The Durham Dogma
On the first of November last year the Labour-controlled Durham County Council decided that all its employees must be members of the appropriate trade unions and took action to enforce the principle of the " closed shop." So began the lament- able comedy which is still dragging itself out. These Labour councillors are nothing if not persistent. First they wrangled with the teachers, who very properly objected to this absurd inter- ference, and it took two sharp letters from the Minister of Education to bring them partly to their senses. In May of this year the Labour group controlling the Council gave way and agreed that the question of union membership should not be raised among school teachers. But no sooner had this unseemly dispute come to end than another took its place. For these zealots of the " dosed shop " insisted that teachers only should be exempt. Meanwhile, the British Medical Association had black-listed the Council because of its " closed shop " policy and also because of its failure to put in effect an industrial court award of higher salaries for school medical officers. Its members were asked not to apply for vacancies advertised by the Council, and four vacancies for assistant school medical officers remained un- filled after five weeks of advertising. At last the Labour group, that dogged and die-hard body, has decided that doctors, like teachers, should not be asked whether they are members of a union. Otherwise the " closed shop " is to remain. The policy has two big cracks in it, but the Labour councillors cling to it as something sacred. They have, at any rate, distinguished them- selves in this, that their mulish obstinacy is the face of righteous indignation and deserved ridicule must be almost without parallel. Was there ever such pointless dogmatism?
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