Lord Carrington's defeatism
It was bad luck for Lord Carrington that his secret report on the Conservatives and the trade unions should have been leaked on the day that the committee of inquiry into affairs at Dulwich Hospital reported. Lord Carrington, it is said, does not believe that a future Tory administration should 'take on' the unions. Not to take on someone or something IS to leave it alone; and, left alone, the unions — some of them, some of their officials — will continue to behave as NUPE did at Dulwich: nastily, brutishly and — if it had had its way — in short order with Nurse Burke. It is well to be reminded from time to time what trade unionism at its Worst is capable of; and the 'worst' is what more and more anion activity seems to aspire to, whether glorifying the thuggery of the 'Shrewsbury Two' or persecuting railwaymen who have a conscientious objection to union Membership. Of course, Lord Carrington is haunted by a spectre, the Memory of 1973-74 when Mr Heath's administration 'took the miners and received a thrashing. Historical analogies are always dangerous, and before the received ,version, Ted and the NUM as the 'King Kong versus rkiodzilla' de nos fours, becomes forever enshrined in Tory folklore, it is worth making a simple historical point or two. Heath — characteristically some might say — chose to nght the wrong battle at the wrong place and the wrong t'me. The miners have always, and rightly, enjoyed public sYmpathy. They had a case. Mr Heath could have settled with them early on more favourable terms — to the 90vernment — than those eventually obtained. Even when !ue nation was 'brought to its knees' in February 1974, ,Inclustrial output was higher than it is now. The heroic, 1/41luomed struggle of the Heath government is, in part at east, a myth. The only real defeat was the defeat in the general election of a government found wanting in skill. c What is not an historical myth is that we have got by a :tuPlicated route into a pickle over the trade unions. For 1,11,ee there is a grain of truth in the tag 'we are all guilty'.
unions have not acquired the power they now wield mrough some communist conspiracy or fraud: it has been Iv■sk handed to them on a plate. Successive governments, from Disraeli on, have found that it suited their convenience to place the unions outside the law. The post-war acceleration of union strength took place largely under the Tory ministries of 1951-63, acting, as they tended to, on the principle of anything for a quiet life. Naturally Mr Wilson's first government did little to curb union power, and the debacle of In Place of Strife was abject. But following that, no more inept scheme for union reform could have been devised than that cooked up by Sir Geoffrey Howe, with the nonsense of registration and de-registration.
It is unfair to impute motive, but there is a flavour about these latest Tory musings of self-serving and also of defeatism. A number of the shell-shocked casualties of 1973-74 have no enthusiasm for going over the top again. Men in such cases, who do not wish to fight a battle, are likely to say that the battle is bound to be lost. Lord Carrington is rather like those admirals of the 1930s who from disreputable motives claimed that the Royal Navy would certainly be defeated by Mussolini's fleet. That defeatism was happily unfounded. May not Lord Carrington's be?
If the Conservative Party need advice on dealing with the unions they could do worse than turn from Lord Carrington to the Prime Minister. In the Commons on Tuesday Mr Callaghan said that the Tories were always too aggressive when they should be accommodating, too timid when they should be bold. Coming from him that — the second part, anyway — might be thought a bit thick, but he has a large 'measure of truth. Accommodation will be necessary while the big unions are eased out of their ridiculous command of the economy. There are plenty of places for a future Tory administration to show boldness, NUPE has claimed that ancillary staff have 'a right to participate as equals' in the operating theatre. Few people will fancy the prospect of being operated on by porters: Mrs Thatcher will enjoy considerable public support if she decides that the NUPE bully boys provide a good place to start some 'taking on'.
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