ANOTHER VOICE
Rupert Murdoch deserves a dukedom
AUBERON WAUGH
News International's action is union- busting on the American lines. It can only lead to a more violent society,' said Mr Harry Conroy, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists. Perhaps it is fear of this more violent society which has persuaded his union — to which I still belong, after 23 years of faithful mem- bership — to instruct its members to support the printing unions who have had Fleet Street by the throat for the last 50 years, rather than their proprietor, Mr Murdoch, who at last seems to have made an effective move against them. It would be hard to imagine a more flagrant case of a trade union acting against the interests of its members. It now threatens to 'suspend all those journalistic employees of the Tunes, Sun, News of the World and Sunday Tunes who go to work in Wapping until such time as the print unions have been admitted there to resume their strangle- hold.
.For once, the journalists, having been frightened into taking their weapons down from the wall, voted to ignore their lead- ership. It occurs to me that the present dramas being enacted in Wapping may spell the end not only of Sogat 82, the NGA, and other print unions but also the National Union of Journalists and, even- tually, a large part of the trade union movement whose members are retained neither by loyalty nor by affection nor by genuine self-interest, but only by the threat of reprisal if they leave. If Mr Murdoch pulls it off, it seems to me that he should not be honoured by a life peerage, such as was given to Mr Victor Matthews for his brief and uninspiring Period at the helm of Express Newspapers, but by a dukedom at very least. He should be nominated a national hero. Statues to him should spring up in every country town, if not on every village green. More or less alone, and without the slightest encouragement from anyone, he will not only have dragged this country kicking and screaming into the technological age; he will also have imposed a cure for one of the most debilitating aspects of our national malaise.
If one is to diagnose the illness, one might look at the steps which led to the leadership of the National Union of Jour- nalists deciding on a policy which was diametrically opposed to its members' in- terests. But first, a little gasp of admiration for Mr Murdoch's achievement to date. It now appears that his proposal to start a new London evening newspaper, the Post, was a pretence. Under cover of preparing the Wapping site to receive this imaginary newspaper, he equipped it with enough computers and other apparatus to produce all four of his existing titles, leaving his Bouverie Street site with 6,000 overpaid printing workers to stew in their own juice — on strike, sacked and with no claim on redundancy payments which their unions might have been able to secure for them, had they been more intelligently run. Meanwhile, he has been fortifying the Wapping site until, according to Alexander Chancellor, it resembles a cruise missile base, quietly training 500 electricians to do the work of 5-6,000 print workers and making arrangements with non-union car- riers to bypass existing distributors.
It would appear that the leadership of Sogat 82 and the NGA have been acting in a manner as directly contrary to their members' interests as the leadership of the NUJ, although there is evidence that where Sogat 82, at any rate, is concerned, the leadership may have been frustrated in its desire to come to terms with the reality of the situation by the stupidity and greed of its members, exploited by left-wingers within the union to create what they still pathetically believe are the conditions for revolution: the collapse of their own indus- try and consequent mass unemployment. However, since I do not really know very much about conditions in Sogat 82 and the NGA, let us concentrate on the NUJ, of which I have been a member since 1963 without once attending a chapel meeting or taking the slightest interest in its affairs, voting by post in the leadership elections only when one or another candi- date for office frightened me (by the photograph supplied with his biography) into voting for someone else. It could reasonably be argued that since I have not been prepared to lift a finger to prevent its happening, I have no business to complain that the union has been taken over by idiots and twerps. But my purpose is not so much to complain about what has hap- pened as to inquire why it is that idiots and twerps are the only people who put them- selves forward for election. This phe- nomenon is not confined to the trade unions, of course. It is every bit as much in evidence in local government and in- creasingly so in central government elec- tions.
The reason for this, I imagine, is that their motives for seeking office have little or nothing to do with the job at hand. Their urge to do things or get things done is an abstract one which might derive from some social or emotional handicap, or might be transferred to some political or historical ideal, but it has nothing to do with representing the day-to-day interests of the people who elect them. Mr Harry Conroy, general secretary of the NUJ, revealed at the beginning of this article that he is concerned about the violence in society. Bully for him. I dare say he is also concerned about cruelty to animals, cruelty to children, sexism and the situation in Nicaragua. But what his job requires him to be concerned about most particularly is the welfare of journalists, and it is in this matter that I would judge him deficient.
What I am saying is that the conditions for representative democracy may no long- er obtain in this country as a result of a general reluctance on the part of the representing classes" to represent anything but themselves — their own ambitions, beliefs or conclusions, or whatever group- philosophy they have chosen to adopt as their own. Democratic politics is no longer to be seen as the clash of special interests, so much as an endless friction between busybodies trying to exert influence on their own behalf against the known prefer- ences of everyone else.
Bad and weak ministers — like Lynda Chalker at the Department of Transport allow themselves to be influenced by these busybodies as if they were indeed part of the democratic process, the price to be paid for her own enjoyment of power. Mr Hurd, at the Home Office, may prove to be made of sterner stuff when confronted by 20,763 letters against the Government's proposals on Sunday trading, only 32 letters in support. But the dangers of relying on representative democracy in a country which, for the most part, declines to interest itself in politics are obvious enough. Let us thank our lucky stars there are foreigners around like Mr Murdoch and Mr Shah — if not Mr Maxwell — to rescue us from our follies at the same time as profiting from them. They are surely preferable to the traditional fate of societies like our own, which is to be occupied by a foreign power.
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