Political commentary
Eyeless in Warrington
Charles Moore
According to Lord Marsh, the chairman of the Newspaper Publishers' Associa- tion, and to a leading article in the Daily Mirror, the NGA is like the blinded Sam- son, involving Fleet St newspapers in what is bound to be its own destruction.
One imagines a great canvas of the scene — the background like one of those works of Mad Martin: towering, tottering walls of sculpted stone, red and gold and smoking; the foreground something more indebted to Hogarth: the sweating faces of the Philistine chieftains disturbed at their feast. Here, Lord Rothermere looks up startled, with his mouth still full of the first course. There, Lord Matthews tumbles desperately over Mr Rupert Murdoch in his efforts to get under the table before the ceiling falls in. And on a dais, snapping the massy pillars with his strong arms, the long-haired Mr Joe Wade takes his revenge.
Certainly Mr Wade resembles Samson in his blindness. '0 dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon' is his union's attitude to the closed shop. He is eyeless in Warrington, and, if he had his way, we would all be 'at the mill with slaves' as well. But he and his cause lack the righteous heroism necessary for Lord Marsh's comparison to stand up.
Still, one must agree with Milton that 'nothing is here for tears'. It may seem rather brutal and obvious, but the hesita- tions and ambiguities of Fleet St drive one to take the opportunity offered by appear- ing in an independent weekly simply to record how marvellous it is that the NGA is in such difficulties. The view publicly stated by the NPA is that Mr Eddie Shah has nothing to do with them (indeed, some of their members have hinted that they think him a troublesome maverick); but everyone else knows and rejoices that Mr Shah's suc- cess does open the way for the free move- ment of labour, even in Fleet St. If a coin- cidental effect is that the NGA is bankrupted, or at least weakened, that only makes one feel more benevolently Pickwickian and glowing with Christmas cheer. Hurrah for Mr Shah! Hurrah for Mr Tebbit! And, because it's Christmas, a glass of negus even for that old sourface, Mr Murray.
Since we have spent the summer and autumn being beastly to the Government, let us use this season to acknowledge what a success for it this episode is. Not only have the unions been shamed and defeated, but they have suffered without the Government having to enter the fray. The troubled ques- tions of the rights and wrongs of organised labour have been overlaid by the straightforward question of obedience to the law, and Labour have looked cowardly and indecisive. Perhaps even better than this for the Government's hopes of a reviv- ed British industry, is the way that the law has sustained a single business (essentially, in this case, a single man) against the might of a union. It was a commonplace in the early days of the dispute that Mr Shah was at best unsophisticated, at worst completely confused and liable to give in. But at each step Mr Shah has found that the law has supported him, and so his confidence, ar- ticulacy and determination have grown. A great problem with labour laws is that they can be too difficult or threatening for businessmen, always naturally interested in getting on with normal work, to use. Mr Shah proves that someone starting with few advantages can use the law to defend himself. The Government is being vin- dicated, and in an area which decided the way that a great many people voted in 1979 and 1983. We have that rare thing — an election promise successfully fulfilled, and by a combination of the Tory arts: this is the work of Mr Prior and Mr Tebbit.
Without wishing to dispel any jollity, however, I do wonder whether the Govern- ment would have wanted or known how to rout the unions if they all came from that great repository of English political sen- timentality — the countryside. I ask because that sentimentaility is now (and always) being exploited in the Tory party with far more effect than the cause of the 'inner city' could ever be. Just as an ar- chitect only has to describe his new housing scheme as a 'village' for everyone to em- brace it without demur, so a politician has only to claim that something is 'rural' for thousands to spring to its defence. This Government did prove able to resist Labour's plea for 'rural opticians' ruined by the end of their monopoly; but it is said that the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, has been arguing passionately in the Cabinet to preserve the monopoly of house conveyancing in order to protect 'rural solicitors' in their age-old craft of drinking sherry at elevenses and collecting the money of their country neighbours. You may remember how, in the last Parliament, Lord (RAB) Butler and the Duke of Nor- folk roused the shires in the House of Lords to go on subsidising rural transport for schools, and so inspired eulogies of the hereditary principle from convinced socialists. You cannot forget, if you live in the city, how much you subsidise others to live out in the countryside and commute in.
When a politician claims to be doing something for the countryside one must put on one's most Scrooge-like mien and shout 'Humbug!' British farmers have no need or inclination to emulate the Cratchit family and stick spoons in their mouths to prevent themselves calling for goose. They yell lusti- ly, and are so often fed, indeed, that they themselves rather resemble those unhappy geese who become unable to move and end up supplying pate de foie gras. They have an embarras de richesse, except that up till now they have not been embarrassed, knowing that they could depend on their fellow countrymen's love for the yeoman, and even more on the control that their union exercises over Conservative consti- tuency associations.
That love and that control still exist; but people are beginning to see the farmer in a less friendly light. They dislike his straw- burning. They resent his fences and his Keep Out notices. They find his chemicals and his vast machines and his hedgeless fields unattractive. They discover that he does not have to pay rates on his farm buildings and that the planning controls on them are lenient. They may even know that (thanks to Mr Heseltine's Wildlife and Countryside Act in the last Parliament) a landowner has only to suggest that he might tear up a Site of Special Scientific Interest for the Government to pay him not to. They very often do know that the Common Agricultural Policy pays already well- placed farmers to despoil and exhaust still more acres to produce food which is then thrown' away or, at best, dumped on the Russians. Even so, one must doubt whether indignation would really have been aroused if we had not discovered that the main beneficiaries of our money were French and Irish and Greek. Foreign farmers do not have the same cachet.
The NGA dispute has put the Govern- ment in better heart. Mr Tebbit's reorganisation of regional aid, which may amount to a secret reduction of it, shows that the Government is trying to app- ly its economic principles more widely. Mr Tebbit even dares to doubt the value of the large sums spent on the inner cities. But the real test for Tories, who are still so tied up with the landed interest, is whether they are prepared to open the land to the same freedom and difficulties which business en- joys and confronts. If they are, the Minister of Agriculture should not be a jolly, (leave out that comma if you want) rich farmer like Mr Jopling, but someone tightfisted and suburban like Mr Tebbit. Such a reformer would have to put up with a great many people quoting the 'Deserted Village' at him, but he would be laying up treasure in heaven and, if she means what she says, in Mrs Thatcher's heart. All that disagreeableness in Athens was an en- couraging portent. But further unpleasant- ness must of course wait till after Christmas which I hope you all enjoy, and which I shall be spending in the heart of our lovely countryside.
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