HOW TORIES WILL FACE THE UNIONS

Political myths—especially those cherished by political commentators—die hard; and as soon as one has been exploded by events, another is promptly created to fill its place as the basis of “expert” analysis and prediction.

After the elections of 1974, it became fashionable to refer to the Labour party as “the natural party of government,” and to prophesy that Conservative influence would be permanently confined to the shire counties and the South-eastern suburbs. It was asserted with some confidence that a new Tory leader whose political base was in Finchley could not hope to win friends in any industrial area north of Watford. There was also a great deal of superior talk about the hopelessness of a political appeal allegedly based on what were contemptuously called middle-class values.

As far as I am aware, none of those who so confidently promulgated these myths has yet admitted that he was wrong. Yet myths they were, for all that. Workington, Walsall, Stechford and Ashfield—two of them won by direct switches of votes from Labour to Conservative in polls of general election proportions—were no mere flash in the pan. Our belief, based on campaign reactions and on careful survey work, that there is a fundamental shift of political allegiance in industrial and mining areas, has since been strikingly confirmed by county council election gains with unusually high polls. We won enough seats from Labour in Co. Durham, Derbyshire, Manchester, Merseyside and the West Midlands to make it clear that the monolithic structure of the Labour heartlands is breaking up.

So much for the myth of “the party of the shires and suburbs.” Of course we do not expect to score swings of quite this size in a general election; but it is a fact that no Government which has suffered by-election and local election reverses on this scale has ever won the ensuing general election.

Certainly a part of the swing represents a mid-term protest against the falling living standards caused by Labour's follies and failures; but we are satisfied that a substantial number of traditional Labour voters have finally come to the conclusion that, if Labour Governments produce economic crises and heavy unemployment, Labour rule cannot be good for the average working man and his family.

Nor is this conviction based solely on calculations of material advantage—which brings us to the second of the exploded myths. Since these derided “middle-class” values amounted simply to a conviction that skill and hard work should earn an adequate reward; that the rule of law, public order and self-discipline are essential to a civilised society; that educational standards are important; that concern for the unfortunate should not be institutionalised in such a way as to destroy all individual responsibility—then it was always remarkably insulting to assert that these were not convictions instinctively held by a majority of working people.

And so it has proved. Few people really believe that a country—any more than an individual—can go on indefinitely living on borrowed money; or that a community can long continue to pay itself for producing less. Common sense is an inherent characteristic of the British, and so much that has happened under this Labour Government seems to ordinary people to fly in the face of all common sense. The commonsense message of our policy document “The Right Approach,” faithfully spelled out by our candidates in all the by-elections, has been getting home. Common sense is very far from being a middle-class monopoly.

Of course we still have a long way to go. Recognition that Labour has failed, and that the Tories represent the only viable alternative, implies neither total trust nor complete confidence that we shall solve the country's deep-rooted problems. These have to be earned by achievements in office: and I cannot emphasise too strongly the responsibility that rests on the Conservatives who now control Britain's county councils. They have to show not only efficiency and financial realism, but a deep sense of caring for the needs of the people they have been elected to serve.

That Conservatives do not “care,” and that Labour does, is an old myth regularly exploded when we are in office, and sedulously re-created by Socialists when we are in opposition. The facts show quite clearly that our record from 1951 to 1964 and from 1970 to 1974, in the field of pensions and other benefits, would stand comparison with that of any Administration in office in this country. Nevertheless, old myths die hard.

Yet one essential message has been getting home to ordinary people: that not only jobs but all the social services, from health to pensions, have to be paid for by the creation of wealth—and that wealth is not created by the [end p1] State. As living standards steadily fall, faith in the State as the preserver of jobs and the fount of largesse has also declined, and this has encouraged still more people to believe that State Socialism offers no hope for them.

So with the old myths dead or dying, it is not surprising that new myths have to be created if the greatest myth of all—the viability of Socialism—is to survive until the next election. And in the week of panic that preceded the Liberals' resuscitation of a moribund Labour Government, it became clear that Labour's entire election campaign is to be based on myths. Who can blame them? They can hardly go to the country on their record of achievement since 1974, nor can they agree on any constructive and convincing programme for the future: so what is left?

“The Tories have ‘lurched to the Right’.” This, I gather, means that we believe in a sensible control of the money supply and a reduction in public borrowing—in other words, what Mr. Healey has been told he must do by the I.M.F.

“The Tories ‘cannot work with the unions’ and are hell-bent on ‘confrontation’.” Well, it has yet to be shown this summer that the unions will go on working with Labour on Mr. Jack Jones 's terms. But if this popular assertion means that a Conservative Government would not be prepared to accept a T.U.C. diktat laying down political and economic conditions which we believe to be opposed to the national interest, in exchange for rigid pay controls which frustrate the energies and aspirations of skilled craftsmen and managers alike—well yes, fair enough.

But that is not what I call “working with the unions.” And if the trade union leaders, many of whom do not have to run for re-election, really listen to those of their followers who are increasingly disenchanted with the rôle of party politics in trade unionism, and start trying genuinely to represent their members' interests, then I think we shall get on very well.

After all, my colleagues and I will have been elected by a genuine democratic process involving the support of millions of trade unionists, and no trade union leader is likely to gain much support if he makes a mockery of a general election and of parliamentary democracy by refusing to accept the Government of the people's choice.

I do not think the ordinary trade unionists will find the myth convincing. I shall be very happy indeed to fight an election on this issue—if only because of the knowledge that it is the only issue on which Labour still dares to fight.