Compromise, not confrontation: amending the Industrial Relations Act
The Government and the trade unions are showing signs of pulling back from the brink; and a good thing, too. Last week's passions have been succeeded by this week's deliberations: jaw-jaw has been preferred to war-war, and although the industrial situation, and the Government's relation to it, are far from sound, neither situation nor relation is as shaky and dangerous as each was a week ago. Both the Government and the trade unions have considered, and looked at fairly squarely, the prospect of war; and both, sensibly, have flinched, and have somewhat withdrawn. Nevertheless, the present positions of the Government and the trade unions, if not exactly eyeball to eyeball, are too close and too hostile for comfort; and it is quite clear that, unless both parties give way further, which is to say retreat further back, any one of countless unpredictable industrial or legal incidents could provide the provocation leading to the outbreak of a declared or undeclared industrial war.
It ought not to be necessary to say that such a war would be an unmitigated disaster; but necessary it is. There are voices raised within the Conservative Party which say, "Let them have their general strike. Let us seize this opportunity to smash the unions. The people will put up with all the inconvenience. They will back us against the unions. If necessary, the Government will then be able to go to the country on a 'Law and Order' ticket, the Conservative Party will be returned with an overwhelming majority, and the overweening power of the trade unions will have been destroyed for ever." This kind of nonsense is not only being muttered and uttered up and down the country, but can also be heard from some of the more heroic Conservative back-benchers. Even if the basic proposition, that a general election fought on such an issue would produce a government victory at the polls, were to be accepted as correct (and it is very doubtful that it is so), any such victory would be pyrrhic — one more such and all would be lost. The Prime Minister took the opportunity given him by a television broadcast to make it clear that he envisages no such election; and he was right to do so. A general election on such an issue would, if won by the Tories, or if lost by the Tories, estrange the trade unions from the Conservative Party for a generation and could easily preclude the possibility of any fruitful or even useful Conservative government.
We also hear somewhat similar noises prophesying and welcoming industrial war from the Left. Here, two distinct voices may be discerned from out of the general Babel. There is, first, the voice of the true believing fanatic, who genuinely wishes industrial war because he enjoys the prospect of anarchy which such war will open up; because he genuinely wishes to destroy not only the Conservative but also the present Labour Party; because he seeks to wreck the country's institutions by revolution. This voice, which belongs to Communists, Trotskyists, anarchists, Maoists and the like, is noisy, is heard more and more frequently, carries considerable weight at mass meetings and in certain factories, areas and parts of the communications business, but is entirely without representative strength or electoral potential. It is a harlot's voice, shrill, irresponsible, trivial, and need not be taken too seriously. The second voice, which is that of the left, or socialist, wing of the Labour Party and the trade unions, is altogether more important and more weighty for it possesses both representative strength and electoral potential, and it is, essentially, a responsible voice. It makes a brutal kind of political sense for this voice to advocate a general election or any other course' of events which will have the effect of separating the Conservative Party from the great mass of trade unionists. Just as it is political nonsense for the Right to advocate policies of confrontation, which cannot but damage the Conservative Party electorally in anything but the short run, so is it political sense for the Left to seek to trap the Right into such confrontation. And since this voice of the Left is responsible, in that it seeks to achieve power through representative and electoral means, and has therefore a vested interest in the maintenance of law and order, and is utterly opposed to the revolutionary or wrecking Left, what it is saying needs very much to be taken seriously.
On the specific issue of the Industrial Relations Act the Labour Party is, as usual, disunited and disordered: once again, things are being made exceptionally easy for the Government. In last week's debate on the industrial situation Mr Wilson and Mr Prentice expressed the party's official line which is, in Mr Wilson's words, "that the law must be obeyed, even manifestly bad law "; this was repeated by Mr Prentice, shadoW spokesman, who said as clearly as his leader, "We think that this is a bad law and that it should be changed but that in the meantime it should be obeyed." The left, or socialist, wing of the Labour Party and, it would seem, many powerful trade unionists, have a different view, expressed by men like Mr Wedgwood Benn and Mr Norman Atkinson who said, in the same debate, "We are selective about the law, accepting some laws and rejecting others." Mr Atkinson argued that " The Government are making the rules as they go along. They have set up what was rightly described by my right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition as a puppet court and it is presided over by a puppet judge. It is an extension of the political system, and that is why we reject the law emanating from that court. Its laws are political laws." Mr Prentice used strong language to accuse the Government — the member for East Ham declared: The Government have put on the Statute Book an Act which millions of people regard as stupid, offensive, divisive and unfair and their opinion of the Act will lead some of those people to break the law. I do not defend their breaking the law; I am merely saying it will happen. When it happens, the overall respect of this country for the law as a whole will be lessened. The Government are the wreckers; they are the people who are bringing the law of the country into disrepute.
But this attack evades the Left's policy of confrontation, as put forward by Mr Atkinson, who dismissed Mr Prentice's view "when he says that at all times all laws must be dbeyed and courts must be obeyed." Mr Atkinson went on: That is not the majority view throughout the trade union movement; that is not the view held by the TUC; it was not the view expressed at the special conference at Croydon; it was not the view endorsed by the TUC at Blackpool. It was not the view taken by the Finance and General Purposes Sub-Committee on three occasions since then. The TUC policy has always been non-cooperation with this court ... Non-cooperation plainly means disobeying decisions.
