We are justly proud of our two party system with its long and honourable tradition.
It is right that we have an official Opposition as well as a Government embodied in Parliament;
right that the rules of Parliament safeguard the duty of Opposition to scrutinise and sometimes constrain the actions of Government;
right that in an Opposition, we constantly have an alternative Government, ready to take over;
right that both parties should submit themselves as genuine alternatives to the judgement of the electorate. [end p1]
Even so our people have an instinctive sense that this system can only work properly if the contending parties share some common and fundamental beliefs— a genuine belief in a free society, an abhorrence of a one-party state, and a resolve to defend British interests.
Against this background we also pride ourselves that, at moments of great public danger, or on specific issues, politicians can usually be counted on to call off the party battle and, in the old-fashioned phrase, “speak for Britain” .
We Tories, being a party tied to no group and to no interest, are particularly drawn to this idea of a united national response. [end p2]
In the last few weeks of misery and crisis, I think we have all felt the urge to look for some common ground on which honest, responsible and patriotic politicians could stand.
That is why I asked the James CallaghanPrime Minister, first in the House of Commons, then in a television broadcast, whether he was willing to take just a few concrete measures, which have overwhelming public support, to stem the rising tide of anarchy in our industrial relations.
Let us be clear about one thing: I was not proposing a coalition. If you combine all the good and talented men and women in one Government, to whom do you turn when the nation is disenchanted with it? To the extremists? [end p3]
That is not a safe or healthy arrangement. Moreover, good and talented people do not always share the same purpose or prescribe the same remedies.
What we would have liked to have seen was not a party armistice, but a bit of decent, generous, patriotic collaboration across the party battle lines. [end p4]
Well, you know the answer I got—or rather the answer I didn't get—from the Government.
So regrettably we are left with one conclusion, namely that on the crucial question of the need to give solid legal protection to the rights of the individual and the life of the community against the abuse of Trade Union power, there is today no agreement between the major political parties in this country.
In the years that lie ahead, we must hope to build that agreement, but action cannot wait upon its achievement.
The task of grappling with this issue will fall to us as the next Government, and we shall not shrink from it. [end p5]
I am convinced not only that the electorate will charge us with that task and give us the majority we need to carry it out; I am also convinced that many who cannot bring themselves to vote for us, many who represent the old, decent tradition of the Labour movement in Britain, will bless and support our efforts.
We shall go about our business as a national party, sustained by the knowledge that what we are trying to do on industrial relations is not to apply a piece of party dogma. It is to uphold principles enshrined in the common law which, until a few years ago, we were entitled to assume to be the common property of all responsible parties in the country— the right to go about our daily work or pleasure free from interference by anybody else, [end p6] free from violence, intimidation, obstruction or other form of harassment.
This basic rule should apply in industrial disputes as in every other walk of life.
The Task
In assessing the nature of this task, let us first get the diagnosis right. We must not make the mistake of supposing that the problem is one of direct conflict between a single, powerful institution, the Trade Union movement, and the rest of the community. It is not.
We know and have seen that members of one union can inflict as much damage on members of another union as they can on the rest of the community. [end p7]
It is both an irony and a tragedy that although members of one trade union can inflict great harm on others, they cannot protect themselves or their families from the damage that others cause.
They have a greater power to wound than to defend.
As a notable and Henry Simonsprophetic American wrote more than thirty years ago:
“In an economy of intricate division of labor, every large organized group is in a position at any time to disrupt or to stop the whole flow of social income; and the system must soon break down if groups persist in exercising that power or if they must continuously be bribed to forgo its disastrous exercise.”
(Henry C. Simons: Some Reflections on Syndicalism, in Economic Policy for a Free Society 1948) [end p8]
In this country today, separate groups of workers are seeking by strike action to extract wages which neither private sector employers nor the Government as an employer, think it within their present capacity to pay.
After all, we can't pay ourselves more than we produce in goods and services. We have become so much the prisoner of rigid incomes policies that we have forgotten to relate incomes to output.
If we don't earn the increased pay but just demand it, the extra money will soon be worthless. [end p9]
And the brute fact is that we are producing no more goods now than we were in 1973.
We are paying ourselves twice as much, so money is now worth half as much.
The £1 of 1974 is the 50p of today. [end p10]
Wage settlements on the scale now being demanded can be satisfied in only one of two ways. The Government can print money to meet them at the cost of debasing the currency and plunging us still more deeply into inflation. If that happens, the pay increase will soon prove illusory; prices will catch up, British goods will be priced out of the world market, and ultimately no-one will benefit. That much we are all familiar with.
The other method of satisfying high wage claims which cannot be financed out of increased production and sales is to satisfy the workers concerned at the expense of other workers, to allow prices or taxes to rise, prices or taxes which must be paid by the rest of the working population. [end p11]
So let us be clear: what we are up against is not a conflict between employers and workers, but a conflict between workers and workers. Beginning of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1300 10 February 1979
What for example, does it profit a worker in the motor manufacturing industry to get a large increase in wages by striking if in a week or so, he finds that his firm is crippled by a strike of lorry drivers, and then by a power strike, and then by a strike by water workers, so that he cannot get the production or the wages from his own factory?
