History of England 1-6

Industrial relations had been cordial for much of the Sixties, at least by comparison with many of Britain’s neighbours. But by the end of the decade, ‘strife’ was again apparent, and Wilson and Barbara Castle, the new employment secretary, could feel in the nation a growing unease. Castle took to the task of taming the unions with something akin to despair; as a member of the party’s left, she knew better than most what the harvest would be. Nonetheless, her northern persistence and native ardour drove her on. After a lengthy period of consultation, on 16 January 1969 the White Paper ‘In Place of Strife’ was published. The tenor of the document was simple. The unions must restrain their brood or government would declare them unfit parents and act accordingly. In detail, this included the right of the employment secretary to demand a strike ballot if she felt that the national interest was imperilled, a twenty-eight-day period of mandatory work in the event of a stalemate in negotiations, and, crucially, the establishment of an Industrial Board which would have the power to bind and to loose in any confrontation between unions. Its decision would be legally enforceable. This was of particular importance since the most intractable union ‘troubles’ tended to arise not between employers and employed but between unions competing for the highest wages. Much of this would have seemed unexceptionable, but for the contingencies the White Paper envisaged. A threat crouched over all; financial penalties awaited if the unions refused to comply, and, if these too were flouted, prison.

It is perhaps surprising that even then most Labour voters and MPs were generally supportive of these radical proposals. But neither MPs nor voters counted beside the unions who funded the Labour party. Moreover, a new breed of union leader had come to power; he was a militant, as often as not a Marxist, whose only care was to fence his members’ rights in a girdle of barbed wire. And he had an ally in cabinet: the home secretary, James Callaghan. Callaghan had been an undistinguished, if tenacious, member of the cabinet. At once instinctively loyal and quietly ambitious, of the Left but never a Marxist, he was above all a union man. Callaghan disliked Barbara Castle, partly on the dubious grounds that she was somehow less workingclass than himself and partly because she was university educated. His time would soon come.

The bill announced by ‘In Place of Strife’ was swiftly put to the test. In February 1969, a strike broke out at the Ford Motor Company. It was in some ways a textbook case of irreconcilable interests. Management had drawn up a plan whereby, in exchange for forswearing any unofficial action, members would be awarded a generous pay rise and larger holiday benefits. Having initially approved the plan, union leaders swiftly altered course when their members, unmollified, walked out. The impotence of adjudicators was further emphasized when a court injunction in favour of the offer fell on deaf ears.

Those on the parliamentary back bench would have none of the White Paper’s provisions, the press was divided, the unions scornful, and many formerly amenable MPs increasingly disillusioned. Still worse was to come. On 26 March, the NEC (the National Executive Committee of the Labour party) gathered to discuss Castle’s proposals. Fifteen colleagues had already proclaimed their opposition to the paper when Callaghan joined their number, with arm uplifted. ‘In Place of Strife’ limped on for a few weeks, but Callaghan’s blow had struck it to the heart and soon it collapsed. In its place the unions accepted a ‘solemn and binding’ commitment to keep its members within the bounds set by government. That stirring, utterly vacuous expression was to rumble through the next decade.

The increasing malaise of 1969 was only slightly offset by the news of a glorious collaboration between French and English designers: the supersonic aeroplane, Concorde. If there were any notably high spirits, however, these were occasioned chiefly by the spectacle of Tony Benn at the airport in Toulouse quite literally worshipping the great sleek vulture of steel beside him. Technology was, he explained, his religion.

When the last election of the decade was announced, in 1970, Labour’s mood could not have been more buoyant. The balance of payments seemed healthy, and the disappointments of the past few years were matters on which the government chose not to dwell. After all, much good had been done. Labour could point to its care for the disadvantaged, for the young, even for the elderly – though for many in the Sixties, England was no country for the old. It could boast of its international standing, and it could claim that the young had never been so fully or richly educated, the poorest never so well provided for. Yet there seemed no need to dwell on the past when the future too would surely be Labour.