Industrial Relations

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Rhagfyr 1973.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Paul Rose Mr Paul Rose , Manchester, Blackley 12:00, 4 Rhagfyr 1973

Of course not. My right hon. Friend has misunderstood me. I said that the Government were willing to yield to blackmail from abroad and yet were not willing to pay the miners what they deserve for doing a hazardous job, one in which they daily risk their health and their lives. I should have thought that my right hon. Friend would not mistake my meaning.

The courts are unsuitable because they decide between claims. They do not conciliate. They do not arrive at compromises. It is interesting that the fine inflicted on the AUEW coincided with phase 3 of a disastrous and manifestly unfair economic policy that has hit at wages but not at prices, profits, fees or speculation. In this context the Act is a prescription for chaos. In its leader on 23rd October The Guardian asked : Can there be any doubt that this dispute concerning the refusal of a small firm in Woking to give trade union recognition affecting 35 employers is potentially the most divisive event since the case of the imprisoned dockers? Some of my hon. Friends have been provoked into attacking the judge of the court and they have been counterattacked by the head of the judiciary. This raises the constitutional issue whether law officers should be associated with politics. Many people are puzzled and learned judges are at loggerheads as a result of the Act that has been thrust upon them. They are in the position of accountants who are asked suddenly to become sociologists. The result has been not to reduce by a single day the time lost in strikes.

The real fact of the matter, as the New Statesman underlined in an editorial on 9th November, is that the Government have produced one of the most disastrous and unmanageable pieces of legislation to reach the statute book in half a century. That legislation has poisoned the political and industrial atmosphere throughout the lifetime of this Parliament.

It is time for the Government to admit that they made a catastrophic blunder which they can do by abolishing the NIRC—the central pillar of an edifice that is already half in ruins. The tragedy is that the debris from that edifice threatens to block the mines, railways and factory floors, and the fault lies fairly and squarely on the Conservative Government.