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STRIKING DIFFERENCES
Gormley brought down the Heath Government. Heath fought an election on the theme of "Who Governs?", the Prime Minister or the NUM. He lost. Gormley maintains that he was pursuing a purely industrial objective, with no political aims. [William] Whitelaw was brought to Whitehall from Stormont to mediate. A virtual settlement was negotiated between Gormley and Whitelaw. Before it could be formalised, this settlement was sabotaged by Harold Wilson for political purposes. Gormley was enraged by this sinister political interference in an industrial dispute. But the dispute was prolonged and the Tory Government fell.
To bring down a sympathetic Tory Government, in a period of full employment, as an unintended by-product of an industrial dispute - that's power. Scargill has been tyring desperately for two and half years to bring down an abrasive Tory Government, in a period of high unemployment, but it refuses to treat him as anything more than a minor irritant.
"It is something of a cliché that any law which doesn't have the support of the majority is a bad law. I think it's probably also true that a national strike which doesn't enjoy similar support, among the population in general, is likely to be an unsuccessful strike" (Gormley, p.94). Gormley secured the support of public opinion for the strikes of 1972 and 1974, by fighting them on issues which could enlist public sympathy, and by putting the case across very effectively. By contrast, Scargill has alienated public opinion by his stark refusal to negotiate from an initial demand which few people regard as reasonable, and by the zombie-like manner in which he replies to all questions with intricate and carefully thought-out formulas. But there is also a very great difference in the social situation as been 1974 and 1984.
MISSING THE TIDE
Trade-union power in Britain reached its zenith in the mid-seventies. It reached a position somewhat similar to that of the aristocracy in the 18th century. Government could only be conducted in consultation with it. There was no other power comparable to it. But it retained the status of a protest movement, which might be socially irresponsible because of its weakness. That state of affairs could not continue. The trade union movement would either have to take on the status of an extra-Parliamentary Constitutional power, or its power would have to diminish. The only other alternative was that effective government would cease to be possible. The British and Irish Communist Organisation was the only organisation which understood what was happening and explained it. Certain elements in the leadership of the Labour Party may have understood it, but they did not explain it. Michael Foot acted as if he understood it, but he is a soft and kind hearted intellectual who could never bring himself to tell home truths to the trade union movement. He legislated in the trade union interest. He hoped the trade unions would know what they should do. But when the trade unions did the opposite, he went along with them.
In 1977 Denis Healey introduced a sort of provisional Budget which was made explicitly conditional on trade unions behaving in a certain way. The Tory opposition sent up a howl of protest about the rights of Parliament being infringed. That wouldn't have mattered if the trade unions had accepted the implied status. But they didn't.
"As I said at the time: 'The way to present a Budget is to present a Budget, not to put conditions on part of it which rely on the goodwill of somebody else'. In the end, the Government is there to govern. That, too, was one of the reasons I was so opposed to the Social Contract. Yes, we went along with it for a couple of years, to help the Labour Government, but it put us in a false position. Our role in society is to look after our members, not run the country." (Gormley, p.l93.) And that was not just Gormley's response. It was the response of the entire trade union leadership, from Scargill and McGahey on the left to Frank Chapple on the right.
The major attempt to alter the status of trade unionism, and to place responsibility where the power lay, was the Bullock Report (1977), which proposed that the workforce should have equal representation with the shareholders on boards of management. It was rejected by the entire spectrum of trade unionism, with a few individual exceptions. It was declared to be the business of management to manage, and the workers should be left free to oppose management.
Now, if it is the business of Government to govern, and of management to manage; if trade unions must be free to oppose all governments, breaking any laws which displease them, and to oppose all management decisions; and if the power of the trade unions is such that Government cannot govern and management cannot manage - what then? Gormley was aware of the dilemma, and he was willing to exercise some restraint so that Government could just barely govern and management could just barely manage. But few other union leaders were capable of this kind of brinkmanship.
If the Tory Government fell as an unintended by-product of the miners' strike in 1974, the Labour Government fell in 1979 because it was deliberately challenged by trade union power. And this Government, which fell because of the "winter of discontent", consisting of Callaghan, Foot, Benn and Shirley Williams (who tried to obliterate private education, and who appeared on the Grunwick picket line while a Minister), was the most simple-mindedly pro-trade union government that ever held office in Britain.
British society is intolerant of dilemmas. It has not evolved for three hundred years by being paralysed by logical contradictions. The trade unions could have made the conduct of government possible by taking up a sort of extra-Parliamentary hegemonic political status. When they refused this status, and exerted their massive power purely as an opposition force, it became necessary that this de facto influence should be cut down so that government might be resumed without it. The trade unions, having destroyed Heath and Callaghan, made Thatcher possible. Thatcher has been elected twice for the purpose of diminishing the political influence of a powerful trade union movement which refused to assume political responsibility. A substantial body of the working class voted for her for this purpose, even though there were three million unemployed at the last election. And under her influence, managements have regained the power to manage.
The refusal of the Labour movement to move decisively into the position of a ruling class in the seventies is having catastrophic effects on it in the eighties. It is like a horse whose nerve has gone because it refused a fence.