But it is incredible (or it would be incredible if it had not happened) that a Labour government has allowed matters to go as far as they have.
When Mr Wilson came to office this time it must have been absolutely clear to himself and his advisers (it was, indeed, clear to at least three ministers who urged decisive action on Mr Wilson and Mr Foot) that not much time was left before Sir John and Mr Scanlon became locked in a death struggle. Mr Foot saw the bosses of the AUEW and tried, with that unexampled rhetoric always at his command, to persuade them at least to appear before the court in order to postpone the final confrontation, so that he would have time to get rid of the hated Act altogether. He failed: Mr Scanlon and his colleagues held their position of total and irrevocable refusal to have anything whatever to do with the NIRC, thus manifesting the highest and strongest imaginable commitment to their principles, or the deepest and most imaginable obstinacy, depending on your point of view.
Had either Mr Wilson or Mr Foot paused to think they would have seen that Sir John and Mr Scanlon would behave exactly as they have behaved. Their course would then have been to pass rapidly and in all its stages through the House of Commons a one-clause Bill withdrawing the Industrial Relations Act and restoring the pre-1970 legal status quo. Such a course would have been clearly determined by the Labour need to rescue the AUEW from the law, but it would also have been of a piece with Labour's current philosophy and strategy. Certainly, the Tories would have jeered at the one-clause Bill, and made unkind remarks about Labour's dependence on the unions: but they would not have brought Mr Wilson down on the matter. Indeed, I am told that it is unlikely that Mr Whitelaw would have offered more than token opposition to such a policy.
Why, then, did Mr Wilson and Mr Foot not grasp the nettle? Some AUEW people are convinced that there was a Machiavellian conspiracy against them, that Labour leaders actually and deliberately wanted to see the union driven on to the rocks, and Mr Scanlon destroyed as one of the two most powerful union leaders in the country, so that they could go on dealing with the much more placable Mr Jack Jones. The Prime Minister
Spectator May 11,119/ tir4 and his Secretary of State for Employment point out, on the advice of their civil servants, that it was just too complicated to devise and pass a one-clause saving Bill, particularly as they were planning at least three major pieces of legislation to replace Mr Carr's own Act. There is little colour to this defence; and all the evidence suggests merely an unpardOni able and unprincipled state of muddle in th.!...t new government. Alas, it is now clear that the Governme_nt will have to do something to rescue 511. Scanlon, for neither the members of his uni°11 nor the Labour Party as a whole will tolerate. the full implementation of Sir John's diktat' Inevitably this will involve retrospective legislative action, and the law itself and its principles will be brought again into disrepute' because of the pressure of political necessiLY• I have concentrated on the business of ivtl. Scanlon and his union, but the state of spin 15 evident in a host of other ways. The as: tonishing thing about modern politics is lin' just the incidence of folly among politiciansci but their willingness to repeat and comPottnf folly. The Prime Minister's reckless defence the members of his own private office whell,, they came under criticism, and his even Indr', reckless defence of Mr Short against ne's merely the continuing revelations of stories but the steady fire of somebody like Arthur Irvine, has all the appearance of a Md.' painting himself unnecessarily into a corner'
We are still very far, in this country, ill We that resembles a Watergate sane°,
it, hardly matters to anybody's finances di) sense of principle whether Mr Short got C25 or £500 from Mr Smith — but our leaclekrse. unfortunately, are behaving in exactlY same psychological manner as is Mr More and more of Mr Wilson's valuable tone is being spent on preparing propagandistid defences, and less and less on the forWar planning of his government's legislative sc' tivities. All this is extremely bad not merely for te country and the national interest, but for tnir, general tone and character of politics as We a We are, indeed, in a neurotic situation whent0 former Attorney-General writes obscurelY the Times about events a quarter of a cenal'ai ago and creates immediately a criticer, parliamentary situation; or when a forgott„t former Conservative Member of Parliatnen"s adds further and equally obscure accusatt° a to the pile and gives that critical situatiott,e further twist; or when, in direct denial of 1'1;5 facts, the Leader of the House of Con,,o, states in public that a former Labour Officer who believes he should resign isInare minority of one at Westminster. There in faults of nerves and faults of judgementsal abundance at Westminster: Mr Short's refumf to resign is a fault of judgement, and,, of nWeilseo t' sn's strange weekend speech a res nerves.
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rneP It is hardly surprising at a time when, al), I behave so strangely, with such a lack 0` sense of good manners or hon00,ran to I behaviour, with so evident a determinatinever I cling to office at all costs and with Whet, assertions seem to be required at the mdworae that matters of major political import he,ctiiis shunted to the back of the queue. 11 „use Labour Government destroys itself the cc`ort.5 of its destruction is unlikely to be Mr E past or the state of the party in the as east, but the ignoring of real problems sucaod the conflict between Sir John Donaldsona_na Mr Hugh Scanlon. But the immediate re ,v,e for destruction will be seen to be the exclusdnj preoccupation of Mr Wilson and those ar°30 , him with themselves, their own interests, s of I A their own self-justifications. The prohlenlboaf the nation, and the problems of the 1-'4 and I t movement, require the real, energetic , exclusive preoccupation of the politicians;froal other matters which take their mind,5„,eres' these problems must be disposed of, " sary by resignations.
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