Politics
A frightened Government
In That Interview on 'News at One' on Monday, Mr Tony Benn claimed, among many things, that: 'The Government have broken the long tradition of peaceful picketing that goes back right into the 19th century'. It must be an ingrained belief in this tradition which leads a large number of people to object to the tactics of the police in stopping pickets' cars before they reach the mines. The moderate voice on this dispute deplores violent picketing, but equally deplores police 'overreaction'. But what is 'peaceful picketing', or rather, what is the point of it? When defending picketing, trade unionists usually speak of the power of 'persuasion'. One can imagine some role for persuasion of people not directly concerned with a dispute — it is possible, for instance, that customers picketed as they go into Barclays Bank may be converted by the leaflets handed them at- tacking the bank's investment in South Africa — but when the persuasion is ap- plied at the workplace to would-be workers it is bound to be ineffective if it is no more than persuasion. The fact that the workers have arrived is evidence that they have weighed the arguments and have decided to work. Picketing has only two effective methods of stopping them — intimidation or a physical blockade.
What the Government, by coordinating police forces, is doing is to try to break the long tradition of violent picketing that 'goes back right into the nineteenth cen- tury'. It has had rather limited success and, considering the seriousness of the assault on freedom and order that such picketing represents, it has been rather half-hearted, but it is in this light that the current attacks on the Government's 'authoritarianism' should be seen. If policemen at Mansfield police station really did interrogate miners about what they thought of Arthur Scargill and whether they would vote Communist they are acting quite wrongly, but they were also showing basic understanding of this dispute. The row is not about union rights, let alone the level of miners' pay. It is a struggle for power between Mr Scargill and the forces of law.
It is only natural that those professionally opposed to the Government do not want to recognise the situation in quite these terms. The imprisonment of Sarah Tisdall, about which Diana, Lady Mosley complains in a letter to the Spectator this week, has given just enough colour to the question of secrecy to allow people to charge the Government with displaying incipient fascism, and for more cunning critics to warn the Government of the danger of lay- ing itself open to such a charge. Add one or two aspersions on the impartiality of the
Master of the Rolls, attacks on the 'media', the Police Bill, and the attempts to abolish the metropolitan counties, and you have some useful diversions from the great ques- tion of the hour.
Even so, Labour's position is weak. At Prime Minister's Questions on Tuesday, Mr Kinnock, who has got better and better at these occasions, was unusually feeble. He concentrated on the decision by the Metropolitan Police to carry submachine guns during the economic summit in Lon- don in June, perhaps hoping that, in the hubbub, people might get the idea that the guns were for use at a second Tonypandy. Labour MPs for the relevant constituen- cies, most of whom are moderates, have stuck doggedly to complaints about the police and steered off the questions of ballots and the wishes of constituents who want to work. People like Mr Gerald Kauf- man, who is extraordinarily right-wing, but assailed by Militants in his own constituen- cy, find safety in shouting about civil liber- ties. Labour is too tied down by history to be able to oppose any strike by miners, yet at the same time recognises that Mr Scargill is fighting his own battle and harming the party in the process. So its policy is silence.
This is standard politics — no more and no less reprehensible than usual. But the situation does emphasise the frivolity and pointlessness of the modern Left. Why have a trade union party if its connection with the unions means that it can never say anything about contentious industrial disputes? It is reported that Mr Kinnock is manoeuvring 'behind the scenes' to get a ballot on a national strike, but things have surely passed the point where the party of the labour movement can fuss around in the Green Room trying to reconcile various prima donnas. There is a clear sentiment among miners in favour of a ballot, and an equally clear dismay at the present divi- sions. If the Labour party and the TUC could work coherently with themselves or one another they would make a concerted public appeal for a ballot. They would not have to commit themselves either way about the ballot's result.
The particularly annoying thing about Labour's weakness is the way that it makes everything so easy for Mrs Thatcher. She has only to reiterate the need for those wishing to work to pass unmolested, to sup- port the police and to remind people of the existence of Mr Scargill, and she is assured of public goodwill. Yet Conservative policy towards coal is actually almost as cowardly as ever. It is now publicly stated that mines which produce no coal at all should be shut, even that a few which lose money should close; but it is still true that the Govern-
ment's fear of the miners has given them ex- traordinarily generous pay-offs and wage settlements which put them well above most equivalent workers. There is scarcely any pretence that Mr MacGregor's latest plans are intended to make British coal a business proposition, only that they will make the losses rather less large. Tories still look at the photographs of those sooty proletarian faces from regions they have seldom visited and feel guilty. It is as if the fact that miners work underground made them more frightening. Might they suddenly push their way up through our drawing room floors, armed with pick-axes and a schedule of their immemorial wrongs? And this week the vicious Thatcherite junta has been equally timorous about a more general question of industrial rela- tions — contracting in or out of the political levy. Mr Tom King, Mr Norman Tebbit's replacement as Employment Secretary, has persuaded himself that an agreement with the TUC, without recourse to law and without a fundamental change in the preseht system of contracting out, will be able to inform workers of their rights. It is so obvious that such an agreement will not be properly enforced (why else would the TUC by a party to it?) that it is tempting to suspect Mr King of some cunning and secret design. The truth is more likely that Mr King is one of that school of politicians which believes in the 'all good chaps' theory by which antagonists need only to be slap- ped genially on the back by a minister to agree to pursue moderate and sensible policies. Or, to put it another way, Mr Teb- bit was the stick, and the red-haired Mr King is the carrot. But if Mr King is sincere, though misguided, one must not think the Cabinet in general so high-minded. Mrs Thatcher has allowed her administration to back down because she wants to preserve the Labour party. The main reason for this is simply the electoral unpredictability of a,
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three party system, or of the transition o1 the Alliance to second party status; but it s not merely the status quo, but the Labour party in particular which Mrs Thatcher likes. It is an old and recognised foe, in op- position to which it is easy for her to main- tain and express her prejudices. It is vulnerable to all her electioneering skills, and it is exceptionally bad at recognising her real faults and playing on them. The Government is not frightened of changing the levy because of consequent changes that would be demanded of Conservative con- tributions by shareholders — it is a good bet that individual shareholders won' think a payment to Tory funds a small Price for maintaining their dividends by reelec- ting a Conservative Government. The Government is frightened of changing British politics. As with the miners, its cau- tion is remarkable, but little remarked.
Charles Moore
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