The election battle lines emerge
he session of Parliament that has now will almost certainly be the last be- re the next general election. It is this that es this week's Queen's speech its special merest. For the more important of the roposals it contains will not only provide he battle lines for the skirmishing that recedes the election campaign itself: they !so, inevitably, have the nature of an elec- ion manifesto, since the effect of the arious pieces of legislation (and prelimi- aries to legislation) promised cannot pos- bly be felt until long after the nation has ne to the polls.
In principle, the government of the day always at an advantage in this exercise, s it has the privilege of choosing the ter- m on which to fight. The present overnment, however, suffers from the ct that its most popular major measure • likely to take least parliamentary time, hile its least popular measure will take ost parliamentary time and therefore ds to attract most public attention.
For there can be no doubt that Mr Wil- n will be fighting on his most favourable otmd when Mr Short introduces his Bill make it compulsory for all state secon- ry schools to be comprehensive schools. ow, the educational dangers in a wholly n-selective education system are real ough. They are spelled out, fairly and jectively, by Dr Rhodes Boyson—him- If a comprehensive school headmaster— page 587 of this issue. In America the Is of the prevailing local neighbourhood ool system (a more accurate name for same beast) are widely acknowledged. t while the Tories would be justified on se grounds alone in opposing Mr Short's 11, Mrs Thatcher would be wise to out- yle Sir Edward Boyle in the lukewarm- of that opposition. For, electorally, the mprehensive' Bill will be seen by the blic at large simply as a Bill to abolish eleven-plus; and opposing this would about as popular as opposing a Bill to• ish poverty.
flowing this, and knowing, too, that, 1 or no Bill, there is simply no time for Government to destroy any of the great mmar schools before the next election, Tories should concentrate their educa- al efforts not on opposition but on pro- ndmg their own alternative reform.
• this should clearly mean making a ay of parental choice by allowing a ent to decide just how much he is pre- ed to spend on his child's education- ead of, as now, being forced to choose between the lot (which is beyond the reach of most) or nothing.
But while Mr Heath would be wise to advise his colleagues—whatever the noises from the constituencies—to allow Mr Short's short education Bill to slip through Parliament as quickly and with as little fuss as is decently possible, Mr Crossman's massive and dauntingly complex pensions Bill will inevitably require more parlia- mentary time than almost everything else in the Queen's speech put together. Which is lucky for the Conservatives, for the Crossman scheme is Labour's most obvious legislative vote-loser. For a start, it would cripple the private, occupational pension schemes in which half the working popula- tion of the country are now enrolled. 'Hands off the people's pensions' is a cry that will find a ready response.
Nor is this all. Occupational pension schemes are financed by genuine private savings (they are, in fact, far and away the biggest medium of personal savings there is). Mr Crossman's scheme, by contrast. can only be financed by increasing taxa- tion—even if that taxation is officially described as a national superannuation 'contribution'. In this year's Budget Mr Jenkins launched his save-as-you-earn scheme because he judged. rightly, that most people would rather save more volun- tarily than be taxed more compulsorily. for an equivalent economic effect. Mr Crossman's great plan to move in exactly the opposite direction, and replace saving by taxation, is likely to prove a great deal harder to sell to the public, however much it may be wrapped up in the rhetoric of 'social justice'.
So much for two of the three main legislative proposals in the Queen's speech. The third (for local government reform is evidently not to get beyond the White Paper stage) is Mr Wilson's great gamble: the trade union benefit Bill. Having failed to beat the trade unions, the Prime Mini- ster is determined to rejoin them. No one need lose sleep over the revelation that the reactivation of part 2 of the 1966 Prices and Incomes Act (for mentioning which poor Mrs Castle got such a drubbing from Messrs Jones and Scanlon at this year's Labour party conference) will not, after all last long. Much more serious is the promise of a Bill to give the unions all the sweeteners Mrs Castle had originally thought up to seduce the union leaders into accepting her original Industrial Relations Bill—now, alas, deceased. This will certainly include the compul- sory recognition by employers of specific unions (just at a time when those same unions are becoming increasingly 'unrecog- nised' by the men themselves) and the pay- ment of unemployment benefit (hitherto disallowed) to men laid off because a fac- tory is brought to a halt by an unofficial strike of a group of their own workmates from their own trade union. Admittedly. any such unemployment benefit will in part be a replacement of the supple- mentary benefit their families already en- joy; but the net effect will in many cases be to increase still further the de facto sub- sidisation of unofficial strikes by the wel- fare state.
And this is Mr Wilson's gamble. Know- ing the nationwide unpopularity of indus- trial unrest, he first attempted to legislate against it—with the support of the great majority of the public, including trade union members themselves. When the TU(' bosses refused to wear it he decided to turn the other cheek, and is now hoping to buy industrial peace by a policy of industrial appeasement. This is all very well if it comes off. But if. instead, the present wave of unofficial strikes and other forms of in- dustrial action continues to grow, the pub- lic is likely to judge Mr Wilson's trade union benefit Bill a good deal less appro- priate to the situation than the Tories' proposals for reforming trade union law.
But important though all these three areas of legislation are, the most important plank of the Government's election mani- festo could not be mentioned in the Queen's speech at all. For it is. of course. next year's Budget—and the economic climate that this is able (or unable) to create. Here, as in the industrial field, the Government will be wrestling, not with :he Opposition, but with events, many of which lie in large measure outside its con- trol. When the election comes to be held Mr Wilson may well discover that his in- ability to admit this, to accept the limita- tions of government action, proves his greatest handicap—worse even than the memory of the blunders and broken promises of his first five years. The public mood of disillusion may be with all politi- cians. But most of all it is with those who claim to be able to call spirits from the vasty deep. Neither the Prime Minister's recent style, nor the heavy legislative pro- gramme he has prepared for the last ses- sion of the present Parliament, suggest that he has changed in this respect.
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