The press
Doubts about Tebbit
Paul Johnson
The SDP leadership would be well advised, in shaping their policy on the unions, to pay particular attention to the woes of Fleet Street. Here is an area in which they have a real opportunity to out- trump Mrs Thatcher and win themselves a lot of grateful friends. For the unpleasant truth is that, after more than three years of a Tory government elected and pledged specifically to put the unions in their place, Fleet Street is almost as vulnerable as ever to tiny groups of ultra-left militants, and union threats to the freedom of,the press multiply on all sides.
Consider the issue raised by the electri- cians' 24-hour stoppage and the Sean Geraghty case. That stoppage cost the newspapers £2 million and substantially ad- ded to the pressures which imperil many thousands of jobs on national newspapers; it damaged the interests of newsagents, `Adultery is now OK, and I'm also loving my neighbour.' advertisers and other groups. By any stan- dards it was a weighty affair. The newspaper publishers were able to use the 1980 (Prior) Act to get injunctions against named union officials who planned the stoppage. But the injunction failed, because the electricians defied it. When the publishers brought the electricians' leader, Sean Geraghty, back to court, he produced evidence showing the difficulty of rescin- ding a strike decision at short notice. Mr Justice Leonard decided: 'I don't think that the degree of blame that attached to him is very high in the particular circumstances of this case. I do not see this breach as a very serious one because of the difficulties sur" rounding it.' So he fined him £350 or, in default, a week in prison. The dispropor- tion between a £350 'punishment' and inflic- ting damage of £2 million is ludicrous and illustrates the feebleness of the Prior Act. In theory I suppose the publishers (and . others) could sue Geraghty for civil damages; but the chances of their recover- ing their losses would be nil, the procedure would smack of persecution and the only predictable result would be further disrup- tion of the presses. Geraghty can, and does, claim a political victory. At last Tuesday's branch meeting of the Fleet Street electricians, he explained how he saw it. He said that the cost to the publishers of the one-day strike was what they were having to pay for publishing £85,000-worth of government adver- tisements dealing with the NHS dispute. `They have paid £2 million to put that inac- curacy right', as he put it. To summarise: newspapers, in a perfectly legal manner, print a government advertisement. A union official, acting unlawfully in defiance of a court order, 'fines' them £2 million. In punishment he is fined £350, which others will undoubtedly pay for him. It would be
difficult to think of a procedure more calculated to bring into contempt not mere- !Y the wretched Prior Act but the whole Judicial process of this country. (I leave aside the other and in some ways more serious issue of contempt raised by the threats of the print unions to bring pressure on the court by striking if Geraghty fails to Pay the fine and is imprisoned.)
So the Prior Act is no good. What of the new Tebbit Bill, due to become law this autumn? It was hoped that it would do the trick with such stoppages, because it allows the injured or threatened party to Proceed (in the case of an unlawful strike) ,11°r merely against named union officials, but
against the union itself and its funds. Had the law been in force when the electri- cians stopped the presses, the newspaper publishers could have dunned the wealthy
ETPlj, and possibly got its £2 million hack. In more realistic terms, the Tebbit Bill should strip Geraghty and his like of their power. For if they act in defiance of the law, and in defiance of their union, the fact that they would now, under Tebbit, im- peril union funds would give unions an overwhelming incentive to expel them. flee expelled, they can of course be sacked by the newspapers which employ them, and electricians prepared to behave lawfully hired instead. In theory then the Tebbit Bill should act as a real deterrent against ir- responsible and destructive behaviour by militants.
Unfortunately, the Tebbit Bill may not be watertight. Clause 15 states that unions are not liable for damage caused by the Unofficial actions of their members unless such actions were 'authorised or endorsed' by a responsible person. As the Bill defines a responsible person as the main executive committee of the union and other persons eMPowered by the rules to authorise or en- dorse industrial action, the category may be limited to full-time paid officials or corn- inittees regularly attended by such officials. Geraghty, of course, is not a union official in this sense: he is paid by the Daily Mirror, though in practice most of his time is spent °n union work. If, therefore, the courts in- terpret Clause 15 accordingly and rule out .?eraghty as a respoible person, then the tebbit Bill is no goonsd either. For all the union then has to do to escape liability is to repudiate the strike publicly and make clear
is unauthorised — which is exactly what
slid Chapple, the boss of the EETPU, uid in this case. So we are back where we started.
It is already clear that we need a third trade union Bill in this parliament. Mrs thatcher herself is keen. The pressure on the Cabinet to provide one will increase if the SDP takes a hard line, for on the whole explosive issue of getting the unions back ‘virhin the law the two parties are corn- Peting for the same voters in many 1arginals. This is one area in which the ,_P has a real chance to influence policy before the next election, especially if it un- equivocally embraces the issue of press freedom. Labour and the unions are mov- ing rapidly towards censorship and control. The hatred the Labour Left feel for the free press of this country was brutally illustrated in a recent article in Labour Weekly by Michael Meacher MP, which accused na- tional newspapers of what he termed the systematic distortion of reality, suppression of news, conspiracies of silence, and togeyfication'. The 'reform' of the press, he claimed, 'should be one of the top priorities of the next Labour government'. In the meantime, Clive Jenkins, the boss of ASTMS, is to ask the TUC at its annual conference next month to 'monitor' all those who write about the unions with a view to compiling a blacklist of 'bitter and mercenary journalists'. The more un- popular and isolated the Left becomes, the more it turns against the instruments which measure the process. The Tories are being very dozy on this issue, thus providing the SDP with the chance to collar it.
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