Political commentary

From one Grantham to another

John Grigg

'Hello,' said a kindly, bespectacled, rather harassed-looking man to eighty - two- year-old William Fry, standing at his front gate in Cooper Road, Willesden, NW.

'Who are you then?' demanded Mr Fry.

'I'm the Home Secretary,' replied Merlyn Rees — for it was he, visiting the class-war battlefield of Grunwick on 27 June.

So at any rate their exchange was reported, and Mr Fry was further quoted as saying to Mr Rees: 'I've been a trade union- ist since 1912, and I've never been so dis- gusted with your lot. My old man and me fought to put a Labour government into power, and look what you and your lot have done now. You'll be buried at the next gen- eral election.'

Opinions may differ as to the advisability of personal visits by Home Secretaries to scenes of public disorder. When Winston Churchill put in an appearance at the 'battle of Sidney Street' two yedrs before Mr Fry joined a trade union, he was much criticised for publicity-seeking and hindering the police. But one thing can be said with abso- lute certainty about Churchill at Sidney Street. Nobody asked him who he was.

Mr Rees has a regrettable talent for exposing himself to insult, and he lacks the combination of firmness and flair which senior ministers must have if they are to dominate events. When he visited the recent Police Federation conference at Scarborough he was scragged in the street and treated with gross discourtesy inside the hall. But he did not react, as a more adroit politician might have done, in such a way as to turn the tables on his opponents.

It did not occur to him, as policemen were walking out or ostentatiously reading news- papers during his speech, to throw down his notes and say: 'All right, if that's how offic- ers of the law propose to behave to the Home Secretary, I'll have nothing more to do with this conference. It doesn't in the least matter to me what you think of me as an individual, but I won't have the office of Home Secretary treated with contempt. Goodbye, gentlemen.'

Had he made such a gesture the media would have been bound to show him in an advantageous, and the police in a very dis- advantageous, light. As it was, he appeared pathetic, which is the last thing a political leader should ever seem to be. And he was pathetic again in his encounter with Mr Fry.

When, nearly a year ago, Mr Callaghan had to find a Successor to Roy Jenkins, I suggested in this commentary (24 July 1976) that he would be wise to appoint Anthony Wedgwood Benn to the Home Office. Thus, it seemed to me, he would both weaken the left by promoting one of its supposed leaders to a position where he would be tied to law and order, and at the same time provide himself and the country with a Home Secretary of the necessary toughness, lucidity and demagogic skill.

Unfortunately, Mr Callaghan did not take my advice! And he must now have considerable doubts about the choice he made. If Mr Benn were Home Secretary, it is unlikely that relations 1:etween the Gov- ernment and the police would have been allowed to fall to the low point that they have reached, and quite certain that Mr Fry of Willesden would have known who was talking to him.

The Grunwick affair is obviously a trap for the Government, but it is also — though perhaps rather less obviously — a trap for the Opposition. Failure to deal drastically with mass picketing and exploitation of the immediate issue by the extreme left makes the Government appear weak and involves it in a sort of guilt by association. It iden- tifies Labour in the public mind with bully- boy fringe elements and with what many regard as a trade union assault on personal liberty.

For the Conservatives it is all too easy to blow Grunwick up into a major issue of principle, in which the overweening claims of trade unionism are said to be in conflict with the inalienable rights of the individual. But the temptation to do so must be resisted, because the local rights and wrongs are not so simple, and above all because it would be disastrous for the Conservative Party to adopt an anti-union stance. Indeed, it is of supreme importance at this time that the Party should go out of its way to prove that it is the unions' friend.

So far as the actual Grunwick dispute is concerned, readers of last week's Spectator will have read with interest the report from 'a correspondent', who said that many immigrants were 'prepared, even anxious, to work in what the British would call unpleasant conditions for what the British would call inadequate wages', and added: 'Of course one might wish to raise their conditions and pay to those considered of British standard. But such an argument ignores the fact that our industry is now in competition with firms in parts of the world like India, China, Korea and communist Europe where people work harder than we do for less money.'

Surely that argument ignores the fact that immigrants employed at Grunwick are British, and must be encouraged to conform to British standards. Besides, whatever may be true of textiles, for instance, it cannot be true of Grunwick's line of business that it is in competition with India, China etc. British

people will not go to Delhi or Hong Kong to have their films processed.

In general, moreover, the level of wages in Britain is not high by comparison with that of most industrialised nations that are in competition with us. What is wrong with our industry is not the high level of wages, but the low level of productivity. British trade unions are right to campaign against anything in the nature of sweated labour, even when a majority of the workers involved accept it. Our unions should work for high wages and high production.

The Tory Party will be badly placed to insist upon the latter point if it seems to be encouraging people not to join trade unions. Yet that is precisely what it is in danger ofseemingto do over Grunwick. The pickets who really count are not those who have recently come in on the act to advance their own revolutionary cause, but those who have been patiently, doggedly and in small numbers standing outside the Grun- wick factory over a period of ten months. Their cause is a good cause, which Tory politicians should be as ready as Labour politicians to support.

Mass picketing by outsiders, which has so incensed Mr Fry and the general public, is of course a monstrous abuse. But it does not follow that the best way to deal with it is to prosecute thousands of left-wingers, who have been converging on Grunwick with that and above all in view. The most effec- tive weapons to use against them are psy- chological and political, not legal. And the same also goes for the postmen.

The Mr Frys of this world may not dis- tinguish between the trouble-makers and the local strikers, and may condemn, them all, and the Labour Party with them, to per- dition. Such comments are •often made in the heat of the moment, and in the sym- pathetic presence of pressmen and cameramen. But it would be foolish to assume that the Labour Party will be 'buried' at the next election, merely because Mr Fry says so.

Many Tories are instinctively hostile to trade unions, just as many Labour people are instinctively hostile to privately owned businesses. Both forms of prejudice are deplorable and against the national interest. It is essential that the Tory Party's leading members should suppress any anti-union feelings that they may have, and that they should not appeal to anti-union sentiment in the country — which might possibly help them to win an election — but which there- after might well destroy their chances of governing successfully.

Mrs Thatcher, more especially, has to get rid of the anti-union prejudice which lurks not far below the surface of her political nature. The shopkeeping, country-town world of Grantham in which she was brought up is far removed from that of Roy Grantham, general secretary of APEX. But unless she can move, in spirit, from one

Grantham to' the othe ,;'l ' - the Tory Party the wror" most critical