Conservative government's plea for restraint in pressing wage claims.
The final paragraphs of a resolution passed unanimously at the
eighty-eighth annual conference said that the TUC " ... asserts the
right of labor to bargain on equal terms with capital, and to use its
bargaining strength to protect the workers from the dislocations of an
unplanned economy.
"It rejects proposals to recover control by wage restraint, and by
using the nationalized industries as a drag-anchor for the drifting
national economy."
These phrases reveal the heart of the quarrel between the TUC and the
government. The Conservatives are belabored for not carrying out a
Socialist policy--i.e., a planned economy--but restraint on wages is
rejected.
The resolution represented a serious check in progress toward a
national understanding of the country's economic position. It ensured,
I believe, another round of wage demands by the unions, protracted
industrial disputes, and, eventually, higher costs for industry and
higher prices for foreign buyers.
The constant bickering between union and union, between unions and
employers, and between the TUC and the government should not divert
us from the qualities of the British industrial working class. It
is highly skilled, especially in the fields of electronics and the
other new industries now so important to the export trade. Its
gross production and productivity are rising. It is, once aroused,
intelligent and energetic. The nation is essentially homogeneous. There
is obviously a wide gap between worker and employer in Britain, but it
seems less wide when we compare it with the French worker's hostility
toward his boss.
But of course the industrial worker is only one unit of the industrial
system. Working with him are hundreds of thousands of engineers,
technicians, planners, and managers--men of high quality, imaginative,
daring, and resourceful. Together these two groups operate industries
that are rapidly recovering from the effects of the war and the
frantic post-war period in which all machines had to run at top speed,
regardless of repairs, if Britain was to make enough to live.
If Americans understand that in a smaller country industry will be
on a smaller scale than in the United States, they must concede that
the steel plants in Wales and the North, the hydroelectric power
system built in the fastnesses of the Scottish Highlands, the new
nuclear-energy power stations now nearing completion are impressive
industrial installations. British industry in the physical sense is not
a collection of obsolete or obsolescent factories and rundown mills;
new plants and factories are appearing with greater frequency every
year, and the emphasis is on the future.
A journey through the busy Midlands provides the proof. Everywhere one
sees new construction for industrial production. The rawboned red brick
factories, relics of Victorian England, are silent and empty; many have
been pulled down. The main problem for Britain is not the modernity of
her industrial system but the lack of modernity in the outlook of her
industrial workers.
The judgment may seem too harsh. It is manifestly unfair to place the
entire burden of progress toward a healthier economy on one element in
the economic situation. Certainly British capital in the past and to
some extent in the present has been singularly blind to the country's
new situation and unenterprising in seeking means of adjusting itself
to this situation. The price rings and monopolistic practices have
sustained inefficient factories and restricted industrial enterprise.
Nevertheless, it is my conclusion that today the industrial owner and
manager understands the nation's situation and the union leader does
not. The TUC has attained great influence in the realm. The industrial
worker has won living standards undreamed of a generation ago.
Nonetheless, there is a dangerous lack of tolerance in labor's approach
to management. This carries over into labor's approach to government.
It is a highly unrealistic attitude in which organized labor clamors
for the adoption by a Conservative government of a system of economic
planning which that government was elected to end.
As we have seen, thousands of the Tories' strongest supporters
are angry because they regard the government they elected as
pseudo-socialist.
This contest between labor and capital is involved and sharply
partisan. Viewed from the outside, it may seem an insurmountable
obstacle to British progress. But to accept that view is to ignore the
most important, the most enduring of all the country's resources: the
character of the British people.
From the time of Charles II on, visitors to Britain have been struck
by the way in which the character of the British people has allowed
them the widest latitude for internal differences, often carried to the
very edge of armed conflict, and has yet enabled them to maintain their
political stability.
There is a lesson in recent history. Imposing forces within the kingdom
reached a pitch of fanatic fury over the Ulster question shortly before
World War I. Great political leaders took their positions. The Army
was shaken by rumors of disaffection. Officers were ready to resign
their commissions rather than lead their troops into action against the
turbulent Ulstermen. The Germans and others watching from the Continent
concluded that the heart of the world empire was sick. Yet what was the
outcome? Finally aware of the magnitude of the challenge presented by
German aggression in Belgium, the country united instantly. The leaders
composed their differences. The Army closed its ranks. The officers
went away to fight and die at Mons and Le Cateau.
The lesson is that the British, because of their essential homogeneity,
can afford a higher pitch of internal argument than can other nations.
