Another voice
Prospects for revolution
Auberon Waugh
Pnobody in Britain talks as if 1. the danger of revolution were anything to be taken seriously, but I suspect that quite a large number of people, especially women, old people and peers of the realm, are more worried than they care to admit. Only this explains the sudden revulsion from Mrs Thatcher and the general feeling that Mr Ian MacGregor is to be blamed almost as much as the leadership of the NUM for the prolongation of the coal dispute; more specifically that Mrs Thatcher should seek to negotiate a compromise with Mr Scargill.
It has become commonplace to blame the Government for the poor presentation of its case against the miners, although in my opi- nion no case has ever been so badly presented as that of the miners. But there is a readiness to believe even Mr Scargill in preference to Mr Peter Walker — on the subject of coal stocks at the power stations, which is the one crucial issue at stake which cannot be explained by normal mistrust of anything said by Mr Walker, and can only really be explained by funk. Television pictures of our gallant policemen pushing and being pushed by Mr Scargill's 'pickets' from the north have terrified fat white southerners into forming a peace movement. There is a feeling that Mrs Thatcher is going to lose the next general election even if she does not succeed in pro- voking a revolution before it, and the result is a general terror of any government policy which can be shown in an unfavourable light. Suddenly we start listening to all the DHSS propaganda which has faithfully been reproduced in the Daily Mirror for five years about how Government 'cuts' in the Health Service (in fact expenditure has leapfrogged in real terms) threaten children's wards, research into cot deaths, and any fashionably poignant medical com- plaint of the moment.
Thatcher, generally, is in the doghouse. Suddenly we are all discovering odd reserves of compassion for miners' families reduced from seven to four pounds of potatoes per meal, forced to return their video machines and leave their Ford Sierras in the garage. It is not any sense of loyalty to Mrs Thatcher, still less of affection, which prompts me to suggest that this reac- tion is foolish. She has done nothing to in- spire either emotion, and continues to con- duct herself with a lack of grace which seems calculated to disgust a large part of conservative England. This is not the mo- ment to belabour her once again for her abominable treatment of Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, that good and wise man, although I have no doubt that it has con- tributed more than she realises to the general dislike in which she is held. But why on earth did she not bother to attend last week's memorial service in Westminster Abbey for Sir John Betjeman? Perhaps she decided he was not 'one of us', but every time she makes this asinine decision she suc- ceeds only in convincing a large number of people that she is not one of them.
Be that as it may, the important thing is not to point out that nobody will shed a tear if, having lost her struggle with the miners, she is relegated to the same dustbin of history as Edward Heath; far more impor- tant is to assess whether or not she is going to win and what chances there are that she will provoke a revolution in the attempt.
On the first point, it seems to me ax- iomatic that the miners can win only if they succeed in shutting the power stations. If Mr Scargill succeeds in closing down the two threatened steel works he will, in fact, be doing the country a great service. But if Mr Walker is telling the truth when he says that existing stocks can last until the end of December, it seems inconceivable that Mr Scargill can win without some quasi- revolutionary acts of industrial sabotage.
Mr Scargill's main problem as an orator is that he has to address two audiences. The first group comprises his own supporters (who must be inspired to fight and suffer), the fainthearts (who must be reassured of the certainty of success), and the would-be scabs, who must be intimidated and browbeaten into toeing the line. The second group comprises everyone else — public opinion, newspapers, steelworkers, Na- tional Coal Board and Government. Mr Scargill's weakness is that he is temperamentally incapable of addressing the second group in any terms other than those designed for would-be scabs in his own union. It may be that he adopts this threatening posture simply as part of his main act, addressed to the first group. But it does not endear him very much to anyone else. With no support at all in the country outside the militant or Trotskyist left, I would hazard that he has about as much chance as the proverbial snowball in hell of getting what he wants.
`The workers, united, have never been defeated' may be a useful rallying cry for his Calibans in rout, but a glance at the history of England will show that the workers, united to cause mischief as a riotous assembly, have always been defeated. If one starts with the great riots of 1831 — in Merthyr Tydfil, the Forest of Dean, Nottingham (where the castle was burned down) and Bristol, and follows through the history of that turbulent cen- tury — the Thomite riots around Canter- bury in 1838, Chartist riots of the same year, Birmingham riot of 1839, turnpike riots in Wales, Yarmouth seamen's riots of 1851, religious riots in Liverpool and Stockport, colliery riots at Wigan (1853 and 1868) Flintshire (1869) and Thorncliffe (1870), the bread riots of 1855 in Liverpool and London, Reform riots of 1866 in Lon- don, and the great cotton riots of 1878 in Blackburn, Burnley, Accrington, Preston and other places — one soon discovers that the only thing they really have in common is that they all failed.
The state has vast powers to quell riots which it has not even begun to use. Nor is there any other way for the 'workers', even when united, to win unless they have popular support. In fact the only way, I should have thought, for a revolution to succeed in this country — one can scarcely imagine Scargill's Calibans seizing control of Broadcasting House and the control tower of London Airport to any good pur- pose under present circumstances — is through a combination of civil distur- bances, general strike and a left-wing elected government, or Labour-dominated coalition which includes left-wing elements.
This is for the simple reason that the military, even if the present Government is too frightened to use it, knows no other loyalty but obedience to the central govern- ment, however constituted.
The Left enjoys very little support in Bri- tain, although it has a certain amount of power to intimidate, whether by threaten- ing power supplies or sending packs of louts on the rampage. It can only win if people decide to be frightened. This applies as much to ordinary citizens as it does to the Government: all we have to fear is fear itself. We must simply learn to endure this frightful Thatcher, with her mean and petty attitude to life. As soon as we begin to lose our nerve and urge the virtues of Heath, Pym, or the abominable Shirley Williams, our troubles will really start. We must be resigned to the fact that there will be more and worse riots as workers in the declining industries discover that the threat to withdraw their labour holds no terrors. All the Government needs to do is to show how easily riotous assemblies can be dispersed, and it will find itself miraculously popular again.
Previous page
