Biting on the ballot
Most people nowadays think that it was rather ridiculous of their 16th-century ancestors to kill one another over the exact significance of a piece of bread used in church. Will future historians think the debates of the present age about the magical powers of different methods of voting were any more sensible? In his Green Paper on trade union reform, Mr Norman Tebbit discusses the secret ballot, not as a desirable method of registering a vote, but as one of the fundamental rights in any democratic society or organisation.' In fact, of course, free societies can have multiple votes, restricted votes, even, in some cir- cumstances, no votes. People can vote by shouting or waving their hands in public, or through delegates, as well as by marking a cross in a booth. No one method of voting is an essential ingredient of freedom, or even of democracy.
No doubt it is a good political trick for a Tory to lecture the trade unions on democracy. But there is a danger, not perhaps for the wily Mr Tebbit himself, but for the Conservatives generally, that they may come to see democracy and secret ballots as the only things that give legitimacy to public organisations. A ver- sion of this madness has already gripped and nearly broken the Labour Party. If it were to take over the Conservative Party, British liberty and parliamentary govern- ment would be endangered.
If therefore, there is no grand principle which insists on secret ballots for trade unions (as Mr Tebbit clearly recognises there is not by his mistrust of secret ballots for strikes, though not for elections of officers), how might they be justified? Before one can answer this, one has to con- sider exactly whatit is about trade unions in Britain which make them so damaging to society and hence so unpopular.
The instinctive answer is that unions are lazy, stupid, bloody-minded and resistant to change. The instinct is broadly right, but it is' more descriptive than explanatory. These characteristics, not found in unions in many other countries to anything like the same extent, result from the political nature of the trade union movement and from the monopoly power of unions which is often gained through their political power.
It would be a false reading of history to imagine that this state of affairs has mainly come about through labour law. The law never invented trade unions. During the course of the 19th century, it gradually made room for them. It is probably true that the Trades Disputes Act of 1906 over- extended unions' legal immunities, but the real power of unions is not attributable to it. Unions have industrial power because of mass support against which the law can do
very little (there were a great many strikes in both world wars — when they were illegal), and they have political power because they combined to achieve parliamentary representation, and from that built up a party of government.
What labour law did not create, it pro- bably cannot destroy. In the course of the present Government, we have seen far greater success in reducing the power of trade unions than was achieved by Mr Heath's attempts to take the unions to the courts. This collapse has resulted from the recession which has reduced membership and made people much less ready to risk their jobs, and also from the resolute refusal of the Government to treat trade unions as partners in its governing. There has been no incomes policy and therefore no impossible agreements. In areas where the Government is the direct or indirect employer, the Government has (with a few notable exceptions) simply confronted the unions and won. Many union members have realised that their union's political status damages their cause, and that elec- ting a militant leader does not get more money for them. The miners are already longing for a return of Mr Gormley.
Mr Tebbit knows all this perfectly well. That is why he is more cautious with his laws than with his words. His Green Paper, after the preliminary clarion calls, lucidly expounds the difficulties of ballot reform. It leaves only the idea that the governing bodies of unions might be forced to be elected by secret ballots. This would surely be practical, and not oppressive if it is shown that the present system greatly abuses the ordinary member. His desire to change the political levy so that members would have to contract in to pay it will sure- ly have greater practical consequences. It would greatly damage Labour's finances quite justifiably, since the notion that working people should automatically be members of the Labour Party is spurious and would bring calls, which are probably justified, for an equivalent principle in the pc:Ilitical contributions of public companies.
Mr Tebbit's ideas are sensible, but marginal in their likely effects. Far more important is the result of the next election. If Labour losses, the crumbling of a political union movement will surely become a collapse. More and more people will turn away from nationally based unions of any sort towards local bargaining, and the Government should be able to disman- tle the closed shops within its own domain (already that of the railway unions is threatened). This would emancipate union members from the outmoded doctrines of class solidarity and go far to make British politics manageable once more.
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