IS IT THE 1970s?
YOU remember it, don’t you? The 1970s, that inglorious decade of UK industrial unrest, the “closed shop”, the threeday week, a miners’ strike, power cuts and then “the winter of discontent”, when refuse piled up on Britain’s streets and you could not even bury your dead. Two governments fell as a result, one Tory and the other Labour. Ted Heath asked the question, “who governs Britain?” in 1974. He got his answer – the trade unions did. Jim Callaghan went the same way in 1979. On top of all that, the rest of us had to contend with platform shoes, flared trousers and Saturday Night Fever! By anybody’s standards – no laughing matter. It would take Maggie to sort it, wielding her handbag in all directions for the next decade and leaving a bruised and battered Arthur Scargill wondering what had hit him.
That is why last week’s Cyprus Today sent shivers of “deja vu” down my spine. Had production of the Austin Allegro restarted? Had the Bay City Rollers decided to reform? No. It was far worse than that (if that’s possible). TRNC “Trade Unions threaten General Strike”, “Unions slam fuel price rises – warn of action” screamed the headlines. All very reminiscent of the kind of front page news that had confronted us as we downed our UK Rice Krispies in 1974, whilst wondering if today was one of the three days we were allowed to work, or whether the evening to come would be another less than romantic, candle-lit evening. All in the knowledge that if the electricity was on, the TV would cease broadcasting at 10.30pm. The only thing that benefited from those less than nostalgic days was the birth rate (well, what else was there to do?).
Don’t get me wrong (and you might find this hard to believe), I have never been against trade unions. I was once the Tory political consultant to the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO), for goodness sake (before they became affiliated to the Labour Party, that is). Unions are vital, but membership should be an individual worker’s choice, not compulsory in a “closed shop” environment, don’t you think? That was one of Maggie’s justifiable complaints about Britain’s unions at the time.
Sadly, last week’s Cyprus Today headlines were not the only thing that the TRNC’s unions have in common with 1970’s Britain. For instance, you can’t open a restaurant here in the TRNC without being a member of the Restaurateurs Union. Membership is compulsory, not voluntary. Trade unions rightly have a duty to protect their members, but should they have the right to threaten a country with a general strike to try force an ELECTED government to change policy? I think not, but that appeared to be the basic tenet of the TRNC unions’ recent verbal challenge to the government. Surely, such challenges are in the hands of the electorate to resolve, by casting votes, not going on strike?
Having said that, let’s keep things in proportion. I have no doubt the TRNC’s union leaders are honourable in their intentions. They are thankfully far removed from the likes of Arthur Scargill, for instance, but I do put this to them: how does a country, already struggling with unjustifiably imposed embargoes, benefit from shutting the economy down again, especially when it is also struggling with the disastrous consequences of an economy-destroying pandemic?
How does a general strike help secure anybody’s job in such circumstances? If it does, I cannot see how. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?
Here’s another thing – you may have read, last week, that 23 TRNC local authorities owe KıbTek a staggering (wait for it) 255 million TL in unpaid electricity bills.
Kıb-Tek cut the defaulters’ electricity off. Quite right too, and long overdue. What did the local authorities’ union have to say about this? They described the Kıb-Tek action as “a farce”. Pardon? Surely the farce is local authorities getting away with not paying their bills for so long? The union claimed that we “can’t get anywhere in this culture of conflict”. Amen to that. So what about a general strike? If that isn’t conflict, I don’t know what is. The union went on – “Municipalities are this country’s institutions too”. Correct. That is why they should pay their electricity bills.
You see, the problem is, the local authorities now don’t have the money to settle the bills (that apparently didn’t stop them spending it), which goes to the heart of the TRNC’s problem. Way more is spent, especially by the public sector, than it earns. Hence the dependence on Turkish generosity. It is a corporate-based mentality and a resultant public sector-based economy that restricts the diminished, potentially wealth-creating, private sector. The chicken that should be laying the golden egg.
Am I alone in such thoughts? No, I am not. Step forward the Turkish Ambassador in Lefkoşa, Murat Başçeri, speaking to the TRNC’s Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association at their AGM. There are “many structural problems that need to be overcome in the TRNC” he said. He pointed to “the inadequacy of current legislation, the inability to standardise inspections and penalties, and the failure to remove obstacles to investment” that “have all caused underdevelopment of the manufacturing sector”. He continued: “This situation is also a result of the continuing protectionist economic mentality in TRNC. This mentality definitely needs to change”. Spot on.
As things stand, the unions appear to be stuck in the TRNC status quo, a situation admittedly (and perhaps inevitably), the consequence of decades of internationally imposed embargoes. To break free from the embargoes means breaking free from the consequences. Mr Başçeri appeared to do more than hint at that great truth. To my mind, defending the economic status quo is the equivalent of accepting eternal isolation. Surely, the trade unions don’t want that? The 1970s are long gone.
They are history. My advice is simple. Don’t repeat it here.