Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (68 page)

Unilateralism became the official policy of the Labour Party at the 1982 Party Conference, when the necessary two-thirds majority was secured. Michael Foot personally had long been committed to the unilateralist position. It had an appeal in the universities and among some intellectuals and received a good deal of covert support from those in the media, especially the BBC. Labour councils had adopted the gimmick of declaring their areas ‘nuclear free zones’. Although the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) had begun to lose support from the high point it had reached in 1981, it remained dangerously strong.

Ultimate control of Cruise missiles was the most tricky issue. The decision to modernize medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe had been made under pressure from the Europeans, particularly the Germans, anxious to prevent any ‘decoupling’ of the American and European wings of NATO. The Americans had developed and paid for the missiles, and therefore owned them, massively reducing the cost to European governments. There was a strong feeling in the US Congress that any US-owned missiles should be subject to US control. However, American ownership obviously carried implications if it ever came to decisions about use.

In Britain, distrust of the United States surfaced on the question of whether there should be a ‘dual key’ – that is, whether there should be a technical arrangement to ensure that the US could not fire these weapons without the consent of the British Government. That would go beyond the existing agreement that the US would not use nuclear weapons based in Britain without an Anglo-American ‘joint decision’.

The United States had offered us the possibility of dual key right at the start, but to exercise that option we would have had to buy the weapons ourselves, which would have been hugely expensive. John Nott, before he left his post as Defence Secretary, had been attracted by the dual key option. But neither Michael Heseltine, his successor, nor I shared his view. The UK had never exercised
physical
control over systems owned and manned by the US. It was in my view neither fair nor necessary to ask the US to break with that precedent now. Also, the more the Soviets were told about how and in what conditions Cruise missiles would be fired, the
less credible they would be as a deterrent. The Soviets might be persuaded that at the last moment a British Government might not agree to their use. Finally, the use of a dual key in the United Kingdom would have raised the whole question of arrangements elsewhere in Europe. In West Germany both government and public opinion would only agree to deploying Cruise and Pershing II missiles if there was no German finger on the trigger.

So for all these reasons I satisfied myself through discussions with Washington that the position was satisfactory from the point of view of British security and defence, and on 1 May 1983 I cleared personally with President Reagan the precise formula we should use to describe it. But I knew that it would be difficult to defend our line: not only anti-nuclear protesters but a sizeable number of our own supporters in and out of Parliament had their doubts. Moreover, most of the newspapers were opposed to us on the question of dual key.

We were anxious to avoid very visible signs of deployment in the runup to or during the 1983 general election campaign, with demonstrations stretching police resources. Until almost the last moment we had been planning an autumn election. But as events happened we had an election in June, so this was not the problem which it might have been. (The launchers and warheads duly arrived in November.)

Elsewhere in Europe the situation was still more difficult. There was already a good deal of public criticism in Germany and Italy of NATO’s offer of the zero-option, which was widely felt to be unrealistic. And the Soviets were mounting a major public relations campaign.

It was crucial that NATO’s policy on arms control be well presented and that the alliance should stick together. On Wednesday 9 February I had a meeting at Downing Street with George Bush to discuss these matters. The Vice-President had a special remit from President Reagan to keep in touch with European governments and he did this with great skill. He was always very well briefed and had a friendly, straightforward manner, the proof that this reflected personality rather than artifice being that his staff were well known to be devoted to him. I now urged the Vice-President that the American Administration should take a new initiative in the INF negotiations. The aim should be to seek an interim agreement whereby limited reductions on the Soviet side would be balanced by reduced deployments on the part of the United States, without abandoning the zero-option as our ultimate goal – that is the complete elimination of intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

Mr Bush reported my views back to President Reagan who replied in a message to me on Wednesday 16 February. The President was at this stage somewhat noncommittal about a new initiative but said that he would be willing to consider seriously any reasonable alternative idea for producing the same result as the zero-option. This did not seem to me to be sufficient. I replied two days later on the hotline. I stressed the success of Vice-President Bush’s visit to Europe, but pointed out that one of its effects had been to raise expectations. I hoped that the speech which President Reagan was due to make shortly on these matters would go beyond a restatement of the US position and begin to indicate how it might be developed. As things turned out, the President’s statement contained nothing new. So I continued the private pressure for further movement, while remaining in public totally supportive of the American position.

Then on Monday 14 March President Reagan sent me another message. He said that he had directed that a prompt review of the US position on INF negotiations should be made as a basis for new instructions to the US arms negotiating team. In the meantime, he asked that there should be no European calls for US flexibility and specifically asked me to express confidence in the very close co-ordination of our policies. I replied warmly, welcoming his decision. On Wednesday 23 March the President told me the results of his review. While sticking to the ultimate objective of the zero-option, the chief US negotiator, Paul Nitze, would tell the Soviets at Geneva before the end of the current round of negotiations that the US was indeed prepared to negotiate an interim agreement. The Americans would stop deployment of a (still to be specified) number of warheads, on condition that the USSR reduced the number of warheads on its mobile long-range INF missiles to one equal with the US on a global basis. Again, I welcomed his decision, but argued that he should consider giving specific figures. In fact the President’s proposal announced on 30 March did not do so. But his modest flexibility did have a beneficial effect on public opinion and incidentally helped us in Britain fighting the general election campaign soon to be upon us.

In that election campaign, defence would be of great political importance. Yet I had no doubt that the result would ultimately depend on the economy. Our economic course had already been set in the 1981 budget. We now had to see the strategy through. It was a remarkable testament to the soundness of public finances by this stage that we managed to pay for
the Falklands War out of the Contingency Reserve without a penny of extra taxation and with barely a tremor in the financial markets. The economy was already beginning to recover and would have done so more rapidly but for sluggish world conditions.