The confrontation the Left publicly seeks and the Right privately desires could well be disastrous for the country, although neither those on the left or on the right who want such confrontation think so. Those seeking confrontation, whether from right or from left, believe that the fight will be worth it and that their class and the country will benefit through the results of the war. There are excellent historical precedents for disobeying 'bad' laws, just as there are for enacting political or class-biased laws; and the present running debate on industrial relations in the country is not usefully assisted by over-simplified references about the absolute necessity for the law to be obeyed: in the past, judges, juries, politicians and the public at large have not hesitated to overrule, refuse to convict on, neglect or disobey laws regarded as bad. Great tracts of law have been allowed to fall into disuse. Those who seek confrontation, whether from left or from right, Will not be prevented from pursuing their policies by considerations to do with the 'sanctity' or ' inviolability ' of all our laws or of the Law.' Politicians, trade unionists and others who seek to avoid confrontation will have to depend upon better arguments than those which have to do with the public's supposed respect, at all times and under all circumstances, for each and every law. As Mr Jeremy Thorpe said, "the law of the mandate does not override the law of what is practicable and acceptable "; and it is difficult to dispute Lord Devlin's contention that There's a distinction you see between making a law which judges have to interpret and apply and between putting the court in a Position as if it were identifying itself with the law. . That's what dislike, it's a political matter and it should be kept as a political matter . . . if the impression is given that somehow there is a court created which has got to make the Act work, that it's got to get the thing through somehow, well that's bad for the law.
Moreover those whose policy is to avoid confrontation can hardly depend upon the Law' providing a remedy when it is Precisely a law — the Industrial Relations Act — which has proved to be capable of providing almost at the will of any Party ostensibly seeking industrial peace or industrial justice or industrial fair play, the provocation of a major confrontation.
The Left need not, and will not, bother much about 'the Law' in the pursuit of its policy of confrontation; but will, in practice, rely upon the law in the shape of the Industrial Relations Act to produce a situation in which a general, or not much less damaging specific, strike will be called as a means of defeating the Government or compelling it to call and to fight a general election which will complete the estrangement of the Conservative Party from the organised working class. In this endeavour, the Left has the practical assistance of the Industrial Relations Act in its present form, and of tile Industrial Relations Court if its previous form is to be relied upon. The other principal allies of the Left are those of the Right who also seek the same confrontation, but who believe that its outcome will be the effective destruction of trade union power, and particularly of that kind of power which it regards as ' irresponsible ' or of a ' bullying ' nature. Mr Heath himself has used the term ' bully ' in this context (blithely unaware that he himself is bullying the working class into Europe); and the Right has looked to the Prime Minister himself to take the lead in accepting and bringing about a confrontation. Psychologically, the Prime Minister may well have inclined strongly towards policies of confrontation. But he has learned from office: the exip,en,-ies of political, industrial and national circumstances pretty swiftly strip Prime Ministers of most of their doctrinal clothes and trappings. Mr Heath has demonstrated that he is capable of ahandoninct some of his most cherished doctrines. It is now clear beyond doubt that the Right will not find in the new Mr Heath a Prime Minister and a Leader of the Conservative Party in any way eager to engage in war with the unions.
Thus, the Government has now acknowledged the need to amend the Industrial Relations Act. This, for those who enjoy the prospect of confrontation, can be interpreted as another defeat of the Government; but is better regarded as a triumph of reason, conciliation, accommodation. Al the moment, the Government is hampered in the pursuit of industrial harmony by its inability to control the operations of the Act. The Government cannot, at present, put the Act on ice, for it is open to any private party who considers he has a grievance which the Act might redress to take his matter to the Industrial Court. Even if the Government decided to refer nothing to the Industrial Court, companies or unions or injured individuals can (and doubtless will) set legal processes in motion when conciliation procedures would have been appropriate. Suggestions have been made that the Government should alone have the power to refer a matter to the Industrial Court; and this would make considerable sense. The Opposition has already moved from its position that it would repeal the Act, and Mr Prentice has indicated that " drastic " amendments might suffice. Mr Macmillan has announced that "we are ready to reconsider parts of the Act which unions or employers believe to be unsatisfactory or damaging to their legitimate interests, and to look again at those parts that are operating in Ways not originally intended." The Government, the TUC and the Confederation of British Industry have held a useful Downing Street meeting this week, and plan another next Monday; and this continuing series of tripartite meetings might well provide the forum at which a bargain on the amending of the Industrial Relations Act can be struck.
There are signs of an up-turn in the economy; there are indications that confidence is returning in business and industrial quarters. Over the past month the country has come far too close to industrial war between Government and the trade unions, but in the past few days there has been a last-minute effort to avoid the disastrous confrontation. All those who have contributed to this avoidance are to be congratulated; and the mood of compromise is to be encouraged. The Government's economic policy is confused. The country may continue to sloth itself into decline. The Prime Minister has not yet discovered how to reinvigorate the nation. But he has learned, we must now conclude, that industrial relations policies designed to provoke rather than to prevent industrial confrontation are appropriate only for men of the Left, and that the appropriate policies of a Conservative government towards the trade unions involve conciliation, co-operation and compromise. Nothing would do this country more good than an amending of the Industrial Relations Act agreed between the Government and the trade unions.
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