SPLITS AND REBELLIONS
The Conservative Party Conference at Brighton was always likely to be difficult. Most of those present had expected that it would never take place because of the supposedly imminent general election campaign and felt cheated of that victory. The opinion polls showed us falling behind Labour. Above all, the controversy over the Government’s rapidly disintegrating pay policy focused even more attention on our approach, and that was itself threatened with disintegration.
A couple of weeks before the Conference Jim Prior had unwisely made remarks in a radio interview which seemed to offer Conservative backing for the Government’s 5 per cent policy, and not only made clear his support for the principle of a statutory incomes policy but actually revealed that he thought a Conservative Government would be forced to introduce one: ‘I think that may well happen under certain circumstances.’ In my own interviews, I tried to shift the emphasis back towards the link between pay, profits and output and away from norms. Although I made it clear that I was not supporting the Ford strike, I equally blamed the Government’s 5 per cent pay norm for what was happening and said that a statutory policy was not a practical possibility. I was widely interpreted as having called for a return to free collective bargaining, an interpretation I did not seek to deny.
Ted Heath now intervened on the other side. Speaking in the Conference economic debate, while I watched from the platform, he warned of the risks of dogmatism and said of the Government’s 5 per cent policy: ‘It is not yet clear to what extent it has broken down. But if it has broken down, there is nothing here for gloating, nothing for joy. We should grieve for our country.’ Geoffrey Howe made a strong closing speech, handling Ted’s intervention with aplomb and saying that a future Conservative Government would return to ‘realistic, responsible collective bargaining, free from government interference’. But later that evening Ted appeared on television and went further. He warned that ‘free collective bargaining produces massive inflation’, and when asked if the Conservative Party should support the Government’s pay policy at a general election, he replied: ‘If the Prime Minister says he is going to the country and expresses the view that we cannot have another roaring inflation or another free-for-all, I would say I agree with that.’
This was a thinly veiled threat. An open split between the two of us during the general election would cause enormous damage. The question of Ted’s role during an election had long worried the Party, and Peter Thorneycroft had met him quietly to discuss his plans earlier in the year. Humphrey Atkins had also received messages from several MPs close to Ted who told him that he was proving amenable to an approach to help. Arrangements were made to liaise with his office during the campaign. Ted’s intervention had blown all that out of the water.
Moreover, in substance Ted’s view seemed to me entirely misconceived. There was no point in backing a policy which was beyond repair, even if it had been beneficial (which, in anything except the very short term, it was not). Moreover, although opposition to centrally imposed pay policies meant that we would find ourselves with strange bedfellows, including the more extreme trade union militants, the revolt against centralization and egalitarianism was basically healthy. As Conservatives, we should not frown on people being well rewarded for using sharp wits or strong arms to produce what the customer wanted. Of course, when such an approach was described, even by those allegedly on our own side, as being opportunist — and when it was accompanied by open disagreements as now between Shadow Ministers like Jim Prior and Keith Joseph — it was difficult to have the analysis taken seriously. But in fact it was an essential part of my political strategy to appeal directly to those who had not traditionally voted Conservative, but who now wanted more opportunities for themselves and their families. So I addressed much of my Conference speech directly to trade unionists.
You want higher wages, better pensions, shorter hours, more government spending, more investment, more — more — more — more. But where is this ‘more’ to come from? There is no more. There can be, but there will not be, unless we all produce it. You can no more separate pay from output than you can separate two blades of a pair of scissors and still have a sharp cutting edge. And here, let me say plainly to trade union leaders, you are often your own worst enemies. Why isn’t there more? Because too often restrictive practices rob you of the one thing you have to sell — your productivity.
Restrictive practices are encrusted like barnacles on our industrial life. They have been there for almost a century. They were designed to protect you from being exploited, but they have become the chief obstacle to your prosperity… I understand your fears. You’re afraid that producing more goods with fewer people will mean fewer jobs, and those fears are naturally stronger at a time of high unemployment. But you’re wrong. The right way to attack unemployment is to produce more goods more cheaply, and then more people can afford to buy them…
We shall do all that a government can to rebuild a free and prosperous Britain. We believe in realistic, responsible, collective bargaining, free from government interference. Labour does not. We believe in encouraging competition, free enterprise, and profits in firms large and small. Labour does not. We believe in making substantial cuts in the tax on your pay packet. Labour does not. We will create conditions in which the value of the money you earn and the money you save can be protected.
Over the next six months this strategy would be successful. But in the short term it was a liability, because the Party was not united on it and because opinion polls suggested that the public wanted us to support the Government against the unions. And not surprisingly we found ourselves at the end of the Conference season five and a half percentage points behind the Labour Party.
The removal of the prospect of an immediate election, after everyone’s nerves had been screwed up to fight one, led to a breakdown in the ordinary disciplines in both parties. In the Labour Party this focused on economics. With us, it boiled over on Rhodesia, first at the Party Conference and then in the House of Commons.
Within the Shadow Cabinet it was Peter Carrington who argued most strongly against accepting an amendment in the Rhodesian debate at the Party Conference which would commit us to lifting sanctions. Peter’s line was that although sanctions were largely futile, in the eyes of the Patriotic Front lifting them would constitute de facto recognition of the so-called ‘internal settlement’ earlier that year, by which Ian Smith had brought into the Rhodesian Government moderate black parties whose claim to represent the black majority was questioned. Peter argued that it would put us in an extremely weak position in trying to bring together the various parties to the Rhodesian dispute when we had already taken sides in this way. John Davies, who had to defend this contorted and unpopular line, did so in a rambling speech in which he was thrown by loud heckling. He looked exhausted and I could see when he sat down that he was in great distress, rubbing his head. I leaned across and asked him what was wrong: he told me that he had a splitting headache and had not slept for three days. I did not like the sound of this and told him that he must immediately go back to London to have a brain scan. He protested at first but finally agreed, being taken back in my car. There it was discovered that he had a malignant brain tumour, from which tragically he died a few months later.
Events at the debate at the Conference fuelled feeling within the Parliamentary Party. Reggie Maudling was one of a formidable team of backbenchers opposed to the Shadow Cabinet line of abstaining on the Commons order renewing sanctions. I did not like this line overmuch myself and, other things being equal, would have joined them in the ‘No’ lobby. But it was better to have a full-scale backbench revolt than to lose members of the Shadow Cabinet at this delicate juncture. In the end 114 Conservatives rebelled against the whip, including two junior spokesmen who accordingly left the front bench — the largest Conservative rebellion since 1945.