UNIONIZING THE EDITORS
Wicker, Brian
It should not be beyond consideration that an aggressive foreign policy may not be suitable--or, at least, continuously. Inextricably entwined with foreign policy of whatever tone and...
...There is no doubt too that the genuine issues of principle involved will be mixed up, in the Tory press especially, with a great deal of anti-union bombast...
...But Mr...
...This recalcitrance is understandable, for the unions in Britain have a natural affinity with the Labor Party, and these new potential recruits to their ranks would refuse to admit any such affinity...
...Indeed, in a few industries--notably, and perhaps ironically, the newspaper industry--yon had to have a union card before you could get a job...
...As a citizen of Birmingham, at a moment when Birmingham has temporarily been in the world's headlines, I feel particularly keenly the delicacy of this balance...
...And how would you define the difference, in legal terms that still conformed to the realities of the situation...
...The fact is that a TUC tribunal would be just as likely to be fair and impartial as any tribunal that is not wholly independent can be: certainly as fair as a tribunal set up by the press itself, and much more workable than the old Industrial Relations Court of the Tory Act...
...The faith and trust, essential to successful foreign policy, is dispersed...
...This is not an argument that is likely to fire the interest of the average working man: hut it is an important one all the same, and has implications for the press the world over...
...More often, you had to join a union as soon as you had been taken on...
...When the Labor Party returned to power, it set about abolishing the Industrial Relations Act, and making "closed shops" legal once again...
...Michael Foot (Secretary for Employment) had introduced in order to restore the pre-1971 situation...
...And furthermore, not only must justice be done, it must be seen to be done...
...management liked it because it gave the work force stability...
...Just something in-between...
...In fact, it was part of a strategy to curb the growing power of the big unions to dictate to" government and II April 1975:38 management...
...The parallel with the present issue is too awkwardly close for their true comfort...
...But the claims of the press editors are different: or so they say...
...But by a number of unexpected Parliamentary mixups, the Opposition managed to secure some amendments to the Bill which Mr...
...If amenities were observed, he could again sit down with members of the Senate and House foreign relations committees--in closed session, if need be, and just "talk shop" without any participant trying to win a black belt in political karate...
...It is certain that much of the opposition to Mr...
...At least, not for a long while...
...Foot has a point, too...
...The fact that, on a "one man one vote" principle, the professionals and managers would be outvoted, is just their bad luck: it is hardly an argument, in itself, against permitting closed shops where a majority of those involved want one...
...That needn't mean we retreat into our boroughs as the only alternative to embarking on Kiplingesque adventures on the burgeoning and unstable frontiers of the world...
...Evidence can be refuted: but suspicions can remain suspicions whatever the evidence or lack of it...
...To ensure the liberty of the majority, in a period of indiscriminate terror and mass organizations, it is paradoxically necessary to reduce the freedom of individuals to do "their own thing": since "their thing" may well be planting bombs in pubs or kidnapping the daughters of the rich and vulnerable...
...For they fear that if the National Union of Journalists (an increasingly militant union) insists that they, like everyone else on the writing side of newspapers, must belong to the NUJ, and if they could face exclusion or dismissal from the union (and hence their jobs), with nothing but a TUC tribunal to appeal to, just because they wrote things the union disliked, then the whole freedom of the press, and hence of democracy itself, would be endangered...
...However sympathetic an editor may be to the trade union cause, a frightful dilemma could easily arise here...
...You cannot consistently demand one thing for the police and another for the press...
...While the vast majority of people here clearly feel that Mr...
...Ostensibly this measure was aimed at the restoration of an individual liberty: to belong to a union or not...
...The Congress should undertake to reassess our foreign policy in a thoughtful way...
...The most worrying part of the new Act, as I see it, is that people can now be held, not because the Home Secretary had good evidence to suggest that they may be involved in terrorism, but simply because he suspect.~ they are...
...Unions liked it because it gave more power to their elbows...
...Commonweal: 39...
...It simply introduced an inappropriate legalistic mentality into a subtle complex of human relationships and emotional attitudes...
...President Ford has willingly testified before a congressional committee on another matter...
...But in 1971 the Conservative government, in its "abrasive" phase under Heath, passed the Industrial Relations Act, which made the compulsory closed shop illegal...
...SISYPHUS OOOOOOOOOOOOOO FROM BRITAIN UNIONIZING THE EDITORS The balance between individual liberty and personal security is a very delicate one...
...Until 1971, the "closed shop" in Britain was perfectly legal, and in many indnstries normal...
...That is where the argument stands at present...
...Many Labor supporters are keen proponents of the view that complaints against the police should not, as at present, be dealt with by the police themselves, but by a clearly independent body...
