MONEY Are TUC miracles possible?
NICHOLAS DAVENPORT
It looks as if the lone campaign I have been conducting — thanks to the unfailing courtesy, if not commitment, of the editor — for certain reflationary spurs to the economy will shortly be crowned with success. The trade union members of the National Economic Development Council came away from the meeting last week with the feeling that reflation was near. Mr Barber did not, of course, make any promise but he did repeat that he would be prepared to take action if it seemed necessary after he had received his report on the economic outlook in a few weeks' time. Both the CBI and the TUC representatives had emphasised the depressing state of the economy. The CBI said there was a complete lack of confidence in the business world and that industrialists would not make investment decisions without some reassurance about the stability of the currency, let alone some prospect of reflation. The fact that the TUC paper urging sufficient reflation to restore growth to a 5i per cent rate was not summarily dismissed but accepted for consideration and further discussion was taken to be highly significant. The TUC members afterwards said that it was the best and most constructive meeting of the NEDC ever held.
Sir Frank Figgures, the new DirectorGeneral, impressed every one with his fairness and his realism. Coming from the Treasury he was regarded as speaking with more authority and when he said, after the meeting, that the next four weeks would be devoted to a round of discussions between the Government, the CBI, the TUC and 'Neddy' on how to attack inflation and stagnation it seemed that at long last a dialogue was possible between the two nations in the UK — the two sides in the social conflict. As the Prime Minister has hitherto not considered a dialogue to be
Juliette's Weekly Frolic
If my horses won and I were rich, there would be nothing nicer than to be privately jet-propelled to Doncaster for Saturday's Timeform-sponsored bonanza. This one day plug for the North, boasts the Queen, Lester and seven dazzling races on which £41,000 added money has been lavished — while the initially large entry has shrunk to pint-sized fields, some exciting tussles are promised. The longest race, the William Hill Gold Trophy, sees top-ranking handicapper, Chinatown, relieved of his customary crippling burdens taking on the Queen's Charlton and Murless' Prince Consort. On his seasonal reappearance the latter failed by a whisker to give 41b to Meadowville, who had Charlton a good four lengths behind in the 1970 possible I take this to be grounds for real optimism.
I have lately been emphasising the mental nature of this social conflict. The workers had got it in their heads that the Tory governing clique, like the old moneyed ruling clique before them, was out to bash their family of trade unions and inflict them with the suffering of massive unemployment. Psychiatrists will recognize the 1970 outbreak of unofficial strikes as the mood of the 'obstructive psychopath' — the man who will lie down on the job regardless of the public inconvenience he is causing because he is sick of the society in which he lives. To reach the mind of the obstructive psychopath the mental doctor has to convince him that he is on his side, that he is trying to help. That is why it is so important for Dr Heath to convince the mentally sick TUC that he is trying to help them by a dose of reflation which will lessen the pain of unemployment. Of course, if Dr Heath were to think that the continuing pain of massive unemployment was good for the TUC he would be going out of his mind himself. But there are signs that he has recognised that " enough is enough." The increasing number of bankruptcies and the growing mood of despondency among businessmen may have suggested to him that the other patient in our national asylum — the employer — is also growing sick of the society in which he lives. (Certainly the employer would move into another society — the European — if this madhouse were to go on). So I am inclined to think that Dr Heath has seen the importance of changing the nature of the regime for his patients. Which means, of course, changing the economic climate.
If my diagnosis is right, then this meeting of the NEDC was even more Leger and after that I'm committed to follow him here. The £6,000 Daniel Prenn Stakes, is likely to develop into a dual between local contender, Artaxerxes and the year younger, Swing Easy, whose smooth Ascot success over the finest opponents showed a return to the two-year-old form that landed him the New, July and Richmond Stakes in 1970. A more respectable field for the opening Vernon Sangster Gold Cup, though consistent Ndabibi should find little to worry her. In a recent Epsom victory she had Tuesday's fluent scorer Dancing Cap five lengths in the rear and is a cut above the others. The rich Royal Palace Stakes looks easy for Magic Flute, whose stable companion, Altesse Royale, is off to charm the Irish out of their Guinness Oaks the same afternoon.
Assets £52.67. Outlay: £3 to win Prince Consort, Swing Easy and Ndabibi . important than the question of the Common Market. I have said that this meeting was Mr Heath's last chance to reach the mind of the working class. He left it to Mr Barber to preside and Mr Barber wisely left it to Sir Frank Figgures to do the breaking-down of the patient's resistance. Sir Frank, I am told, adroitly suggested that an incomes policy was not the real issue. "It pays," he said, "to abstract ourselves from previous patterns of thought." The real issue was to combine economic expansion with a stable currency. And Mr Barber allowed the TUC to bring forward its idea of automatic wage increases if the cost of living rose faster than an agreed rate as if it was a reasonable idea for discussion. Could it be that the TUC is beginning to realize that if workers are to be satisfied with their wage bargains the employers will have to be satisfied with their profits?
The workers' movement in Britain is perhaps the most stupid — and the most honourable — in the world. It believed at the start that the profit motive was wicked and that the capitalist system must be destroyed. Not being prepared to destroy the capitalist system by force it made Fabian socialism its creed and having got a Labour government to carry out the first instalment of Fabian socialism in 1945-51 — the nationalization of some six industries and the Bank of England — it became disenchanted with its political leaders who made an economic mess of things. (This applies equally to Mr Wilson's as to the Lord Attlee's government.) It does not know now what to believe. Reformed capitalism is not quite as bad as it thought but its reflexes continue to work as they did in 1911.
The trouble has been that the British trade union movement has never been interested in industrial efficiency and profitability. It has merely been interested in protecting itself against what it believes to be exploitation by a wickedly profit-motivated class of employers. It is still suspicious of worker participation in management and productivity committees. Worker members of such councils are still regarded as bosses' men. The TUC movement has been so stupid, so hidebound by its history, that it has failed to recognize that the world has changed and that capitalism is no longer free to exploit. Sometimes the wicked exploiter is now a privileged trade union which imposes its claim to the injury of the poor and the pensioners. If it has now dawned on the TUC that the workers will gain more by co-operating with managements in productivity bargains — rather than by securing 20 per cent wage claims followed by 18 per cent price rises — then a miracle will have happened — the immaculate new conception of profit. There will have been nothing like it since the Pauline conversion on the road to Damascus.
The next meeting of the NEDC may show whether the miracle has taken place. If it has the Stock Exchange will not be slow to discount it.
It has clearly begun to do so.
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