THE PRESS
Mirror of the times
BILL GRUNDY
A certain scurrilous fortnightly journal, whose name I forget for the moment, although I believe it to be published in Greek Street, Soho, last week carried a fake adver- tisement on behalf of the Labour party. It showed a picture of the former Minister of Employment and Productivity, captioned '("They couldn't fool NtE") says Mrs Castle.' Private Eye's assessment of Mrs Castle may or may not be accurate, but it's a pretty good picture of the position some newspapers have found themselves in during these last two weeks on the subject of incomes policy. On the one hand they are broadly anti-Tory, but on the other they think that the country definitely needs an incomes policy and a mea- sure of union reform. So in the last two weeks they have been torn between pressing home their view that an incomes policy etc is needed and their desire to impress their readers with their continuing broadly anti. Tory stand.
The paper which has been torn most over this of course is the Mirror. Last year you will remember the Mirror was very strong on the subject. It was right behind Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle, declaring that some such Bill as they were trying to get through was 'essential', a word the then ni kept using, if this country was going to sur. vive. Well, we all know what happened to it and I seem to remember reading—and quot, ing here—a sad little tail piece from the Mirror where the essentialness of the Bill no longer seemed quite as obvious, but where we must keep our chins up and hope for the future. That sort of thing anyway. If it was a little lame, it wasn't surprising, and one could only feel sorry for the Mirror in the circurn. stances of the Wilson-Castle capitulation.
But this year, the Mirror's position is a bit difficult once more. In a leader two weeks ago about the Labour party conference de. bate on industrial relations, Mr Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers Union received a fair clobbering around the earhole for what he had said. The leader accused him of uttering nonsense and of knowing it (or at least suspecting it) to be nonsense. It talked about Mr Jones's 'truculent defiance' and how wrong it is for the people of this country. The Mirror's position, in other words, was very like it had been last year.
It pointed this out in a leader on 6 October, the day after Mr Robert Carr revealed the details of his proposed Industrial Relations Bill. On 6 January, 1969 the Mirror said that the Labour government must BY LAW insist on : 'A cooling off spell before an un official strike can take place. A secret ballot . . . before an official strike can be called, All agreements between managements and unions to be made in the form of a contract enforceable in civil law. That was the con- sidered policy of this newspaper in January 1969. It is the policy of the Mirror today. And tomorrow.'
So how did the Mirror receive Mr Care proposals which, among other things, act. ually do contain the three points it had said 'must BY LAW' be insisted on? To be quite frank, I think they played it just a touch cool. On Tuesday the paper described the plan as 'controversial'. It bravely announced that 'Any Tory or Labour politician Al indulges in union bashing for cheap electoral gain will get short shrift from this newspaper, which is a rum old sentence when you come to look at it closely. It pointed out to the unions that if they've got the idea that Mr Heath will retreat, as did Mrs Castle and Mr Wilson, in the face of opposition, they had better get rid of the idea at once: The re- forms will go through Parliament and come law'.
Which should make the Mirror happy, surely? Apparently not. For next we found the paper asking about the proposals: lifill they really work in the end? Will they help responsible trade union leaders—and there are many of them looking for help—re honour agreements?' Well, it does seemabll late in the day to be asking questions like that when for nearly two years you've bees saying they're essential. Could it be because it's the Tories who are putting the propogi5 forward this time?
I'm only teasing, really. The Mirror NI stuck to its point of view about Incormer policy and union reform over a long pent now, and has devoted a great deal of valuablf space, usually on the front page, to hammer' ing its arguments home. It takes its edua tional function seriously.
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