Who needs the TUC?
Peter Paterson
The grim reality of life under the Tories hit the Trades Union Congress hard last week. Not because of lengthening dole queues — though the unions know that they are on the way — nor even the prospect of next autumn's pay round, which promises to be bloody. It was simply that, last week, they were experiencing the bitter frustration of the fallen favourite: denied the access to the throne of government which is the only way — short of rebellion — that influence can be exerted. But since the TUC is accustomed to the foppish ways of the indolent court of Labour, the road to rebellion seems even more unappetising than facing further rebuffs at the hands of the new monarch. The drill used to be a familiar one to the researchers at Congress House. Weeks before the Budget a memorandum was drawn up for the attention of the Chancellor. In due course it was submitted, and with Denis Healey at the Treasury some aspect of TUC economic policy was more likely than not to find its way into the Budget proposals. But now all this has changed. The TUC's Budget thoughts might just as well have gone straight into their own wastepaper basket, for all the effect they had. But the manoeuvre also used to have a second stage, which was usually acted out in the week following the Budget. The members of the TUC Economic Committee — the most august and the most senior of the General Council — climbed into their Rovers and were driven to 10 Downing Street to offer their opinion on the Budget.
And so, hard on the heels of Sir Geoffrey Howe's economic gamble (the views of the TUC happen this time to coincide with those of the City editors), Mr Len Murray pressed the button for the second stage, putting in a formal request for an audience with the Prime Minister. But Mrs Thatcher refused to play by the conventional rules. Instead of inviting them round with the usual alacrity, she indicated that she was in no particular hurry to meet the TUC at all. Her message to the astonished union leaders was that it might be convenient for her if they could wait until after her return from the Tokyo economic summit. Advised that this was perhaps too brutal a rebuff, she finally agreed to meet them next week.
But to make matters worse every other member of the Government is anxious to behave like Mrs Thatcher. The union 'heavies' no longer find the doors of Whitehall opening ahead of them. A new standard of precedence and correctness applies, and Ministers are not prepared to drop everything else to fit union consultative sessions into their schedules.
Mr Jim Prior, Secretary for Employment, provides the most obvious contrast for those union men who were around in the heady days of early 1974, when Mr Michael Foot occupied that office. Mr Foot kept the CBI kicking their heels in the ante-room while he and the TUC busied themselves with the dismantling of the Heath government's Industrial Relations Act, and its replacement with what seemed — before Lord Denning unravelled the whole thing — a veritable cornucopia of pro-union legislation.
Mr Prior, on the other hand, rarely sees more than one union leader at the time. He has certainly seen Mr Murray — alone — but he has indicated that he is not yet ready for a collective encounter with Mr Murray's colleagues, at least until he is ready to unveil his scheme for reforming union law.
But, as anyone might have predicted, it is Mr Michael Heseltine who can take Mrs Thatcher's abrasive style and turn it into a studied insult. He decided, as a necessary prelude to a press conference he wished to call to announce a ban on recruitment in local government, to inform the unions concerned. Unfortunately, two of the largest, the National Union of Public Employees and the General and Municipal Workers, were holding their annual conferences in Scarborough and Torquay respectively. There is some dispute over whether an invitation was sent to these two unions at all, but what was apparent was that even with the best will in the world, neither could get to London in time to attend Mr Heseltine's meeting.
With an urgency which predicates an entirely different, and altogether swifter in its decision-making, system of local government than we actually have, the Minister decided to go ahead without them. It was all too clear that he had no intention of consulting the unions, or even of seeking their views. has flourished every since.
So, just what is it that the Government is trying to tell the unions? The first, and most obvious, message is that the 'good old days' are over, that social-democratic corporatism is dead (significantly, the CBI is also finding access to government restricted), and that it is time for union leaders to mind their own shop rather than the government's. There are, of course, a number of union leaders who will be glad to spend less of their time around Whitehall. Any inquest into the last, strife-torn days of the Labour administration is bound to conclude that, in attaching themselves too closely to the government, union leaders lost prestige, and sometimes contact, with their rank and file members. They are prepared to admit they were wrong to allow themselves to be bound quite so tightly into the government machine by Wilson and Callaghan, spending weary hours attending meetings of the NEDC with its multifarious 'working parties', having to share economic responsibility with the Cabinet through the Liaison Committee, and serving on every Whitehall board and commission and committee in sight.
However, to remove the unions from Whitehall is one thing: to downgrade, ignore or insult the TUC is quite another. Certainly, TUC morale is low — as is its authority. There is still too much remorse over the union role in Labour's defeat, and the debate over the proper posture of trade unions who feel persecuted by the actions of the Tory Government — popular mandate or no — is still in its interesting early stages. Hence the entertaining row between Mick McGahey and Joe Gormley in the upper reaches of the miners' union, and the studied ambivalence of Mr Murray's latest utterances.
But once these early, heady days of decisive government are over, the permanent opposition which the trade union movement naturally represents will still have to be dealt with. Mrs Thatcher seems inclined to force unions and employers to confront each other with little or no government intervention: you've built up the machinery, you know the economic facts — settle your own quarrels.
But nothing works as simply as that. The real underlying message is that the unions will be forced by an aloof and unapproachable government's economic policy to choose between higher wages and fewer jobs. And once that argument really heats up, Mrs Thatcher and her Ministers are going to find that they are badly in need of the TUC.
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