Indeed, the very fury of these arguments testifies to the vitality of
the nation. It means a country on the move, in contrast to the somber,
orderly, shabby dictatorship of Spain or the somnolent French Republic
where the great slogans of the past have been abandoned for the motto
"We couldn't care less."
Those who admire the British accept British character as one of the
strongest arguments for their nation's survival as a great power.
But before we go too far in endorsing this view we must note that
there are bad characteristics as well as good ones. We know that the
British society is changing. Is it not possible that in the process
of change some of the characteristics which made the nation great are
disappearing?
Mr. Geoffrey Gorer tells us that the British have become a law-abiding
nation dwelling in amity and honesty under British justice. In some
aspects of civil relationship this is true. Visitors to Britain
only a century ago were alarmed by the behavior of British mobs.
The cockneys of London pulled the mustaches of a visiting Hungarian
general and shouted rude remarks at their Queen and her Prince Consort.
From medieval times the British working classes have been long on
independence and short on respect. The uprising of the _Jacquerie_ in
French history is balanced in British annals by the dim, powerful, and
compelling figures of Wat Tyler and John Ball.
Has all this changed so much? Have the turbulent, violent British
really become a nation of sober householders indifferent to their
rights or to those at home or abroad who threaten them? Superficially
the answer may be yes. Basically it is no. The present strife between
organized labor and the employers is only a contemporary version of
a struggle which has gone on throughout its history and which is
world-wide. It is when this struggle is submerged that it is dangerous.
Despite all the damage it is doing now to the British economy,
dissension in the House of Commons and in the boardrooms of industries
is preferable to wild plots laid in cellars.
When we consider the heat with which these debates are conducted we
must also take notice of one sign of British stability: partisan
passions, either in industrial conflict or in political warfare,
never reach the point where the patriotism of the other party is
impugned. The Conservatives do not label the Socialists as the party of
treason. The patriotism of Hugh Gaitskell is not questioned by Harold
Macmillan. Ultimately we come round to the realization that, despite
the bitterness of debate, the central stability of the state remains.
Much of this stability may result from the existence of the monarchy
at the summit of British affairs. All public evidence indicates that
the Crown is nearly powerless in modern Britain, yet it represents an
authority older and higher than any other element in the realm. It may
be the balance wheel, spinning brightly through the ages, that insures
stability.
"At the heart to the British Empire there is one institution,"
Winston Churchill wrote twenty years ago, "among the most ancient and
venerable, which, so far from falling into desuetude or decay, has
breasted the torrent of events, and even derived new vigor from the
stresses. Unshaken by the earthquakes, unweakened by the dissolvent
tides, though all be drifting the Royal and Imperial Monarchy of
Britain stands firm."
It can be argued that the excessive interest of the British people
in the monarchy and the expense and labor involved in its upkeep are
characteristics ill suited to Britain in her present position. This
interest reflects the national tendency to dwell fondly on the past,
to revere institutions for their historical connections rather than
for their efficiency or usefulness under modern conditions. Serious
criticism of this well-defined trait comes not only from Americans but
from Australians, Canadians, and other inhabitants of newer nations. We
look forward, they say, and the British look back.
There is some justice in the criticism, but perhaps the error is not
so grave as we may think. Obviously, it is impossible for a people
living in a country that has known some sort of civilization from
Roman times not to be impressed by their past. A tendency in the same
direction marks contemporary American society. Just as we are struck
by the Londoner's interest in Roman relics dug up in the heart of his
city, so European visitors note that an increasing number of Americans
are turning to their own past. All over the East the fortresses of the
French and Indian and Revolutionary wars are being reconstructed and
opened to tourists. National attention is given to attempts in the Far
West to re-create for a day or a week the atmosphere of a frontier that
passed less than a century ago. Half-forgotten battles and generals
of the Civil War are rescued for posterity by the careful labor of
scholarly biographers and military writers. This does not mean,
however, that the United States is looking back in the field of science
or invention.
Similarly, British preservation of old castles or folkways is not a
sign that the nation has turned its back on the twentieth century. The
boldness with which the British accepted the challenge of the nuclear
era in industrial energy is a better guide to their temper than their
respect for the past. What is damaging is not reverence for the past of
Nelson or Gladstone, but the tendency of some of the middle class to
mourn the recent past, the dear dead days before the war when servants
were plentiful, taxes relatively low, and "a man could run his own
business." These mourners are temporarily important because their
resistance to needed change infects others. But the life whose end they
bewail has been disappearing in Britain for half a century, and the
generation now rising to power will not be plagued by these memories to
the same extent. To those who matured in war and post-war austerity,
modern Britain is a prosperous land.
