True to character
Page 30
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OUR FRIENDS and acquaintances will often act out of character. Public figures and institutions deny themselves the privilege. Their attitudes are fixed for all seasons.
Evidence that life goes on beneath the frozen surface is only found when new circumstances require an early expression of opinion. The familiar guidelines and slogans may not help. The mask will slip for a moment.
This was the situation for the Transport and General Workers' Union when the senior management of the National Freight Company announced the proposal to buy the company 'from the Government and to offer shares to employees. First reactions from the TGWU were understandably cautious but on the whole favourable.
If the political aspect is ignored, this was not difficult to understand. The proposal was intended to be, and clearly was, in the interests of the employees, a large number of whom are TGWU members.
They were being offered a share, however small, in the running of their own undertaking. Although a large loan would have to be raised from outside sources, the control of the company would be in its own hands..
In the prospectus for the new consortium, NFC chief executive Peter Thompson says that the group will not be split up. If anything, it will widen its scope, notably by making acquisitions overseas. The fear will be removed that an outside purchaser might decide to sell off some of the NFC subsidiaries.
The union was bound to support the proposals up to this point. Stability and expansion were promised. The status of its members would be raised. Decisions would not be made over their heads with no genuine power of consultation.
Although the union may have played no direct part in formulating the scheme, it would certainly expect somewhere or other to be involved in its operation. On this point there was no problem about running true to form.
Through many changes in Government and almost as many changes of name, the NFC is one of the few state-owned organisations which seem at last to have achieved efficiency and financial stability. The main doubt is the extent to which this stability is illusory because of the special relationship with the Government.
It has not been possible to say with complete certainty what profit or loss the NFC is making in financial terms, and whether it is being propped up by a hidden subsidy.
Strict comparison with independent hauliers has been further hampered by the suspicion that, whatever happened, no Government would allow the NFC to go out of business. In the last resort, the Treasury lifeboat would come to the rescue. However much the NFC may have tried to ignore this prospect, it must have given some advantage — which again could not be measured — over competitors.
Once the consortium is launched, there ought to be no further doubts of this kind. With morale high and prospects good, the NFC will at last be able to give an unequivocal demonstration that, whatever private enterprise can do, a nationalised organisation can do just as well.
If the TGWU had reasoned thus far, it would here come up against the immovable obstacle. The Labour Party — in this context indistinguishable from the TGWU — is opposed on principle to the Government's plan to transfer the NFC to the private sector.
The opposition will be maintained whatever the evidence that an even more efficient NFC will emerge from the transition, and whatever the opinions of the people chiefly concerned, that is to say the NFC employees. The Party policy is to renationalise and (if Party conference resolutions are to be relied upon) to renationalise without compensation.
The determining factor is the notorious clause in the Party constitution framed 60 or 70 years ago when " mechanical road transport was in its infancy. The Party cannot avoid the commitment and the TGWU has to take the same line.
In the end, the union has run true to character and lines up with the Party in opposition to the NFC proposal. It cannot even be considered on its merits, because it is part of a process of which denationalisation is the intolerable and almost unthinkable first step.
Mr Thompson has had to do with this issue in his introduction to the prospecti Long-distance road haulage to be nationalised under the Transport Act passed by the Labour Government after thf war. A few years later, the Tori, restored to private enterprise most of the assets that had beE taken over.
There were threats of renationalisation at the time, and they have been repeate "But this has never happeneo says Mr Thompson.
He argues with some reas that it would be very unlike that another Labour Government would single ot for renationalisation the onh company in the road haulag industry substantially owned its workforce.
It would seem, although naturally Mr Thompson does r make the point, that a Party which has once had to bend principles because of comm sense and the weight of put opinion, should perhaps look the principles again and see whether they need modificatio It is significant that the Sodi Democratic Party, made up almost entirely of dissidents from the ranks of Labour, h joined the Conservatives an Liberals in approving the NI plan.
The TGWU should also be ii dilemma. Its first duty is towai its members and hitherto th duty has not been in conflic with Labour Party loyalty. T time may have come when choice has to be made.