Driven snow
Sir: Mr Gale (September 7) has argued that the unions are innocent of causing inflation, 'pure white as the driven snow'.
If we take this analysis further, I think we may ask two separate questions. First, do the unions actually cause inflation? On this, I agree entirely with Mr Gale and with Sir Keith Joseph that it is our governments which are largely responsible. In the second place, do the unions comprise too large an agglomeration of power in society? These two questions are not mutually exclusive, but we may consider independently the second (and more interesting) question of whether over-mighty barons or an under-mighty monarch lie at the heart of the trouble.
One school of thought, that represented by Mr Gale (and 1 presume also by Mr Powell) says that power should be centred at Westminster, on the floor of the House of Commons; this I deduce from their opposition to the Brussels bureaucracy. Out of deference to consistency, they ought also to lament the drift of power from the House of Commons to thg unions, the CBI and Congress House that has taken place under both Labour and Tory governments.
On the other hand, an important element in Conservative thought has been a preference for political power to be not centralised, but rather decentralised; in which case a trade union movement of dominating influence is seen as no threat, and the taking of decisions at Congress House or over tripartite talks at Chequers is not viewed with disfavour.
Some weeks ago Mr Cosgrave asked: what are Conservatives to conserve? In the case of the trade unions are we to say that we desire a situation that existed at some ideal time in the past, say 1952, when there was a moderate union leadership, co-operating with the government of the day? But the person who seeks to recreate a golden age is a reactionary. The Conservative conserves what exists in the present; he merely opposes future change. While accepting the reality of the present situation, he fights to prevent any further accretion of power by the unions. Mr Gale waxes eloquent about the unions; I accept the new baronage with a note of pessimism.
Nigel Saul Chairman, Monday Club Universities Group, Hertford College, Oxford
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