The decade of the Seventies had witnessed a prodigious growth in the power and prestige of the trade union movement in Britain. Before the First World War, Lenin once remarked that the trade unions could never hope to encompass more than one third of the working class under capitalism. Yet in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher first came to power, trade union membership reached an historic highpoint of 55 per cent of the workforce, some 13.3 million people. These organisations embraced millions of workers, not least the growing army of white-collar workers, increasingly proletarianised by the changing nature of work.
However, within a decade and a half, the juggernaut of Thatcherism had brought the unions to their knees. Overall numbers in the trade unions had declined to nine million, of which little more than seven million were affiliated to the TUC. The closed shop had been outlawed and the basic right to strike had been severely curtailed. The large elements of workers’ control in the factories and workplaces – control of hiring and firing, the speed of the job, and other restrictions on the prerogatives of management – were completely undermined by the employers’ offensive. The balance of forces within the workplaces swung dramatically in favour of the employers, who, in turn, had no hesitation about putting the boot in. For them, it was retribution for the great unrest of organised labour during much of the 1970s. And as we know, revenge is sweet.
Thatcher’s election victory ushered in a period of sustained attack on the Labour movement. Standing at the doorway of Number Ten, Thatcher quoted the words of St Francis of Assisi: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony… where there is despair, may we bring hope.” James Prior, her future minister, recalled: “I was nearly sick on the spot. It was so untypical of Margaret’s attitude.”
Prior was quite right. More typical of Thatcher was the language of open class war. But this strident tone was no accident. It reflected the impasse of British capitalism and the new period that demanded an all-out attack on the wages and conditions of the working class. Her election also coincided with a new world slump from 1979-81 that drove up unemployment to record levels, as millions of workers, especially in manufacturing, lost their jobs in the shake-out.
This new harsh climate shocked and stunned the working class. The fear of mass unemployment, which emerged especially after 1974, proved a key weapon in the hands of the bosses and the Tory government. Behind these attacks lay the over-riding strategy of the ruling class, as well as Thatcher, to restore the diminishing power of British capitalism, at the expense of British workers.
Keynesian deficit financing was now declared dead and buried even under the Callaghan government. Tory economic policy was based upon Milton Friedman’s crude theories, which, under the new-fangled name of Monetarism, merely repeated the old nostrums of classical capitalist economics. These were the stale dishes of the interwar period simply reheated and served on different plates. Thatcher’s monetarist policies actually served to exacerbate the economic crisis, leading to the destruction of around 20 per cent of manufacturing industry between 1979 and 1981.
In the context of the global slump of 1979-81, when the output of the OECD countries fell by some 19 per cent, the impact of these policies on Britain was truly catastrophic. It was a kind of Twentieth Century Luddism – but on a vast scale. Industry after industry went to the wall, in a frenzy of downsizing, asset-stripping and take-overs. British industry was forced onto a Procrustean bed, and cut to pieces. Thatcher epitomised the upstart, short-sighted, get-rich-quick sections of the capitalist class. She proclaimed that British industry was “slimmer and fitter,” when it was dying of anorexia.
The ruling class declared open war on the unions. They put their full weight behind the Tories’ attempt to break the power of the trade unions and teach the working class a brutal lesson. Under Lord Carrington a strategy was worked out to shackle the unions. The Tories had neither forgotten nor forgiven their double humiliation in 1972 and 1974. Thatcher was determined to avenge these indignities and destroy the National Union of Mineworkers. If that meant wrecking the majority of the British coalfield in the process, so be it. Whatever it would take in terms of money and resources, she would see the job through to the end. Nevertheless, the conclusions of Lord Carrington were not particularly optimistic:
Strong unions and advanced technology operated by their members, particularly in fuel and power, mean that no government these days can ‘win’ in the way Mr. Baldwin’s Cabinet triumphed during the General Strike of 1926 by maintaining supplies and services. The group examined the possibility of using the Armed Forces to break strikes and concluded that such a practice could not be adopted on a large scale for two reasons: first that Britain no longer had enough troops and second that it would permanently damage the fabric and practice of the country’s politics.[1]
Six weeks after the lily-livered Carrington report and its “capitulationist” conclusions, another internal Tory document drafted by Thatcher’s close ally, Nicholas Ridley MP, was leaked. This was far more encouraging for the Thatcherites. This document sketched out the necessary contingency plans to take on the unions, especially the miners, and defeat them. It categorised three sectors vulnerable to strikes:
(a) sewerage, water, electricity, gas and the health service is the most vulnerable group; (b) railways, docks, coal and dustmen in an intermediate group; and (c) other public transport, education, the postal service and telephones, air transport and steel in the least vulnerable group.
It concluded that in the most vulnerable sector strikes could not be fought effectively. It was therefore essential to isolate each group and pick them off one at a time. It was important to concentrate on the weakest sections, and be prepared to take whatever means were necessary, including the rigging of profit figures in the nationalised industries to put them on the defensive. “There should be a large and mobile squad of police equipped and prepared to uphold the law against violent picketing”, stated Ridley’s report. “Good non-union drivers should be recruited to cross picket-lines with police protection.”
