Whom the Gods would destroy?
The Government is now running into very serious trouble indeed. It is a year since the Industrial Relations Act came into force, and last year saw more days lost through industrial action than in the last five years of the Labour Government put together. During this week of the Act's first anniversary, there has been a complete stoppage on the railways, an 80 per cent walk-out of civil servants, selective strikes by teachers, a worsening situation in the supply of gas, and the collapse of Ford pay talks. The industrial situation is likely to get worse. Next week's Budget, if it is to make economic sense, will require the Government to bring its spending into line with its income; a popular Budget, avoiding this, will feed the inflation the Government's Counter-Inflation Bill is purportedly designed to avoid. The Prices and Incomes policy, before it has been enacted, is being attacked by industrialists as well as unions; the bureaucracy is not fitted to enforce it; and such support as it now enjoys among the bewildered public will diminish as the unfairnesses, anomalies and absurdities of the practical consequences of a policy of socialist planning gone mad become obvious and onerous.
Politically, as well as industrially, the situation will get worse before it can get any better. Within the Cabinet and within the Conservative Party there is dissension. The Prime Minister's prestige is badly damaged, but his authority over the Party is likely to remain until senior men within the Cabinet conclude that the Party would be better off without him than with him. There is no indication of this happening so far; and it may never happen. The strong men' in the Cabinet look weaker than they did; and no one makes the running. Much the same remains true within the Labour Party. Both parties, and both leaderships, survive, as cripples propped up by each other's crutches.
The country is likely to conclude, if the industrial situation continues to degenerate, that the Government is misgoverning. No government, whether socialist or conservative, should allow itself to become one or other of the two sides in disputed industrial relations. In the present industrial situation, the Government should be able to intervene in order to conciliate. It cannot do so, because the situation is largely of its own making. This weakens the Government, and would certainly destroy it, were it not for the persistent weakness of the Labour opposition in a political situation largely of its own making. Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. The question is, Which of our once great parties will come to its senses first? Which, first, goes truly mad?
