Towards counter-revolution
Auberon Waugh
Tory cries that Mr Callaghan ought to have declared a State of Emergency may be ascribed to the ancient and honourable tradition of opponent-baiting or irresponsible opposition, or they might be explained by a natural if mischievous desire to see that Mr Callaghan reaps the whirlwind he has sown, rather than Mrs Thatcher. But I happen to think they come from a deeper confusion, a stirring of some ancient response of outrage which is alarming, at the moment, in its lack of aim or precision, not to say in its stupidity. One may recognise it as the sound of English county families baying for broken glass and rejoice in the memory of similar noises on happier occasions, but I think one would be wrong in that analysis. There is no element in it of knights girding on their armour for battle. It is closer to the cry of frightened old women demanding that somebody else should do something to protect them.
The powers available to government under the Emergency Regulations are so vast that they should be abhorrent to any opposition, let alone a Conservative one, except in a state of war. Perhaps we are in a state of war — a case could certainly be made that the conflict between society and the unions has reached the proportions of civil war, but is it wise, in a state of war, to agitate for vastly greater powers to be made available to the enemy? Is Mrs Thatcher honestly saying that she trusts a frightened and uncourageous Prime Minister, at the mercy of malevolent forces outside his control, to govern by Order in Council? A more sensible posture for the opposition would have been to oppose the State of Emergency with all available force, declaring it to be tantamount, in time of peace, to the declaration of a state of civil war. As soon as civil war is declared the constitution is suspended and people must decide for themselves which side they are on. It is surely time we stopped cowering on the brink of the precipice and took a long look over it.
In all the bleats and cries to Nurse, nobody seems to have prepared a sober assessment of how many heads will need to be broken. how many unruly elements locked away, before Britain can be returned to a workable state of social and industrial discipline. At present. such disciplinarian cries are left to the psychopaths in our midst, with the result that they are not taken seriously, or treated as a mischievous nuisance. But there is surely need to think long and hard about what needs doing, and how it can most effectively be done with the minimum amount of bloodshed and dislocation. To put the problem at its most extreme, any twerp or psychotic could have ordered troops to fire on the Grunwick pickets — to judge from conversations at the time, half the saloon bar population of the country would have done so. The calculations left out of this response are, in the first place, whether the troops would have obeyed the order, in the second place whether another Peterloo of that sort would restore the working class to its traditional attitude of deference, or whether it would have had the reverse effect of bringing about a General Strike and revolution.
All of which may seem too obvious to be worth saying, but before we fall back on an orgy of self-congratulation over how well we have handled these tiresome people in the past we might reflect that Grunwick has no lessons for us today. It was a set-piece public relations exercise for the police and the forces of law and order but the police had neither the resources nor the stomach to hold miniGrunwicks outside every factory, warehouse, depot, hospital, school, public lavatory and cemetery in the country. Nor can the army make more than a token contribution towards keeping what are colourfully described as essential services going. As Mr Callaghan sensibly decided, their presence as lorry-drivers, power workers, hospital orderlies, lavatory attendants and grave-diggers would. be bound to produce more resentment than useful assistance.
But nobody has yet been prepared to draw the inescapable conclusion that if the police or army are to be of any assistance — and they are all that society has got to fall back on — it must be in an offensive, rather than a defensive role.
So, to work. The problem of legal sanctions, as we now know. is that practically no laws on industrial relations are enforceable. It is the old problem of persuading a horse to drink — nothing, short of the Soviet labour camp system, car make someone return to work who doesn't want to. Moreover it is essential that anyone imprisoned in the course of my solution finds himself there for traditional offences against the peace — preferably in common law — rather than under some new-fangled Fair Play At Work legislation. Common law is in fact extraordinarily tough on such offences as Riot. Rout and Unlawful Assembly. But any new laws passed must take this unenforceability into account — in other words, they operate by removing legal protections which already exist. So here goes.
In the first place, anyone taking part in an unofficial strike would automatically dismiss himself from employment, losing all seniority at work, all claims under his employer's pension scheme. if any, most social security rights and leaving himself theoretically open to damage for breach of contract by his union, which would similarly be liable to a civil action for breach of contract by the employers. In all probability none of these actions would ever be pursued, but the effect of their existence would make picketing in furtherance of an unofficial dispute a criminal offence, without any further laws being passed.
Next, one would require a much tighter definition of what is a lawful and official strike. Mrs Thatcher has proposed a government-funded body to supervise strike ballots, possibly along the lines of the Electoral Reform Society. I would extend its function to cover another requirement of an official strike — that it should not be in breach of an existing contract. At present a strike is official if the union says so, but the new dispensation would require both the union and this independent supervisory body to agree.
It goes without saying that Mr Foot's Industrial Relations Act of 1974 would be repealed in its entirety — another good example of what one might call inertia legislation. The right of peaceful picketing would then be confined to a worker's own place of work, but any prosecution of 'flying' or secondary picketers would be under existing common law.
With the disappearance of protection for the closed shop, the workers would tend to divide into unionised and directcontract labour. The unions would take over the function of labour contractors under the lump, negotiating fixed-term contracts for their whole labour force and taking over many of the responsibilities of employers. They would be richer and in a few areas more powerful than they are now, and the fact that membership was voluntary should make them more genuinely democratic and responsive to the wishes of their members.
But of course they won't buy the scheme, and it would be defeated by a General Strike, if the strike call was obeyed. That is why timing is so important. There are bound to be pitched battles with militants, and it is essential that police and soldiers go into them properly equipped, with the determination to break up unlawful assemblies and remove the ringleaders. Tear gas will ensure that these battles are not fun-occasions, and only the highly committed will wish to take part. But above all, the unions must be unpopular and generally blamed for everything that has gone wrong. I should time the fight for next winter.
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