Trigger-happy
All this week the most significant industrial scene in Britain has been the silent and deserted railway freight terminal at Strat- ford, in cast London, where the National Union of Railwaymen has been doing its utmost to strangle at birth one of the few hopeful and expansionary developments in recent railway history.
There has for years been a more or less annual ritual about the railways. It involves protracted negotiations between the men and the management, punctuated by the repeated appearance upon the television screen of Mr Sidney Greene, uttering joyless bulletins with an air of lugubrious relish; and then either a strike, ending in a face-saving compromise, or a face-saving compromise arrived at, thanks usually to ministerial intervention, at the eleventh hour.
The nation's sheer familiarity with this ritual may lead some to suppose that this week's struggle between NUR and manage- ment is another in the same category: whereas in fact the Stratford dispute is no mere haggle, but a quarrel over a funda- mental issue which from the start has threatened a major prospect of growth for the industry.
The railways saw a good chance, by cash- ing in on the increase in container traffic, of winning back an important slice of the freight which has been lost over the years, and this expensive new terminal was con- ceived as part of a much larger programme of expansion which was intended to play a crucial part in the railways' future. Instead, so far it has done nothing but draw atten- tion to the profoundly unsatisfactory con- dition of the railway industry. No wonder Mrs Castle has called the affair 'tragic.'
The minister said that the NUR'S demand for exclusive rights to all the jobs at the terminal—regardless of the presence there as tenants of a group of essential shipping agents—introduced a 'totally new' principle. So it did, and a principle which would wreck the entire proposed structure of the new 'inland port.' The underlying tragedy, how- ever, Mrs Castle not only failed to mention but in fact appeared to deny: namely, that after several years of preparation this cen- tral fact about the operation of the terminals should have failed utterly to get across to the men involved. 'I am satisfied that the fullest consultation has taken place at every stage,' intoned Mrs Castle, affected perhaps by the ritualistic nature of so much in the transport field; and, 'the chairman of the railways board has leaned over back- wards in making concessions.' This picture of frequent, even incessant, consultation and conciliation is marred by only one fact: the exercise was a total failure.
Since railwaymen are not a mere bunch of luddite recalcitrants, and since the rail- way management is not uniquely tyrannical or indifferent to its employees' feelings, the explanation of this failure must be that be- tween the two communication has miserably failed. The men have simply not taken the management seriously. They remembered, no doubt, how governments tend to step into their quarrels to offer some sweetener to prevent the ultimate disruption: they foresaw that once again if they were bloody-minded enough they would win something. The fundamental objection to their case was not conveyed.
Thus a brave new venture was launched on a sea of disbelief and illusion. This is bleak enough, but considered in relation to the horrible economic future which lies ahead of the railways, it Is frankly appalling.
Mrs Castle was plainly right to take a hard line with the tqua on Monday, even if it ought to have been made to receive the message a tong time ago. No concession could honestly be made by a government committed as the present one is—not least to the redeployment of labour.
`Railwaymen in general are trigger-happy at the moment,' one of the regional general managers said on Tuesday. The lesson of this week's mess is that neither the railway management, nor the men's leaders, nor the politicians, have yet succeeded in making dear to the railwaymen that the gun is pointed at themselves.
Previous page
