Chris Patten had submitted a paper to the meeting showing deep suspicion of Stepping Stones. Essentially, Chris favoured what he would doubtless consider a pragmatic rather than an ideological approach to Opposition. But I supported the view of the authors of Stepping Stones that it would take more than tactics to transform Britain. The majority at the meeting grasped at the straw provided by Chris’s paper and expressed a nonsensical desire to unify the Patten-Hoskyns approach, to which I had to bow. Effectively they wanted to kill Stepping Stones, but that I would not allow.
It took a month to get Stepping Stones back on track and even then Chris Patten’s work was to go on ‘in parallel’ and opponents of the whole approach, notably Jim Prior and Ian Gilmour, were in control of several of the most important ‘Theme Teams’. John Hoskyns had hoped to persuade Jim Prior to break new ground on the union question but Jim’s promised Stepping Stones speech, when it finally came, was no advance. Though some useful ideas (and some not so good) emerged from the Policy Search group, the crucial question of pay policy was excluded from its remit and by the end of summer 1978 the whole Stepping Stones initiative seemed to have come to a halt. Nor had it had any impact on manifesto work: had we fought an October general election the manifesto would have included no significant measures on union reform.[56]
What rejuvenated the Stepping Stones initiative was the collapse of the Government’s 5 per cent pay policy that autumn. Immediately after the Labour Conference rejected the policy, Keith Joseph came to see Willie Whitelaw and me, expressing his disappointment that we had not got on further. At various times people had suggested that the only way forward was to shift Jim Prior, but now there was obviously an opportunity to move on without taking such a strong step. Accordingly, I arranged another meeting of the Stepping Stones Steering Group for mid-November.
At this and at a later meeting, however, Jim was still able to block proposals for a vigorous campaign on the union question that winter. Peter Thorneycroft gave him strong support. Peter had never been a friend of Stepping Stones: at one point he actually suggested that every copy of the Stepping Stones report should be 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.