‘Who governs Britain?’ has to be asked again
A government that fails to make its own case will never win a battle against the cunning trade unions
History repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce”, said Karl Marx, a man I don’t often quote. Nevertheless, when you look at the way inflation has returned out of the blue over the past few years, promptly followed by widespread public sector strikes, it does take us back to the early 1980s, when I was serving Margaret Thatcher in government and we faced a similar problem.
At the time, we solved it simply by insisting on a secret vote before any strike could take place. As soon as balloting became compulsory, the number of days lost through strikes dropped to a 40-year low. It was quite obvious in those days that strikes were initiated by the very Left-wing leaders of the trade unions, who unashamedly wanted to bring the government down, and they got their way as long as voting on strikes was taking place in public. Once it became a secret ballot the union members rarely voted to strike, and within months the problem that had plagued us for decades had gone – never, we thought, to reappear.
Of course, it didn’t happen just like that, nor was it that simple to get done. If Mrs Thatcher and in particular Norman Tebbit, as well as some of my other colleagues, didn’t clearly articulate the problem, day after day, making quite clear that the blame lay with the Left-wing leadership of the unions, we would not have got the public behind us, including many union members themselves.
Mrs Thatcher always believed in the inherent sense of fair play among the British electorate, and that if you clearly explained the problem and rightness of your solution, they would come on side. That wasn’t achieved by delivering just one keynote speech or a remark in the Commons, but by making the same message, time after time, until you were bored stiff making it. But if you did it often enough, eventually the nation listened.
The public sector may be just a shadow of what it was, but key parts of our infrastructure will suddenly degrade on strike days, selfishly ruining many people’s Christmas. This is despite the fact that the principal actors – the NHS and the railways – both enjoyed tremendous financial support from the taxpayer during the Covid years.
Yes, inflation has reached levels we haven’t seen for decades and all of us are going to have a very difficult winter and spring, and whatever pay increase we are likely to get will probably not compensate for the surging inflation. However, in these particular cases, many of us still do not know what is at the heart of the industrial disputes. Are they merely about wages, or in fact about the intransigence of the unions, unwilling to give up some of their restrictive working practices?
Why doesn’t the Government make quite clear just what the unions are demanding? There will be some sympathy with pay demands, but much less for the maintenance of jobs that no longer fulfil a proper function, as is said to be the case on the railways. Ministers shouldn’t be afraid, either, to articulate how much preferable treatment the NHS has received in recent times, and to argue that although the front-line staff are heroes, the increase in management staff and the complexity of the organisations cry out for simplification that could, in itself, pay for the wage increases.
Members of the Cabinet should be visiting train stations across the country, making the common sense case for the Government’s position. It is only a few months since a short-lived incoming government failed to communicate its policies to the public and nearly destroyed the Conservative Party. You would have thought that this lesson would still be fresh in ministers’ minds.
This dispute is far more important than just the railways or the health service. It will set the pattern of negotiations over the next year that will determine whether high inflation persists. Even if the Government cannot win this battle outright, it is one it simply cannot afford to lose.
During the Conservative leadership contest, Mr Sunak promised in these pages to govern in the spirit of Mrs Thatcher. A good start would be to learn from her ability to articulate the case against strikes and determination to introduce policies that prevent them in future. For if he fails to end this madness, then perhaps Karl Marx will be proved right after all.