Another voice
All our problems solved
Auberon Waugh
Montniaur If I have seldom commented on British Leyland in the past this may have been due to a Comparative ignorance of the subject, Which seldom deters the truly dedicated Commentator. But it was also, in part, due to a lack of any extravagant sympathy for either side. It is all very well to make cornPassionate noises about the brutalising effect on workers of mass production techniques in general, and car manufacture in particular, but the truth of the matter is that by now one is dealing with a work-force Which has been well and truly brutalised; and there seems no good reason to urge their further brutalisation by vast increments of money they have done nothing to earn simply to satisfy whatever unpleasing appetites they may have acquired in the fools' paradise of the last five years. Nor could there be any question of sympathising With a management led by Lord Ryder or any of the disastrous generation of proletarian whizz-kids who might have been appointed to succeed him. So, beyond a benign hope that the closure of British Leyland and all its component suppliers would do something to ease the domestic servant Problem in the West Midlands, I have left Well alone.
But a long contemplation of the French scene and careful scrutiny of the Daily Telegraph's airmail editions suggest a new Perspective. First, let me say what a fine newspaper the Daily Telegraph has become since I left it fourteen years ago. Its leader of Saturday 20 August 1977, 'Social Mediocracy', strikes me as one of the clearest journalistic expositions I have read since Peter Jay sold himself to the enemy.
But the Daily Telegraph's conclusion, that the answer is to appeal to trade unionists over the heads of trade union leaders, strikes me as deeply fatuous. It might work in one or two isolated instances, but it disregards the paralysing wetness which has become a major characteristic of the British People since the war (see the interesting article in last week's Spectator entitled 'Le rnal anglais'). Whether this wetness is the product of insane taxation, immoderate welfare arrangements, television or fluoride in the water, need not concern us here. The Important thing is to grasp it as the major Political consideration of our time. British workers for the most part are incapable of defYing their unions — except to push them to further extravagance — for the simple reason that all those who would articulate OF lead such a defiance are already inside the union power structure or to the left of it. What is required — as British Leyland Clearly demonstrates — is an entirely new definition of technological efficiency which takes into account two important developments: that a large part of the workforce does not want to work at all; and that a smaller but significant part of the workforce will always wish to sabotage the efforts of anyone else to work.
In a long and complicated process such as is required to assemble the component parts of a motor-car, this second development is of primary importance. A car might have everything, even down to Dralon fitted carpeting and head-rests of drip-dry Tomalin, but if it lacks a starting button it is as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And if the little man whose job it is to supply the starting button is suffering from marriage problems, or has decided to make a protest about conditions in Chile, or simply wants more money, then and under present arrangements, 25,000 other people in the production line must be laid off.
Other countries have ways of dealing with this problem. The Germans have laws requiring workers to abide by their employment contracts and wage agreements; for some reason — possibly it is an inalienable national characteristic, possibly the result of guilt for their atrocious treatment of the Jews — German workers are obedient to their laws. American workers are so money-mad that they are prepared to work for the stuff. In the Renault plants they have a special Factory Police with tin helmets and twelve-inch batons. Recalcitrant workers are clubbed, removed or, on rare occasions, drowned. (One of my cars is a Renault, another — the huge one with a wireless that works is made by Peugeot. So is the small mobilette I drive in France. I would no sooner buy a British car than other people would buy South African oranges. But that is only a point of view.) The problem in Britain is that we are too wet to enforce industrial discipfine even if we dared pass the necessary laws in the first place. British workers may not care too much about money, but they feel deeply sentimental about. their standard of living, and expect it to rise every year. The trouble is that they expect this rise in their living standard as of right, in compensation for the grave indignity of being working-class, and do not associate it in their minds with any increase in productivity on their own part. Rather the reverse, in fact. Greater productivity suggests greater indignity, as well as the risk of doing another worker out of his job.
Now of course these attitudes have got to change. But it is no good expecting them to change as a result of trenchant leading articles in the Daily Telegraph, and it is no good expecting anything to change as a result of a government passing laws, since resistance to change is one of the most deeply embedded and sanest characteristics of the British people. Probably events will have to take their course until there is virtually no employment, no production and very little food. Then there must be change. Eventually these attitudes can be accommodated only in a system where everyone is self.. employed, everyone on piecework, all labour is casual and every worker cultivates as many skills — or what may pass for skills in our era — as he can. Only then will nobody have to suffer the indignity of being employed, the saboteurs will be confounded, and attitudes to work will once again find themselves in relation with material expectation.
But such delights can only come after the collapse of our present society, and no sane person welcomes the collapse of an existing order, however asinine it may be. So I really think it is time that industrialists redefined what they mean by technological efficiency to take account of the recalcitrant human element. This does not mean giving the workers brighter canteens or pastel-shaded retiring rooms. It means reducing and so far as possible removing the interdependence of stages in production. Components must be stockpiled and production must continue even if it is only for the stockpile. Greater reliance should be placed on a greater number of small sub-contractors in competition with each other. Where subcontractors are unable to deliver because of industrial disputes, they must be made bankrupt and the plant sold.
'If we are called upon to work at the same level as Continentals we should get the same rates of pay,' says Mr Derek Robinson, the Leyland shop stewards convenor. Yes, indeed. But there is no question of Englishmen working at the same level as Continentals. With the same machinery doing the same job, the British car worker produces less than half his French or German equivalent, according to the Government's own 'Think Tank' report. The only way of staying in business under the present system is to pay him much less, and let the currency devalue every time he gets a pay rise, thereby impoverishing us all.
The plain truth is that nobody wants to work any harder or sees any point in it. Apart from awaiting our doom in as genial a frame of mind as possible, the best thing we can do is to try and convert foreigners to the British workers' point of view. So far, we seem to have converted Australia, but that is not enough. Hasn't it occurred to the Government that British Leyland workers might need a rest after all their strenuous wage demands? Parties of them should be sent by the British Government in charA-bancs to Detroit, Milan, Hamburg and wherever else cars are made. Being British char-h-bancs they will fall to pieces on arrival, and leave their cargoes to spread the good news of our British way of life in paribus in fidelium,
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