Spectator's Notebook
WHAT 011 earth is the Government playing at over the seamen's strike? Take the de- cision to appoint a court of inquiry into the dis- pute. In the first place, it seems extraordinary to appoint a court of inquiry without making it conditional on a return to work. But why a court of inquiry at all? This is simply a. return to the old, old system of settling industrial disputes which proved so inflationary that the economi- cally-sophisticated and productivity-conscious Prices and Incomes Board set up instead.
Now. I've always been sceptical of the Prices and Incomes Board's activities on the wage front proper. But—or so it's always seemed to me—the great justification of the activities of Mr Aubrey Jones and his colleagues is that they can (and do) use the occasion of a wage claim to turn the spotlight on an entire industry with a view to exposing its failures on the productivity front, which is what really matters. There could be no better candidate for this sort of inquiry than ship- ping. For here, par excellence, is the case of an international industry, whose prices are deter- mined by world conditions, which can only pay higher wages either by increasing its producti- vity or by being given a state subsidy. Indeed, Mr Jones should have been asked to look at the shipping industry months ago, before the dispute ever got to the point of a strike.
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