...Allowances were usually made for "conscientious objectors," like Jehovah's Witnesses, but in general the "closed shop" in the second sense of the term was a part of normal industrial relations in many large firms, and both unions and management supported it, though for different reasons...
...I think most "moderates" on the Conservative side, as well as the whole of the Labor Party, would admit as much...
...That is to say, it was legal to require that all workers in a plant should belong to a union...
...But whichever way the issue goes, one feels that a nasty taste will be left in the democratic mouth, even if what has to be swallowed turns out not to be the deadly poison which many people fear...
...While the debate in the pubs is about whether to hang the bombers, the debate in the newspaper offices is about whether editors should be allowed to stay outside the journalists' trade union...
...If the various parties in a particular industry don't want to operate one, they don't have to...
...And whereas the (valid) argument for an anti-discrimination law is that it helps to create an "atmosphere" of disapproval which will act as a background of encouragement to racial equality, the parallel argument in the industrial field is simply false...
...If the law exempts editors, what about the pressure that will build up for exempting all sorts of other democratically important people...
...Mr...
...These gave the individual worker protection on two counts: he could not be dismissed from his job just because he had been excluded or expelled from his union, and he could not be "fairly" dismissed just because he refused to belong to a closed shop...
...You can't compel people by law to abjure long-standing and traditional solidarities, any more than you can abolish racial discrimination merely by making it illegal...
...Jenkins' Prevention of Terrorism Act is too soft, rather than too hard, on the terrorist threat (and that hanging itself is too good for the terrorists) the dangers to genuine liberties that it poses are beginning to be felt...
...The "atmosphere" the Industrial Relations Act created was not an encouragement to individual freedom...
...The mood of the TUC could easily change...
...So would many industrial managers...
...However, the threat to individual liberty and security is not only from the terrorists...
...I wouldn't pretend to foretell the outcome...
...These points were substantial, for clearly individuals do need some such protection from victimization if the system is to be remotely fair...
...He asks why should people in one kind of managerial position (i.e., editors) be given special rights denied others...
...But Mr...
...BRIAN WICKER (Brian Wicker is Commonwears regular correspondent in Britain...
...It should not be beyond consideration that an aggressive foreign policy may not be suitable--or, at least, continuously...
...Feet's proposal has the merit of being acceptable to the unions, and therefore workable...
...The parallel with the police-complaints issue is too close, and too relevant, to be dismissed...
...In view of a recent case, in which the jury trying two Irishmen found in possession of circuit diagrams for bombs, failed to agree on a verdict, the possibility that the police may be holding a good many innocent l~eople in gaol in England (not to mention Northern Ireland) is beginning to worry thinking people...
...Their sons are the victims of warfare and their incomes primarily victimized by high prices of imports such as petroleum...
...Foot really insists on getting his own way, the government's Parliamentary majority can presumably ensure that he does so...
...But that is a separate, though difficult issue: and in any case, the fact is that closed shops are not being made compulsory, they are just once again being allowed...
...If Mr...
...Who are they responsible to--their own union, or their readers...
...The issues are complicated, and a bit of background is necessary to understand them...
...It is doubtful that we can be summoned by a new President calling for m/y sacrifice in our role as watchmen on freedom's tower...
...Reassuring noises from the TUC, about the impartiality of its own proposed machinery for appeals, are not enough...
...Inextricably entwined with foreign policy of whatever tone and substance is domestic policy...
...It will flare up again soon, when Parliament has another go at it...
...But in any case, whatever the true underlying principle involved, it didn't work...
...How can you defend yourself against the Home Secretary's naturally suspicious nature...
...Feet's measure comes simply from those professional and managerial c&erie~ who don't like the idea of trade unions, and don't want to have anything to do with them...
...Feet's proposal is that, instead of trying to give such protection by a complex and unenforceable law, there should be an appeals machinery set up by the Trades Union Congress itself, to hear complaints of this sort...
...The editors have a point...
...Currently, lower-income Americans, as distinct from the old-hand liberals with their support of an internationalist order, are coming to an understandable conclusion that the burdens of our foreign policy since World War H have been inequitably shared domestically...
...Now the journalistic aspect of this whole argument is a special case of the general issue...
...It has long been the case that nobody could get into the newspaper printing trades without an influential trade union friend or relation...
...The mass organizations are also in the news for the same reason--and here I mean in particular the trade unions and the government...
...But it has the drawback that the party being complained against will appear to have a lot of po, wer over the appointment of the judge and jury...
...Nor, for that matter, are major sections of American industry profiting by American foreign policy...
Vol. 102 • April 1975 • No. 2
