The following Wednesday, 30 January, with the ballot still pending, an emergency Cabinet was called. Ted told us that the Pay Board’s report on relativities had now been received. The question was whether we should accept the report and set up new machinery to investigate ‘relativities’ claims. The miners had always claimed to be demanding an improvement in their relative pay — hence their rejection of Ted’s ‘unsocial hours’ provision, which applied to all shift workers. The Pay Board report might provide a basis for them to settle within the incomes policy — all the more so because it specifically endorsed the idea that changes in the relative importance of an industry due to ‘external events’ could also be taken into account when deciding pay. The rapidly rising price of oil was just such an ‘external event’.
We felt that the Government had no choice but to set up the relativities machinery. Not to do so — having commissioned the relativities report in the first place — would make it seem as if we were actively trying to prevent a settlement with the miners. And with an election now likely we had to consider public opinion at every step.
But there were important tactical questions as to how we did this. We could demand that the TUC accept the principle of pay policy as a condition. We could require that the miners go back to work and accept the NCB’s existing offer while the Pay Board undertook its inquiry. These were not unreasonable conditions in the circumstances, but they were very unlikely to be acceptable to either the TUC or the NUM.
Ted and a group of ministers had drafted a letter to the TUC and CBI that made the reference conditional on the miners accepting the existing NCB offer and returning to work. The letter invited the TUC and the CBI for talks. I suspect that Ted was less than happy with this tough draft. In his heart of hearts he wanted a settlement and up to the very last moment believed he could achieve it. But by this stage even some of his closest friends in Cabinet wanted to bring matters to a head with the miners. The split within the inner circle of the Government had already been exposed on the issue of an early election: I assumed that the same divisions existed in the group which drafted the letter.
In the end Cabinet watered down the contents of the letter, removing the condition that the miners accept the NCB offer and attaching no strings to the proposal that the TUC meet ministers for talks. The letter was published. When we met again the following day there was a general feeling that the press coverage had been good and that we had regained some of the initiative lost over the TUC offer earlier in the month. But in practice we were committed now to accepting the relativities machinery and any offer that it might come up with. There was no hiding the fact that the miners were likely to win a large increase. If we went ahead and held an election, the prospect was that we would face another Wilberforce immediately afterwards. At the time it made tactical sense. But looking back I have to believe that others were preparing the ground to buy the miners off.
An election became all but certain when, on Tuesday 5 February, we learned that 81 per cent of those voting in the NUM ballot had supported a strike. Election speculation reached fever pitch from which there was no going back. I suspect none of us was surprised when Ted told us at Cabinet two days later that he had decided to go to the country. The general election would take place on Thursday 28 February — that is, as soon as possible.
Willie proposed formally to refer the miners’ claim to the Pay Board for a relativities study. He couched his argument for this course entirely in terms of its giving us something to say during the election in reply to the inevitable question: How will you solve the miners’ dispute if you win? Cabinet then made the fateful decision to agree to Willie’s proposal.
Because of the emergency nature of the election, I had not been involved in the early drafts of even the education section of the manifesto, which was now published within days. There was little new to say, though the record was set out. In any case, the dominant theme of the document — the need for firm and fair government at a time of crisis — was clear and stark. The main new pledge was to change the system whereby Social Security benefits were paid to strikers’ families. Apart from the questions of inflation and trade union power, the mortgage rate of 11 per cent created political difficulties for us. Naturally, I was mainly questioned about education matters, as when Willie Whitelaw and I joined Robin Day on Election Call in the course of the campaign. But in answer to one questioner I set out my strongly held views on a coalition government: ‘I think it’s a false assumption that if you get a government of all the best brains, the best brains will agree what to do. You can get two experts on anything and they will not in fact agree on what the solution is… You have in a coalition government to drop many of your own beliefs.’
This statement was to be unexpectedly relevant to the period after the election when the Conservative leadership, licking its wounds and seeking some new vehicle to carry it back to power, was attracted by the notion of a ‘Government of National Unity’. I might also have added that if you have no beliefs, or if you have already abandoned them, ‘Government of National Unity’ has rather more attractions.
During most of the campaign I was reasonably confident that we would win. Conservative supporters who had been alienated by the U-turns started drifting back to us. Indeed, their very frustrations at what they saw as our past weaknesses made them all the more determined to back us now that we had decided, as they saw it, to stand up to trade union militancy. Harold Wilson set out Labour’s approach in the context of a ‘social contract’ with the unions. Those who longed for a quiet life could be expected to be seduced by that. But I felt that if we could stick to the central issue summed up by the phrase ‘Who governs?’ we would win the argument, and with it the election.
I felt victory — almost tangibly — slip away from us in the last week. I just could not believe it when I heard on the radio of the leak of evidence taken by the Pay Board which purported to show that the miners could have been paid more within Stage 3, with the implication that the whole general election was unnecessary. The Government’s attempts to deny this — and there did indeed turn out to have been a miscalculation — were stumbling and failed to carry conviction. We had become caught up in the complexities of pay policy and finally been strangled by them. From now on it was relentlessly downhill.
Two days later, Enoch Powell urged people to vote Labour in order to secure a referendum on the Common Market. I could understand the logic of his position, which was that membership of the Common Market had abrogated British sovereignty and that the supreme issue in politics was therefore how to restore it. But what shocked me was his manner of doing it — announcing only on the day the election was called that he would not be contesting his Wolverhampton seat and then dropping this bombshell at the end of the campaign. It seemed to me that to betray one’s local supporters and constituency workers in this way was heartless. I suspect that Enoch’s decision in February 1974, like his earlier intervention in 1970, had a crucial effect.
Then three days later there was another blow. Campbell Adam-son, the Director General of the CBI, publicly called for the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act. It was all too typical of the way in which Britain’s industrial leaders were full of bravado before battle was joined, but lacked the stomach for a fight. I must admit, though, that our own interventionist policies had hardly encouraged British businessmen and managers to accept the risks and responsibilities of freedom.