The trappings of British society are much older than our own. But
their interest in maintaining an unchanged façade should not mislead
Americans into believing the British are returning to the hand
loom. Reverence for the past is often advanced as one reason for
the lethargic attitude of Britons toward the present. Certainly an
awareness of history, its trials and triumphs, gives an individual
or a people a somewhat skeptical attitude about the importance of
current history. But in Britain those who know and care least about
the nation's great past are the ones most indifferent to the challenge
of the present. They are the industrial working class, and their
indifference results from other influences.
Talking to the planners, technicians, factory bosses, communications
experts, salesmen, and senior civil servants, one finds less
complacency and more enterprise than in most European countries. In
fact, it sometimes seems to the outsider that British society is a
little too self-critical, too contentious. Obviously, it must change to
meet the altered world, but self-criticism pushed to the maximum can
ultimately crush ambition.
If we turn to modern British writing, we find sociologists, economists,
anthropologists, and politicians pouring forth a steady stream of books
analyzing the nation's social, economic, and political problems. One
of the great men of the modern Labor Party, Herbert Morrison, thought
it well worth while to devote his time to the writing of _Government
and Parliament_. The intellectual leaders of Britain have turned
increasingly to a minute assessment of their nation and what is right
and wrong about it.
This preoccupation with the state of the realm is healthy. The
complacency that was once the most disliked characteristic of the
traveling Briton is vanishing. The British are putting themselves under
the microscope. Nothing but good can come of it.
We hear from the British themselves confessions of inadequacy to meet
the modern world and flaming criticisms of aspects of their society. As
a nation they are fond of feeling sorry for themselves; indeed, someone
has said that they are never happier than when they think all is lost.
Such British statements should not be taken as representing the whole
truth. The reforming element is very strong in the British character.
Without its presence, the social reforms of this century could not have
been accomplished.
Anyone who frequents political, business, and journalistic circles in
Britain will hear more about mistakes and failures than about success.
(The most notable exception to this enjoyment of gloom is the popular
press, which since the war has made a specialty of boosting British
achievements.) Similarly, any discussion of British character with
Britons is sure to find them concentrating on negative rather than
positive traits. Perhaps this is because they are so sure of their
positive characteristics. In any case, the latter constitute a major
share of the national insurance against decline.
Over the years the British trait that has impressed me most is
toughness of mind. This may surprise Americans who tend to regard
the British as overpolite or diffident or sentimental--aspects of
the national character which are evident at times and which hide the
essential toughness underneath.
Although they bewail a decline in the standards of courtesy since the
war, the British are a polite race in the ordinary business of living.
From the "'kew" of the bus conductor or the salesgirl to the "And
now, sir, if you would kindly sign here" of the bank clerk they pad
social intercourse with small courtesies. However, when an Englishman,
especially an upper-class Englishman, desires to be rude he makes the
late Mr. Vishinsky sound like a curate. But it is an English axiom that
a gentleman is never unintentionally rude.
With some notable exceptions, the British are seldom loudly assertive.
They will listen at great length to the opinions of others and,
seemingly, are reluctant to put forward their own. This does not mean
they agree, although foreigners in contact with British diplomats have
often assumed this mistakenly. The British are always willing to see
both sides of a question. But they are seldom ready to accept without
prolonged and often violent argument any point of view other than their
own.
They are a sentimental people but not an emotional one. Failure to
distinguish this difference leads individuals and nations to misjudge
the British.
Sentimentalists they are. Their eyes will glisten with tears as they
listen to some elderly soprano with a voice long rusted by gin sing the
music-hall songs of half a century ago. As Somerset Maugham has pointed
out, they revere age. The present Conservative government and the Labor
front bench are unusual in that they contain a large percentage of
"young men"--that is, men in their fifties. Sir Winston Churchill did
not truly win the affection of his countrymen until he was well into
his seventies, when the old fierce antagonism of the working class was
replaced with a grudging admiration for "the Old Man."
On his eightieth birthday the leaders of all the political parties in
the House of Commons joined in a tribute that milked the tear ducts
of the nation. When, six months later, Sir Winston retired as Prime
Minister there was another outbreak of bathos. But when two months
after that a new House of Commons was sworn under the leadership of Sir
Anthony Eden, some of the young Conservative Members of Parliament who
owed their offices and, in a wider sense, their lives to Sir Winston
pushed ahead of him in the jostling throng making for the Speaker's
bench. It was left to Clement Attlee, his dry, thoughtful foe in so
many political battles, to lead Sir Winston up ahead of his eager
juniors. Sentiment, yes; emotion, no.
