The Path to Power

recalled to Central Office and burned. Even though Party opinion had begun to shift in my direction, no amount of discussion between Shadow ministers, advisers and MPs would have sufficed to persuade the Shadow Cabinet of the need to think seriously about trade union reform, had it not been for the industrial chaos of the ‘Winter of Discontent’.

Even then they would require a lead. This was an area in which we had made little or no advance since 1975. As Shadow Employment spokesman, Jim Prior had been well placed to veto the development of new policy on union reform. Although just before Christmas 1978 we managed to persuade him to accept an extension of our policy of providing state funds for unions voluntarily holding secret ballots — we would offer cash to cover the cost of pre-strike ballots as well as union elections — this really amounted to very little. Indeed, to the average voter our policy on secret ballots would have been hard to distinguish from Labour’s: in November 1978 the Prime Minister was offering to legislate on secret ballots if the unions wanted it.

In December Keith Joseph had tried to reopen the question of benefits paid to strikers’ families. I had agreed to the summoning of a new Policy Group to consider this question, but when it met Jim Prior’s opposition had prevented any progress.

I spent Christmas and New Year anxiously and reflectively at Scotney, watching the crisis build up. As it had at Christmas 1974, the bad weather discouraged us from our usual walks, and besides I had plenty to do. I read through the various Policy Group papers on union questions and I had brought down a bulging file of briefing from the press and interested outsiders. I spent many hours studying a textbook on industrial relations law and went back to the original Acts of Parliament, reading through the most important legislation since 1906. Every time I turned on the radio or the television the news was worse. I came back to London determined on one thing: the time had come to toughen our policy on union reform.

There was no difficulty in finding a platform. I had agreed before Christmas to be interviewed on Sunday 14 January by Brian Walden on Weekend World; the date was brought forward a week to 7 January. When I came back to London in the New Year, I saw Alfred Sherman, Gordon Reece and a few other close advisers to continue my briefing. The industrial situation was changing so fast that it was becoming more and more difficult to keep up to date, but over the next few weeks having the very latest facts to hand gave me vital advantages.

On Wednesday 3 January Jim Prior intervened to prevent a change in policy. Interviewed by Robin Day on radio, he firmly rejected compulsory strike ballots (‘not something that you can make compulsory in any way’), rejected legislation on strikers’ benefits, and commented on the closed shop: ‘we want to take this quite quietly… it is better in these matters to play a quiet game rather than to shout too much’. Asked what he thought of recent criticism of the trade union leadership by David Howell and Michael Heseltine, he said: ‘I don’t think they are being fair to trade union leaders who at the moment are trying to give good advice to the rank and file, and the rank and file is quite often rejecting it.’

On Weekend World I struck rather a different note. ‘Every power implies responsibility, every liberty a duty. The unions have [had] tremendous power over the years… [And] this is what the debate has got to be about — how unions use their power. I’m a parliamentarian, I am not in Parliament to enable them to have a licence to inflict harm, damage and injury on others and be immune from the law, and if I see it happening, then I’ve got to take action.’

Although I was careful not to commit us firmly to individual measures before they had received proper consideration, I ran through with Brian Walden a shopping list of possible changes, which naturally moved them higher on the agenda than some of my colleagues really wanted. I reaffirmed Jim Prior’s announcement that we would make funds available for secret ballots before strikes as well as for union elections. But I hinted at compulsion if needed, holding out the possibility of legislation to refuse Social Security benefits unless there had been a strike ballot. I also mentioned the possibility of restricting strikes in essential services, announced that we would subject short-term Social Security benefits to taxation and made the case for a right of appeal to the courts for people excluded from a union, who faced losing their jobs where there was a closed shop.

On television the following day Jim Prior replied to my interview. He said that nothing had been agreed between us on Social Security benefits for strikers and that he was against compulsory secret ballots. Thankfully, others reacted more positively. I had broken ranks. People could see that I was going to fight. Offers of support, information and new ideas began to flow into my office.

Most significantly, I received a request for a meeting from a former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Lord George-Brown, who came to my office at the Commons on Wednesday 10 January and who on the following Saturday drove down to Scotney for a further conversation with me. George Brown had more knowledge and experience of the labour movement — that is, the unions as well as the party — than almost any of its current leadership. He had resigned from the party in 1976 (sitting as an independent in the Lords) and had become an increasingly hostile critic of the power of the unions, writing effectively in the press. He told me how the hard Left had risen to positions of influence and power within some of Britain’s most important unions. He showed me that the immunities conferred by legislation since 1906 were being used with a new ruthlessness, and made an unanswerable case for a fundamental change in the law.

The strong support that I received for what I said in my Weekend World interview was in marked contrast to the reaction to Jim Callaghan’s remarks on his arrival back three days later from the Guadeloupe summit. His absence from the country at such a critical time had itself been politically damaging, helping to strengthen the impression that the Government was paralysed in the face of the strikes. The press coverage of the summit itself had not helped him; the sight of the Prime Minister sitting with the other leaders in the Caribbean sun, all casually dressed, was a dangerous contrast to events at home. But the final disaster was the impression he left with the press when he flew into Heathrow. Although he never did use those precise words — ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ — the myth faithfully represented his attempt to play down the scale of the problem. His image of unflappability and competence was never restored.

I reflected later on why Jim Callaghan, the most canny of politicians, stumbled into such an error. Partly, no doubt, it was tiredness as a result of the transatlantic flight. That taught me a lesson I never forgot: do not make public statements on arriving back in the country after any lengthy absence or long journey. Yet the misjudgement also had deeper roots. Indeed, I always considered it a kind of nemesis. Jim Callaghan had based his whole political career on alliance with the trade union leaders. For him, if not for the country, it had been a winning formula. Now that the unions could no longer be appeased, he had no other policy in his locker. This alone can explain his helpless reaction to the crisis which overwhelmed him. The Government could not even decide whether to declare a State of Emergency. Although I had seen when a member of Ted Heath’s Cabinet that this was likely to be of limited effectiveness, the Government’s alternative of trying to reach voluntary agreement with the trade unions to limit the effects of the picketing was obviously futile.

What should be our next move? Parliament was due to return on Monday 15 January. I wrote to the Prime Minister demanding a full statement and a debate on the industrial situation. We had a slot already arranged for a PPB on Wednesday 17 January and work began on a script.

The preparations I made for my speech in the debate were perhaps the most thorough I had ever made for an appearance in the Commons. I had allowed others to prepare a text for my speech in the last Confidence debate, a few months before: it had not been a success and I had resolved afterwards that on occasions of such importance I would not do this again. I did not want a written text in any case — I always spoke better from notes. I worked on this speech as if it were a tax brief, amassing my sources, marking them up with coloured pens, and drafting carefully a few pages of handwritten notes which would show me instantly the structure of my speech when I glanced down at them on the despatch box. Front- and backbench colleagues came in to help, some with information about their constituencies, others-particularly Ian Percival and Leon Brittan — to assist on points of law. Sympathetic firms affected by the strikes sent telexes giving their latest news; the CBI was producing a daily briefing; Denis passed on a good deal that he heard; and we all scanned the press.

My original idea had been to make a hard-hitting but essentially conventional speech from the Opposition benches — hammering the Government and demanding that they change course. But at Scotney over the weekend of 13–14 January and on Monday back in London several people urged a different approach. Peter Utley and Peter Thorneycroft sent me suggestions for a speech offering support for the Government if it was prepared to introduce the kind of legislative changes necessary to break the union stranglehold. Ronnie Millar and Chris Patten — working on the PPB script — were urging the same idea.

My own immediate inclination was to avoid offers of cooperation, for several reasons. First, unlike the