This was music to Thatcher’s ears! It drew a clear distinction between the “wets” and “dries” in the Cabinet. This union-busting strategy was to be systematically applied over the coming years, and was to prepare the most explosive industrial dispute in Britain since 1926. The preparations, in the words of Nigel Lawson, were “just like re-arming to face the threat of Hitler in the late 1930s.” If only the union leaders would show such determination as Thatcher did for her class!
In preparation for the showdown, new hard-faced managers were recruited to deal with the unions in the nationalised industries. In November 1979, the chairman of British Leyland, Sir Michael Edwards, in collusion with the secret services, succeeded in sacking Derek Robinson (vilified in the press as “Red Robbo”), convenor of Longbridge in Birmingham and undermining union organisation in the plant. In April 1980 Edwards imposed a wage deal and changed working practices over the heads of the union. The resulting strike was undermined and broken by threats of dismissals. In November, Edwards threatened to close the Cowley plant if the workers went on strike over pay. Intimidated by these tactics, when the TGWU and AUEW called strikes, they were rejected by large margins and the “deal” was reluctantly accepted.
Following this, management attempted to operate a system of unilateral control, which later resulted in internal changes and mass redundancies throughout British Leyland. These actions represented the new brutal management methods being introduced across British industry. Ian MacGregor, an American boss with a record of fighting the American mineworkers’ unions, was brought in as steel industry chairman to “sort things out”. He had, incidentally, been deputy-chairman of BL under Michael Edwards. In 1980, he provoked a thirteen week steel strike, which ended in defeat for the steel union, the ISTC, under the “moderate” Bill Sirs. This resulted in the destruction of 80,000 jobs. Later MacGregor’s tried and tested talents would be used to take on the miners.
After the bitter experience of the Callaghan government, the Labour Party had moved dramatically to the left. In May 1980 the TUC called a successful mass “Day of Action” against the Tories. In November, the Labour Party held a national demonstration of 150,000 in Liverpool against unemployment. Demands for greater controls over the party leadership and the contents of the election manifesto grew rapidly within Labour’s ranks. This culminated in a special Labour Conference at Wembley in January 1981.
After a bitter struggle, the old system whereby the Parliamentary Labour Party alone elected the Party Leader and Deputy Leader was thrown out, and a new Electoral College was established, giving the unions 40 per cent of the votes, and the constituency parties and the PLP 30 per cent each. It also endorsed mandatory reselection of MPs, which arose from a growing dissatisfaction with the long list of fifth columnists within Labour’s ranks. People such as Reg Prentice, Ray Gunter, Roy Jenkins and George Brown had used and abused the party to promote their careers, and then ditched it. This produced immense dissatisfaction in the ranks that was expressed in the demand for control over the leadership. The changes approved at Wembley abolished the “divine right of MPs” to rule the Labour Party. They were an immense advance for internal democracy and the rights of the rank and file.
Of course, they were not to everybody’s liking. The usual cabal of right-wing trade union leaders did everything in its power to prevent this shift to the left, and organised a secret faction to secure their aims. “St. Ermine’s Hotel dinners, where Duffy (AEU), Roy Grantham (APEX), Bill Sirs (steelworkers), Sid Weighell (railwaymen), Frank Chapple (electricians) and others met regularly to plan their strategy”, revealed The Observer (4 October 1981). Here they met regularly to plot and hatch their plans to subvert the Labour Party. But given the profound disappointment with the Callaghan government, at this stage this secret “conspiracy” was largely a rearguard struggle.
Before the new party rules were put in place, Callaghan resigned, leaving the PLP, yet again, to choose the Leader of the party. Unexpectedly, the soft-left Michael Foot was chosen as the new Leader. In the following election for Deputy Leader, which took place under the new rules, the Left decided to put up Tony Benn against the Right’s candidate, Denis Healey. Benn was defeated by a hair’s breadth – 50.426 per cent to 49.574 per cent. He had taken over 80 per cent support in the Constituency Labour Parties and 40 per cent of the union votes. The vote in the PLP, however, tipped the balance in Healey’s favour.
As a pointer to his future role, Neil Kinnock, though elected on a Left ticket to Labour’s executive committee, abstained with 20 other Tribune supporters, robbing Benn of victory. Another factor in Healey’s favour was the votes of the treacherous “Gang of Four”, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers, who voted in the Deputy Leadership election, and then split away from the party soon after to form the SDP. The Gang attracted the support of twenty-five Labour MPs and one Tory to their breakaway. However, as in 1931, the bulk of right-wingers remained behind in the Labour Party.
“I would have fitted into the SDP, and they would have liked to enrol me”, wrote right-winger Betty Boothroyd in her autobiography. “None of my friends who left the party discussed it with me, but I never thought of them as traitors and there was no bitterness between us.”[2] For these right-wingers, it was simply a division of labour in keeping the Labour Party committed to the capitalist track.
The Tories’ hold on power was extremely fragile. 1981 proved to be a low point in Thatcher’s political fortunes. The attacks carried out by the Tories on the welfare state, local government, and the working class generally, provoked enormous resentment. The avalanche of redundancies across the face of British industry added to their unpopularity. The Tories sunk to new lows in the opinion polls. Like King Midas in reverse, everything Thatcher touched seemed to turn to ashes. It was later revealed that the “Iron Lady” was completely demoralised and even on the verge of resigning as Prime Minister.