THE LION IN WINTER FEARS SHARPEN INTO A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32565, 26 March 1971, Page 8

THE LION IN WINTER FEARS SHARPEN INTO A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

(By T. S. MONKS, uniting to the "Sydney Morning Herald" from London.) (Reprinted by arrangement.) In Britain today there is fear. The vague wonderings of past years about where the nation was heading have sharpened into a crisis of confidence. Millions feel threatened as they see the unemployment figure reach 800,000 and go on climbing. It is far different from the previous waves of introspection since the war’s end. Through these, despite the drives and the raising and falling of hopes, life continued relatively secure and comfortable.

Undermining that comfort and security now are thoughts that Britain is being sucked in a downward spiral to depression, that it has lost its sense of national purpose, and may well be suffering a “pretty bad sickness,” as Henry Ford II pronounced when deciding to make no

more Ford investment in Britain.

Inflation, soaring unem- < ployment, chaos in industrial relations—these are har-1 dening a sense of stability i being dissolved. Ahead lies t the probable plunge into the i European Common Market; i no-one can say with cer-1 tainty what the effects will I be. i I Government confident 1 The Government of Mr, Edward Heath remains , confident. “We were re-, turned to office to change ■ the course of history of this nation,” said Mr Heath. “It is this new course which your Government is now shaping.” The country is being forced to face some unpleasant facts of life: that industries must stand on their own feet without “lameduck” subsidies from the Government; that industrial relations must be reformed. In the past, while there have been many failed hopes that Britain would burst into a new era of enterprise and thrust, there has also been the residual belief that the country would remain able to amble along fairly happily with an acceptable degree of prosperity. Mr Harold Wilson’s “whitehot technological revolution did not come off. In retrospect it seems never to have I had any basis in political . reality. It brought a new . large Ministry of Technoi logy, but no revolution, and i it ushered in a national plan . that was scrapped before it

’ was brought into operation. Labour ministers of the 196470 Government now frankly ’ confess in private to dis- ’ appointments about what t they actually achieved. ’ The Government’s oppo- . nents are charging that it is L only since last June, when j the Conservatives took over, that anxiety about Britain’s future has really deepened. ' The pollsters certainly find ’ that Mr Heath and his Gov- . emment have lost popularity quicker than any in the postwar period. There are accusations that the Government is “har', unfeeling,” and letting unemployment soar to “bring the workers to heel.” Mr Heath and his colleagues strongly deny this. They argue that inflation was already rampant when they took over. The Labour Government, in the months before the June election, had let some big awards set the pattern. Every union was bound to clamber on to the wages bandwaggon.

No wage control Legislation to control wages is out —it would never work—so the Government is resisting inflationary wage rises in the public sector of industry and urging private enterprise to put up a similar resistance. As for the workers—the Government points to the rising weekly toll of redundancies to try to show unions that big wage rises are self-defeat-ing. Industry makes do with fewer men.

This, bluntly, is shocktherapy. In Mr Heath’s view, Britain has become a chronic invalid that needs to be shocked into recovery. Before the Rolls-Royce crash, it had seemed unthinkable that the Government could let such a firm go bankrupt and . fail to pour in funds to keep it going more or less in the same way. But the Government is moving in only to take over such parts of Rolls as are considered vital to the national interest. Rolls-Royce must be seen as a lesson. The Government is getting rid of any illusion that Britain would find its way to prosperity by pouring taxpayers’ money into uneconomic ventures.

As for the unions, they had to rid themselves of the idea that they could go on indefinitely demanding higher wages without any concern for the effect on the firm or industry concerned, or without regard to the prices customers would have to pay. "Just as one man’s inflationary increase is another man’s price increase, so it is another man’s unemployment,” observed Mr Robert Carr, the Employment Minister.

Unemployment toll For most Britons, each week brings new worries. With 800,000 men and women out of work at the last count, many thousand more jobs are being lost every The closure of five steel plants have been announced, making 2600 men redundant, while a further 5000 have been warned of impending dismissal from other steel plants. Another national newspaper is to close, laying off 1700 workers. The first thousands have been dismissed from RollsRoyce. Tens of thousands more with the company and its sub-contractors are waiting for the sack. The big paper firm, Bowaters, has decided it must shut down

nearly half its United Kingdom newsprint-making capa-

city. Many big firms are announcing cutbacks in expansion plans and preparing tc shed labour. Few have not seen profits falling. Among small firms, bankruptcies are running at the highest rate for many years. In some key industries, such as machine tool making, orders are 40 per cent down. The single, increasing, fundamental worry in many areas of Britain is of being out of work: something not feared on this scale since the 19305. Unofficial forecasts say that before the year is out there will be a million unemployed—some fear the figure will be even higher. So far, unemployment has had only a marginal effect on union militancy. It has been one of Britain’s worst ever winters of industrial chaos. Last year’s strike record was the worst since 1926, the year of the general strike. It has also been a winter of aggravation for most Britons: household rubbish not collected for weeks, electric power blackouts, no mail service for seven weeks, 47,000 Ford workers out for seven weeks. No single strike has caused devastating damage, but collectively they are adding significantly to the impression that Britain is strikehappy.

Agreements ignored Industrial agreements which are perhaps only months old are being ignored by militant unionists. Arbitration machinery is spumed. “We have the worst industrial relations in the lifetime of most of us,” says Labour’s Deputy Leader, Mr Roy Jenkins. Mr Jenkins goes on to accuse the Government of seeking major conflict with the unions. That is arguable. The Government is certainly pushing through its bill for reform of industrial relations against the bitter opposition of unions, who charge that the Conservatives are really trying to get them under State control. The Conservatives reply that they are trying to end industrial anarchy by establishing a more orderly system of arbitration, on a legal basis, strengthening the official leadership of unions against “wildcat” militants. The reform of industrial relations is fundamental to the Government’s strategy. The bill will certainly reach the statute book: the mass demonstrations will not stop it, nor will the series of one-day strikes led by the Amalgamated Engineering Union. But when the bill becomes law, the prospect is that in operation it will be blocked by the unions. They have decided on a programme of non-co-operation: they will not register under the Act as they will have the legal right to do, nor will they use the new arbitration machinery. Further, they will not sign any agreements that could be legally binding. Unions’ arguments

The unions resist arguments that the Government is only introducing what is common to most Western industrial countries. They say the bill is unnecessary, blatant anti-union legislation; that the system of voluntary bargaining which has grown up in Britain in the last 100 years is good enough and should be preserved. The feeling grows that this is symptomatic of widely held attitudes in Britain of reluctance to change, unwillingness to accept the disciplines other countries regard as essential. One former Prime Minister, Mr Harold Macmillan, has said: “You can’t tell me that 50 million with our brains, intelligence and guts can’t get it right if they try. The question is whether they are prepared to try to make the necessary sacrifices.” The present Home Secretary, Mr Reginald Maudiing, has argued that the central problem is simply that Britain has not yet adopted the attitudes to life, society, enterprise and work that are necessary to keep competing in the modem world. Britain is becoming a “jealous society,” jealous of other countries which by greater efforts are doing better. There have been sad indicators through the years that Mr Maudiing is right There has been much looking with envy at the economic performance of Western Germany, for example. On practically every economic measure, Britain is at the bottom of the league of Western industrial nations. There is still pride in the quality of life in Britain, in its orderly, stable society, its lack of violence, its tolerance, its liberalism. But can tills balance the fear that Britain is running into trouble so serious that it will hurt every family in the land?

Fears and doubts in Britain have sharpened into a crisis of national confidence in which people are asking whether the nation has lost its way, says T. S. Monks in the first of two articles examining the British scene today.