The black spot in the record was, of course, unemployment, which was still well over three million. It would be vital in the campaign to explain why this was so and what we were doing about it. Our ability to deal with this issue successfully would be a test not only of our eloquence and credibility but also of the maturity and understanding of the British electorate.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I never ceased to believe that, other things being equal, the level of unemployment was related to the extent of trade union power. The unions had priced many of their members out of jobs by demanding excessive wages for insufficient output, making British goods uncompetitive. So both Norman Tebbit, my new Secretary of State for Employment, and I were impatient to press ahead with further reforms in trade union law, which we knew to be necessary and popular, not least among trade unionists.

Towards the end of October 1981 Norman sought Cabinet agreement for what was to become the Employment Act, 1982.

By far the most important of Norman’s proposals related to the immunity currently extended to trade union funds. By virtue of Section 14 of Labour’s Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, 1974, trade unions enjoyed virtually unlimited immunity from actions for damages, even if industrial action was not taken in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute. They could not be sued for their unlawful acts or for unlawful acts done on their behalf by their officials. This breadth of immunity was quite indefensible. As long as unions were able to shelter behind it they had no incentive to ensure that industrial action was restricted to legitimate trade disputes and that it was lawful in other ways. Norman therefore proposed that this immunity should be reduced to that enjoyed by individuals under our 1980 legislation. Both of those immunities would be restricted further by our proposals which removed that immunity for disputes not mainly about pay and conditions and for disputes between trade unions.

There was at first some opposition in Cabinet to Norman’s proposals, but most of us were full of admiration for his boldness. He went away to consider some of the points made in discussion, but the package agreed
by Cabinet in November was more or less on the lines he wanted. Norman announced our intentions to the House of Commons later that month. The Bill was introduced the following February and the Act’s main provisions finally came into force on 1 December 1982.

Far from being unpopular, these proposals were soon being criticized on the grounds that they did not go far enough. The SDP were trying to outflank us by urging greater use of mandatory secret ballots. Many of our own supporters wanted to see action to stop the abuses connected with the ‘political levy’, a substantial sum extracted from trade unionists largely for the benefit of the Labour Party. There was continuing pressure to do something to prevent strikes in essential services. But it would not have been practical to deal with all of these issues at once in a single Bill: each raised complicated questions and we could not afford to make mistakes in this vital area. I was glad, however, that the atmosphere had changed and that the dangers of trade union power were now so much more widely understood. We were winning that battle, too.

In September Norman came forward with a paper containing his thoughts for new industrial relations legislation which would be formally submitted to ‘E’ Committee, the Economic Committee of the Cabinet, with a view to inclusion in the manifesto. Norman had already announced that we would undertake consultations with interested parties on legislation that would require trade unions to use secret ballots for the election of their leaders. There was strong support in both Houses for mandatory secret ballots before industrial action. But we were divided on this.

Ministers now discussed what should be the priorities for the forthcoming consultative Green Paper. We agreed to concentrate on ballots for the election of trade union leaders, mandatory strike ballots, and the political levy. Norman had reservations about the use of compulsory ballots before strikes. We had previously concluded that these should be voluntary. Moreover, there were doubts whether or not the use of ballots would actually reduce the frequency and length of strikes. But I was very aware of the great advantages of linking trade union reform to the unassailable principle of democracy, and I was keen to see that the proposals on strike ballots were expressed in a positive way in the Green Paper.

We published the Green Paper under the title
Democracy in Trade Unions
, in January 1983. Ministers discussed in April where we should go from there. We had no difficulty deciding in favour of proposals relating to trade union elections and strike ballots. Two other issues proved much
more difficult: the prevention of strikes in essential services and the political levy.

Public sector strikes and consequent disruption to the lives of the general public had been a feature of life in post-war Britain, but the practical difficulties of tackling the problem were immense. How should one define an ‘essential service’? How much would it cost the taxpayer in extra pay to secure ‘no strike’ agreements? What should be the penalty for failure to observe a ‘no strike’ agreement?

The political levy was a second difficult subject. It was paid by trade unionists into political funds held by their unions, the principal use of which was, in fact, to support the Labour Party. Payment was on the basis of ‘contracting out’: that is, trade unionists contributed automatically unless they specified otherwise. On the face of it, it would have been fairer to base the system on a principle of ‘contracting in’ and some argued for the change. But ‘contracting in’ would have wreaked havoc with the Labour Party’s finances. Had we introduced such a measure, there would undoubtedly have been pressure to change the system by which some companies donated to political parties, from which, of course, the Conservative Party heavily benefited. I never believed that the cases were parallel: after all, trade unionists in a closed shop could find it very difficult to avoid paying the political levy. By contrast, shareholders who did not approve of company donations to a political party could either hold the Board to account for their decisions or simply sell their shares. But the funding of political parties was a sensitive topic. If we brought forward radical proposals on the eve of a general election, we would be accused both of attempting to crush the Labour Party financially and of unfairness on the matter of corporate donations.

On Tuesday 10 May I held a meeting of ministers at which we decided our manifesto commitment. On essential services, the introduction of strike ballots would clearly help reduce the risk of strikes in these areas. But we would also consult further about the need for industrial relations in specified essential services to be governed by adequate procedure agreements, breach of which would deprive industrial action of immunity. On the question of the political levy, we had evidence from the consultations on the Green Paper that there was widespread disquiet about the operation of the system and we proposed to consult with the TUC to see what action they were prepared to take, failing which we would act ourselves. These were matters to which we would have to return after the election. But we had made substantial progress in reducing
the overbearing power of trade unions – much more than the fainthearted had ever believed possible. And far from proving a political incubus it was one of our strongest appeals to the voters.