Political commentary

Wrong clothes stolen

John Grigg

Writing in the Sunday Express on 24 July, Enoch Powell gloated over what he saw as the discomfiture of his old party. There was, he said, 'a new Labour Party, non-planning, non-egalitarian, non-Utopian — the party of. .strength against strength, market force against market force, supply against demand, and the devil take the hindmost'. The return to free collective bargaining would be effected (as the Prime Minister said) 'without undue damage', because inflation would be controlled by restriction of the money supply.

All this was bad news for the Tories, according to Mr Powell. For how could they object to such a policy? 'They will not be the first whose clothes were stolen while they were bathing'. To the Fallen Angel of the radical right the outlook for his former associates and acolytes seemed bleak, and he did not attempt to conceal his satisfaction.

In fact, he was somewhat misrepresenting the Government's policy. Labour ministers have not suddenly turned into nineteenthcentury Liberals, and what now passes for an anti-inflation policy is a combination of monetary control, moralising, opportunism and selective blackmail. But to the extent that the Government has gone the Powellite /Josephite way, the news is not bad for the Tories but almost miraculously good. The clothes that have been stolen are the wrong clothes, and with any luck the Tories will never now have to wear them.

Whatever her natural inclinations and prejudices, and whatever debts she may be thought to owe to those who made her party leader, Margaret Thatcher is above all a realistic politician. She has never cornmitted herself to fighting inflation exclusively by monetary control and 'market forces', or against statutory incomes policy as a last resort, Her options are far more open than most people assume, and she may perhaps be secretly pleased that the most divisive and inequitable of her potential policies is being tried out for her by the Government.

It is hard to believe that she has no inkling of the fallacies inherent in the Powellism (without Powell) which is the economic ideology of those supposedly close to her. She must surely understand that it is absurd to talk of the free play of market forces in an economy which includes large public monopolies, and she must also be well aware of the social implications of letting wages or prices rip.

How, for instance, could any responsible government permit rail fares to go up in proportion to an inflationary wage settlement with the railwaymen? The idea belongs to the realm of fantasy. Millions of people have no choice but to use the railways, and they would blame the Government rather than the unions for any steep increase in fares.

And they would be right to do so, because only the Government has a clear and unqualified duty to protect the general interest. Trade union leaders have their own sectional obligations and cannot be expected to be more patriotic than the Government. On the whole they have shown rather more public spirit than other 'overmighty subjects' in our history, and considerably more than they are given credit for. But it is hardly fair to expect them to 'behave responsibly when the Government has abandoned its proper role.

In a sympathetic article', also in the Sunday Express (7 August), Angus Maude showed insight into the problem of shop stewards now that there is no longer an incomes policy agreed between Government and TUC. Most of them, he said, were sensible enough but subject to great pressures. 'They have been elected to get the best deal they can for their own people; and if they appear to be hanging back, there will always be someone saying that he would be tougher and more successful if he were given the chance'.

Without perhaps intending it, Mr Maude is here stating one of the most powerful arguments in favour of a statutory policy. It is now very much on the cards that the Tories will ievert to such a policy even before the next election, and one consequence of their doing so might be a thorough working reconciliation between Mrs 'Thatcher and Mr Heath.

Some may regard such an apparent change of course as unthinkable. If so, they do less than justice to the virtuosity of politicians, who are very good at finding plausible reasons for acting in accordance with the logic of events, and one of whose favourite devices is to say that they have to do something that they never wanted to do because the bungling ineptitude and/or moral turpitude of their opponents has queered the pitch.

The danger is that Mr Callaghan will move first that he will shed the wrong Tory clothes and don the right ones before the Tories have emerged from the uncertainty in which they are still wallowing. His tactics, obviously, are to exploit to the full his credit with the trade unions, in the hope that against all the odds they will stick to the twelve-month rule and roughly conform' to Mr. Healey's 10 per cent maximum for increased earnings. But if all forms of persuasion fail, it should not be taken for granted that he will merely resign or go to the country. Much will depend upon the opinion of ordinary trade unionists, more especially those — the majority — who are unable to defend themselves in the process misleadingly described as 'free collective bargaining', Mr Callaghan prides himself, with reason, on his responsiveness to feeling within the Labour movement, and his approach over the next few months was well explained by John Cole in an article in the Observer (31 July), clearly based upon a non-attributable talk with the Prime Minister. According to this, Mr Callaghan would be 'maintaining his own sensitive posts within individual unions', and would himself decide 'whether to fight or fudge some pivotal case'.

Ultimately he believed in what he called 'the politics of democracy', which Cole (Callaghan?) defined as judging the public mood over any particular wage claim and responding to that. 'The result ought to be that he never goes into battle with a reluctant army at his back — vide Mr Heath, 1974'.

In fact, it was not Mr Heath's army that was reluctant in 1974, but rather Mr Heath himself, The army was all too ready to go into a battle which it could not win. But that is a detail. The important question is whether or not Mr Callaghan's philosophy of leadership is appropriate to the present time, or to any time.

Of course no leader can afford to move too far ahead of public opinion, and he must always know what is in people's minds and what they desire. But public opinion should never be thought of in isolation from the actions, or inactions, of political leaders. As A. V. Dicey points out in Law and Opinion in England, what Parliament does is itself a major determinant of public opinion, and in our constitution Parliament as a general rule means the Government.

It is not enough, therefore, for a prime minister to sit in Downing Street monitoring reports from listening posts throughout the country, and eventually deciding to act in accordance with what he judges to be the prevalent mood. He must himself contribute to making the mood what he wishes it to be, and in that respect Mr Callaghan has so far conspicuously failed. He may yet surprise us, however, because politics is full of surprises. But whatever he does, Mrs Thatcher is now better placed than she was before July, because the Government is now demonstrating what might have been the error of her ways.

Moreover, even if Mr Callaghan has the courage to switch to an anti-inflation policy , that will work, and as a result brings the British economy through into genuinely brighter times, it does not follow that the voters will show their gratitude to him. It is quite as likely that they will say 'Thank you, Mrs Thatcher', and in any case it is (nib' when brighter times have come that it will be possible to carry out a full-blooded programme of Tory reform.