Another voice
The last kick
Auberon Waugh
At times this column has been marked by a nervousness, not to say a vulgar despondency, over the prospect of workers' power, on the grounds that it seemed to threaten a new proletarian culture — the culture of Blackpool, of Butlins, Bruce Page and Bruce Forsyth, of Blue Peter and illiterate schoolteachers coaxing their pupils or 'young kids' in the creative use of plasticine. This week I propose to explore an alternative perception, although I shall undoubtedly be returning to the earlier theme, if only because everybody else politely ignores it. In fact, the sinister Irish triumvirate which controls our destinies from Downing Street — Callaghan, Healey and Donoughue — may well suspect that the flames of hell are licking at their ankles as they preside, in alternating fits of cowardice and opportunism, over the destruction of secondary education in Britain. By allowing full rein to the jealousy and spite of their more ignorant supporters, to whom education in any form will always be a reminder of their own failures and shortcomings, they have destroyed any justification they might have advanced before God or History for their miserable, power-seeking existence.
All that remains is to see whether this wretched policy, of using the school and university systems as a means of promoting social equality rather than furthering education, can be reversed. Only last week Mr Gordon Oakes, Minister of State for Education (Widnes Grammar School), was bemoaning the fact that the proportion of working-class (i.e. manual labourers') children entering university has not grown in fifty years. He refused any guarantee that the Government would not introduce a system of 'positive discrimination', saying that he was 'concerned' at figures showing how 50 per cent of university places were taken by 'occupation groups where parents represent only 25 per cent of the population'. I wonder if he is aware that in France, which has the best and most rigorously competitive free education system in the world, not a single child of any skilled or unskilled worker has ever manged to pass from one of the grandes ecoles to the Inspection des Finances.
All of which, might seem to confirm my usual analysis, that, for the middle class, a more sensible posture than bemoaning the existence of the class war is to concentrate on winning it. But while it is easy to see Labour's assault on secondary education in terms of proletarian triumphalism, there is an alternative and far more cheerful interpretation which would see it as the last kick of a dying horse. On this view, the British working class (as represented by What we are now seeing, by this more cheerful interpretation, is the last kick of a pampered animal. Such a view is supported by many students of technology, one of whom, Mr Colin Hines, pointed out only last week that developments in microelectronics threaten to make large sections of the working class redundant. Another, Dr Thomas Stornier, Professor of Science and Society at Bradford University, is more specific. At a European computing conference in Wembley, he forecast that the 'electronic revolution' would make six million unemployed in the United Kingdom by the end of the century — that is, in twentytwo years' time.
Neither pundit cares to guess the number of unemployed if the United Kingdom chooses to defy the electronic revolution, yet that is the course on which we are now set. In order to examine the response of organised labour to this great challenge of our times, perhaps we should take the case of one particular industry, newspaper printing. This may be thought untypical of British industry as a whole since it is protected from foreign competition, but it is less untypical in that under state monopoly most of its jobs will disappear; and under 'siege economy' socialism it will be starved of newsprint. Let us examine how Fleet Street printers are facing the challenges of improved technology.
On this point there is usually a certain shortage of information as newspapers are generally either reluctant or unable to print a detailed account of their internal problems, although Times Newspapers has just revealed loss of revenue through strikes in the first three months of this year of £1,536,000 for the Sunday Times and £824,000 for The Times and supplements; representing a net loss of £1,045,000 and £638,000 respectively. More information is volunteered in the National Association for Freedom's strike-breaking paper The Free Nation, which devotes a special issue to the prob' lems of Fleet Street. Linotype operators and compositors regularly earn betweel £11,000 and £17,000 a year (Financial Times) as against maximum journalistic salaries of £10,200 (Mirror, Express). But that is not the main point. Van drivers, fcr, that matter, are better paid than nine out ut ten journalists, receiving £9,200— or so the writer claims. What pushes the take-hoMe pay of many linotype operators above the level of newspaper editors — the writer, hi his inflammatory way, describes these skilled workers as 'glorified typists without shorthand' — is a system, or rather two systems, of blatant fraud: the 'ghost' workers' and the 'blow-system'. Under the first dispensation (pioneered, they claim, hY the Sunday Times) management agrees te send down pay packets for imaginary work.' ers which are then shared out by the union officials; under the second, management agrees to pay double and triple rates fur imaginary overtime. I would be interested to know how the first fiddle is squared with the tax authorities.
But the most important claim is where the writer estimates that of 3,000 production workers on one (unnamed) newspaPer' 1,800 are surplus on the existing process' 2,300 could be made redundant by bell technology. One would sympathise with the men and certainly oppose the introduction of new technology if they did not insist on overmanning the existing machinery Ofl such a stupendous scale, and being paid 5° exorbitantly for doing it. As things are, the only possible answer to such industrial blackmail is to close down shop — as Times Newspapers have threatened to do. Fur once, the unions are not sure whether the Thomson management is bluffing. The, press may have evolved as a rich man,' luxury, just as most of our heavy industcY steel, cars, shipbuilding — is now the Guv.. ernment's luxury plaything, but these 10 ury occupations require a supporting sub' structure of other people in other oat?: pations who are pulling their weight, andu is in this expectation that they are eventually going to be disappointed now that the Government has put a stop to anythl which might reasonably be called seconcluI/ education. If only secondary education had not beer!, ended, a minority might still be able to wor: while the majority could learn — howeve' unsuccessfully, and with whatever grudgiq expenditure of effort — how to enjoy thitr leisure in the arts, entertainments, ill
erature, music-making and amateur then' ricals. Meanwhile, we can only go on offe,r;
ing these people a little more malted Mittl and nutmeg ale, while standing well clear ot their hindquarters when the inevitable tragedy occurs.
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