An end to free lunches
In his newly published book — reviewed elsewhere in this issue by Professor Robert Skidelsky — Mr Alex Rubner asks what is the 'Price of a Free Lunch'. This seemingly jocular phrase is, in a sense, the central political question of the Especially is that true in this country. The whole industrial world has suffered grave setbacks in this decade and is now facing, in the words of the communique issued after last week's European Community meeting in Strasbourg, 'a large-scale economic and social crisis'. But if the setbacks have been aggravated in Great Britain — as they have — and if the crisis takes a peculiarly severe form here — as it may — then that is a calamity largely of our making. For the central illusion of post-war British politics — one might add of British industry and society — is that things are free. An elaborate welfare state can be supported by an idle and unproductive economy; if people cannot find useful and necessary employment then work will be created for them; incompetently managed enterprises will be saved from the bankruptcy which is their proper fate: it's all free. At last that illusion is coming to an end. This week has seen several straws in the wind. The Post Office has long conducted itself, in the best British tradition, on the basis that its first duty was to serve its own interests and the interests of its employees, rather than those of its customers. What was once an exemplary postal service has deteriorated to the point where no-one can rely on the delivery of a letter, even across London, even in several days. The Post Office management complacently asks us not to post letters. The postal workers' union has valiantly battled not for higher real wages for its members but for a I ess efficient service, with no collections on Sundays and ever fewer deliveries. When the union at last makes a rational agreement under which its members will be better paid in realm for higher productivity its members repudiate the agreement. The while, these postal workers believe (understandably) that their employment is permanently protected: it's free. The Post Office's legal monopoly of Postal services might be justified — just — if the old standards had been maintained. As they have not, the monopoly is intolerable and Sir Keith Joseph is right to suggest that it may be ended. On the same day that Sir Keith spoke, Mrs Thatcher had some polite but blunt words to say to the Economic Committee of the TUC. She wanted Great Britain to become a high-wage society but said that the only route to that goal was higher output, was to bring industrial productivity in this country more closely in line with the level of productivity in our competitors' economies. The Prime Minister chose the right audience for this homily. The unions have understandably become a bogey, but they are blamed for the wrong things. Unions cannot cause inflation (though they can cause unemployment). It is not the unions which have destroyed the currency, but it is thanks to their obsession with restrictive practices, with over-manning, with in effect low productivity that England has become and has remained a low-wage economy. The unions cannot be blamed alone. They do not exist in a social vacuum. Like everyone else they have been led to believe that money is free, that reward is not casually related to effort.
The news from OPEC, though alarming, may also prove to be no bad thing in the long run. The West as a whole, led by the Americans, has far too long behaved as if oil too were free, that it would continue to flow in unlimited quantities at low prices. The citizens of the oil-producing countries see it differently. That was the message of the deposition of the Shah. Oil supplies are finite and there is no morally imperative reason why those countries which possess them should sell as much oil as the West requires, at a price which suits it, simply to satisfy Western gluttony. As Great Britain has become the lucky possessor of oil supplies of her own she should lead the way, and show that here as elsewhere the laws of supply and demand operate, however painful the fact maybe to President Carter. British industry is learning, the unions are learning, the industrial world as a whole is learning the age-old truth that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Previous page