And what satisfaction does he get from his success in exacting higher wages if he finds that his wife or parents cannot have the operation they've been waiting for because of a strike by hospital workers; or if his children's school is shut because of strike action, and if they play in streets infested with rotting rubbish? End of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1300 10 February 1979
If all this goes on from day to day, from week to week, month to month and year to year, what can the end be but general ruin? [end p12]
So what is the answer? In a free society, workers must have the right to bargain for higher wages and to bargain collectively. If they are working for profitable firms, they have a right to a share in their firm's success. If you do well for your company, you have a right to expect that your company will do well by you. That is the basis of trust and good industrial relations.
For those of us who work in the public sector, the fact is that we can only flourish if manufacturing and commercial companies prosper. They create the wealth. They must have the incentive to go on producing it; only then will there be sufficient to support good public services. [end p13]
What is intolerable today is that every wage claim should prevail without regard to the consequences for others. What is also intolerable is that claims which we simply cannot afford to satisfy, should be pressed by union bosses who have the power to coerce unwilling workers to strike.
Throughout the series of strikes we have been experiencing, it has been noteworthy that no-one on the Conservative side has urged the James CallaghanPrime Minister to surrender by giving more. Those cries have come from his own side.
When he is in office, he gets responsible behaviour from the Opposition. When we were in office, how did he behave as one of the leading figures in Opposition? [end p14]
Let me just remind you what he said to the miners during the General Election in February 1974.
Referring to the 16%; which had been offered to them he stated:
“I will say to Mr Heath that if he is returned on February 28th, unless he has more money to put on the table he has a bigger struggle on his hands than he has ever imagined.”
“Mr Heath is arguing that he is fighting inflation” , Mr Callaghan continued, “that is utter drivel” .
(Aberdare Leader, 22 Feb. 1974) [end p15]
Now he's in office the Prime Minister dislikes the picketing we have seen—he has said so;
he isn't a closed shop man—he has said so;
he would like secret ballots—he has said so;
he recognises the need for no-strike agreements in some public services—he has said so.
After a general election it will be interesting to see whether he offers us the same support on these things as we have offered him. Manuscript addition by MT
Law “lacking in usefulness.” Saying—law is only for the law-abiding—that if some people are sufficiently ruthless and careless of the needs and wants of others, they can be allowed to be above and beyond the law. A pretty strange doctrine.
Of course, law isn't the whole answer.
Good management, good human relations too, but where there is no law, there is no liberty, no security. If there is no rule of law, the rule of lawlessness will soon take its place. [end p16] Typescript resumes
The great majority of wage claims should be settled by responsible bargaining on equal terms between employers and workers. That means bargaining from which sheer bullying is excluded. It means bargaining which cannot end in a strike unless the strike has been genuinely approved by a majority of workers balloting secretly. It means bargaining which is not supported by intimidation on picket lines. It means bargaining which does not derive its force from the threat that any worker who refuses to go along with the instruction of his shop steward may lose his job.
Collective bargaining can't be ‘free’ unless the obligations and rewards are evenly balanced between the parties. What we have now is not a free-for-all, but freedom for some to hold the rest to ransom. Where is the freedom between the highwayman and his victim? [end p17]
But what happens if, when all these reforms are made, groups of workers in essential services are still resolved to hold the country to ransom?
I do not shrink from the question.
In a few, a very few, essential industries and services, it is now clear that the right to pursue industrial disputes by strike action is not consistent with public safety.
In such cases, I believe that, like the police and the armed services, the workers concerned should be asked to forgo the right to strike. In return they should have special safeguards for their pay, assuming efficient manning levels.
Overmanning is the greatest single source of low wages in our economy.
When three people are doing the work of two, the wages are inevitably low. [end p18]
And what, you may ask, if all this fails—if such agreements are not accepted or are defied? In the last resort, it is the business of Government to see that the sick and the aged are tended, that the children can go to school, that the population is fed, that the rubbish is not left as a danger to health and that the essential conditions of social survival are maintained.
We have a great national tradition of voluntary service: There are enough people in this country resolved to keep it going, and determined not to yield to bullying; enough to stave off this kind of national disaster, if it ever threatened. At such a time, it would be the duty of Government to harness this spirited reserve to the service of our people. [end p19]
When the overwhelming majority are agreed on where their duty lies, they cannot be defeated if they have a Government with the will to lead and the resolve to govern. End of press release. [end p20] Manuscript addition by MT
When you go home Tell them of us and say For your tomorrow We gave our today. Typescript resumes
The Britain I want is a country where Parliament remains supreme but acts in the spirit of British law and custom. Where the individual, however weak, still has definite rights which can never be taken from him, and where the minority, however small, cannot be crushed out of existence by majority power.
My Britain is one where the rule of law is upheld, impartially invariably, even against the most powerful bodies in our community. And where those entrusted with upholding the law, whether policemen or judges, are given respect, support and encouragement.
I want a Britain where children are taught that there is a real and absolute difference between right and wrong, and that there are certain acts which, by their very nature, are invariably wrong and must be outlawed by society. [end p21]
In our Britain, those who pursue violence as a way of life, whether armed professional thieves or back-street muggers, or terrorists, or thugs, will be treated always and solely for what they are—dangerous criminals, to be resisted by civilised society with all its power.
My Britain is a country where the honest, law-abiding, peaceful and hardworking citizen is valued and prized, and above all defended and supported, by all the institutions of the land.
The spirit of my Britain would be one of hope and endeavour, where all are equal in votes and before the law, but where this equality is a springboard for those who wish to strive for a better life. Manuscript addition by MT
Britain was renowned for these things. Her place in history is secure. Renew that renown. Secure her place in the future.