Should hauliers be banned from striking?
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NO SOONER had the New Year editorials contrasting Orwell's fictional 1984 with the less ominous real thing been read, than Guardian readers were thrust back into a much more depressing period five years earlier. For the paper published a full-page article by the Transport Secretary of the day, William Rodgers, giving his account of the road haulage strike of January 1979.
Unlike many politicians' memoirs, the article seems to be factually correct, though naturally the comments are designed to show that if Mr Rodgers had had his way matters would never have reached a strike.
Perhaps the only surprising point is the admission of his belated discovery that the RHA was "a loose grouping of a large number of mainly small firms", and thus quite unlike the monolithic nationalised boards on which he had become accustomed to imposing the five per cent incomes policy which brought about the strike. Had his civil servants not told him this? Or perhaps even they did not know.
Any Guardian reader with doubts about the importance of road haulage in the national life would have been brought up short by Mr Rodgers' reminder of the grim position five years ago. Despite an agreement which was supposed to have permitted the movement of certain essential goods "Pickets were blocking materials for the manufacture of penicillin, and refusing to allow the movement of chlorine for water purification." Medical supplies were also affected.
By coincidence, the same issue of the paper reported the Institute of Director's complaint about delay in publication of the Government's plans for curbing strikes in essential industries and services. These are usually thought of as health and fire services, water and drainage, and power supply. (Police strikes are already illegal.) But anyone reminded by Mr Rodgers' article of the events of January 1979 must ask himself whether road haulage should not also be included in such a list.
This cannot be looked at in isolation from the rest of the Government's trade union legislation. Much of the damage five years ago was caused by pickets (not all of them from the road haulage industry) preventing the transport of goods which drivers were willing to move. Recent legal cases arising out of events at Mr Shah's printing works in Warrington might seem to mean that the law can now deal with this problem.
However, in this respect, as in so many others, road haulage is different. Disputes in most industries are confined to one or two specific places. This makes it relatively easy to deal with illegal picketing through the courts.
The nature of the industry means that in any conceivable road haulage strike there would always be many hundreds of drivers — self-employed, or working for small, non-union, operators — who would not be in dispute with their employers. To the naive it might seem that there would be nothing to prevent them from moving the goods normally transported by the strikers. (There would be some cases, notably in the hazardous cargoes field, where non-striking firms did not have the specialised equipment, but this type of transport is a minority.) But of course in the real world there would be pickets — and not only from the haulage firms which were on strike. They might picket the non-strikers' depots, though there would be so many of these that even Rent a-Picket manpower resources might be stretched. On the other hand, such picketing would be illegal, though serving writs on so many people would verge on the impossible.
But another difference between a road haulage strike and any other is that there is no need to picket the depots. The factories, warehouses, docks, airports and multifarious other premises which depend on road transport are likely to prove much more fruitful. And their numbers greatly exceed the numbers of road haulage depots. So the problems of dealing with illegal picketing here are likely to be even greater.
Whatever the law may say, in practice existing legislation is unlikely to cope adequately with a renewed road haulage strike.
But that does not necessarily point to a rush to have road haulage strikes banned by law. Despite undoubted abuses over the years the right to strike is a fundamental freedom. The demand for such a right in Poland, for example, (not to mention other East European countries) has been one of the main embarrassments for the Communist Government. It should not lightly be taken away. Only if some greater public good would result should such a step even be considered.
And it is certainly not obvious that the balance of advantage lies in the inclusion of haulage in the list. It is a vital industry — William Rodgers' article should remove any doubts on that score. But the 1979 industry-wide strike was almost unprecedented. Only if it were likely to be repeated would a legal ban be justified. And a repetition seems unlikely, for at least two reasons.
First, the lorry driver as a person is not a natural striker. Studies over the years have shown that most drivers like the life because of the independence it gives them. They tend to be natural "loners", and the very last type to be affected by the group hysteria which seems to be generated by so many strikes.
Second, even the most optimistic interpreters of what seems to be a slight improvement in the economy — or at least a flattening out of the decline — agree that it will have no significant effect on unemployment for several years. And there is plenty of evidence that many workers, and not only in transport, are increasingly concerned about keeping their jobs, rather than increasing their pay.
So operators should be wary about jumping at the chance of a legal constraint on the right to strike. For, happily, William Rodgers' reminiscences concerned a unique event.