For many reasons the British as a people are anxious to find formulas
that will guide them out of international crises, to avoid the final
arbitration of war. The appeasement of Neville Chamberlain and his
associates in the late thirties was in keeping with this historically
developed tendency. One has only to read what Pitt endured from
Napoleon to preserve peace, or the sound, sensible reasons that Charles
James Fox offered against the continuation of the war with the First
Empire, to understand that this island people goes to war only with the
utmost reluctance.
One reason is that in 1800, in 1939, and in the middle of the twentieth
century the British have lived by trade. Wars, large or small, hurt
trade. Prolonged hostility toward a foreign nation--Franco's Spain,
Lenin's Russia, or Mao's China--reduces Britain's share in a market or
cuts off raw materials needed for production at home. In this respect
we cannot judge Britain by the continental standards of China or Russia
or the United States. This is an island power.
Because they are polite, because they are easily moved to sentimental
tears--Sir Winston Churchill and Hugh Gaitskell, who otherwise have few
traits in common, both cry easily--because they are diffident, because
they will twist and turn in their efforts to avoid war (although at
times, for reasons of policy, they will present the impression of being
very ready for war), the British have given the outside world a false
idea of their character. Beneath all this is toughness of mind.
I recall landing in England in April of 1939. It was then obvious
to almost everyone in Europe that war was on the way. On the way to
London I talked to a fellow passenger, a man in his late twenties
who had three small children and who lived in London. "The next time
Hitler goes for anyone, we'll go for him," he said casually, almost
apologetically. He conceded that the war would be long, that Britain
would take some hard knocks, that going into the Navy and leaving his
wife and children would be tedious. But he had made up his mind that
there was no other course. The thing had to be done.
After the war--and, indeed, during it--many Americans ridiculed the
British reaction to the war. They found exaggerated the stories of the
cockney who said: "'arf a mo', Adolph" while he lit his pipe, the women
who shouted "God bless you" to Winston Churchill when he visited the
smoking ruins of their homes. This was a serious error. In those days,
the most critical that had ever come upon them, the British acted in a
manner which made one proud to be a member of the same species.
But that was a decade and a half ago, and the circumstances were
extraordinary. Nations change--compare the heroic France of Verdun
with the indulgent, faithless France of 1940. Have war and sacrifice,
austerity and prolonged crisis weakened Britain's mental toughness? I
think not.
The prolonged conflict between employers and employed and among
the great trade unions is the most serious friction within British
society. Its critical effect upon Britain's present and future has
been emphasized. I do not believe, however, that in the long run the
men on both sides who hold their opinions so stoutly will be unable to
compromise their difficulties in the face of the continuing national
emergency. In the twenties and thirties such great convulsions
in industrial relations as the General Strike were harmful but
not catastrophic. The British economy was buttressed by overseas
investments and by the possession of established export markets
throughout the world. That situation no longer exists. Anything
approaching the severity of a General Strike could break Britain. In
the end, I believe, the extremists of both sides will realize this
and will find in themselves the mental toughness--for it takes a hard
mind to accept an armistice short of final victory in exchange for
the promise of future benefits--to compose their differences and move
toward a national rather than a partisan solution.
Of course, Britain's difficulties are not confined to the home front.
But I have consciously emphasized the importance of her internal
problems because they reflect the nation's present position in the
world and help to determine how Britain will act abroad.
Just as the last decade has seen drastic changes in industrial
direction in Britain, so the coming decade will witness changes equally
great in the development of Britain's international position. Britain
cannot, and would not if she could, build a new empire. But it is
evident that the country intends to replace the monolithic concept of
power with a horizontal concept. We will see, I am confident, a steady
growth of Britain's ties with Europe and the establishment of Britain
as a link between the Commonwealth nations and Europe.
The British have fertile political imaginations. They are adroit
in discussion and debate. After years of uncertainty a number of
politicians of great influence are moving toward closer association
with Europe. At the moment the Grand Design (a rather grandiose title
for the British to use) is endorsed by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan,
Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, Defense Minister Duncan Sandys,
Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft, and President of the
Board of Trade Sir David Eccles. Given a change in government, I think
we can assume that the idea would be supported, although enthusiasm
would be somewhat less great, by the leaders of the Labor Party.
What is the Grand Design? It is the concept of a Europe cooperating
in fields of economy and politico-military strategy. It goes beyond
the Europe of Western European Union or the North Atlantic Treaty
Alliance and thinks in terms of a general confederation into which
the Scandinavian and Mediterranean nations would be drawn. Existing
organizations such as the Organization for European Economic
Co-operation would be expanded to include new members. At the top
would be a General Assembly elected by the parliaments of each member
nation. There would be a general pooling of military research and
development.