BEATING DRUM FOR HEATH

The Sunday pundits went all out this week to frighten the middle class and bash the union leaders into line behind the Tory plan for state control of wages.

The alternative to a deal— Count The Sunday Times', whether you the 'Observer' or the 'Sunday Telegraph' — were said to the collapse of the government, bloody social conflict or 'a Gadarene rush over the precipice'.

Even the most watery-eyed liberals came beating the drum Gone were the last pretensions to hard-nosed, cynical probing after the squalid truth behind the big-deal nationalism of the politicians. One Nation was the flag, bash the workers the rallying-cry.

Nora Beloff the 'Observer', whose recent legal action against 'Private Eye' has helped to tighten the restraints on reporters ferreting out and publishing confidential documents, raised the spectre of Enoch Powell.

Some Tory MPs, 'not all of them from the extreme right, she reported, had been quietly urging Mr Powell to drop the immigration issue and make himself available as a credible alternative leader.

Earlier this year he had expressed an interest in this possibility. But, Miss Beloff added with apparent regret: 'The Uganda Asians have revived his almost obsessive preoccupation with race.' If this one-time Fabian had her doubts about Powell, she had none about Heath and his state pay *Observer Plan. Hewing to the editorial would be a great pity if the tripartite talks... broke down', she wrote:

'If Mr Heath's talks with the unions and employers collapse, as they may this week, there is a serious and imminent risk of runaway inflation, further collapse of sterling, massive strikes, violent pickets — all making Britain virtually ungovernable.

In a long 'probe' article in the same paper cairncross did David Wilson their best to present union chiefs Jack Jones and Hugh Scanion as the dynamic duo who had forced the talks to the brink of collapse.

('Scanlon, his mind razorsharp, is the toughest negotiator, the hard professional among a group of men... To gasps all round, Jack Jones says he would not mind something like wartime controls [on prices].' And so on.)

Jumping off from this highly fictional-sounding framework, Miss Beloff plunged on to transform the two union leaders from Batman and Robin into the Augers of Approaching Anarchy.

'The Prime Minister, she wrote, 'is still hoping against hope that unexpected toughening up was only a All her applause was 'What he now doing, what Mr Wilson has described as "U"

him and to share in the OI the British she "The imes combined length with of the Downing Street But although its column paragraphs this did not prevent the paper coming Just how 'elusive' Miss Beloff's dream be was suggested by corwho declared:

an answer _LO the inflation ›roblem he committed himself to toany. level at not the growth and no ernment too.' Faced with this prospect, less 'Sunday clearly knew where its duty lay. It editorial, union acquiescence in the government's remarkable plan is withheld in the name of an essentially phoney objective [statutory price controll'.

It was left Telegraph leader writer to spit fire and brimstone, and to the paper's assistant editor, Peregrine Worsthorne, to express the real gut-feelings of as opposed to he more delicate impulses of their Fleet Street advisers.

The said an editorial contemplating the prospect of breakdown, must have the ot its convictions. It MUSU go ahead with wage restraint by com•uson cannot be secured by consent.' The leader continued: No doubt compulsion will lead to some bitter clashes. It is no good pretending that The country's inflationary madness will be cured simply by political edict. These battles will have to be fought.

Inconvenience or even hardship resulting from strike will be no justification for surrender...

The government, it must be hoped, is preparing all possible emergency measures-against, for example, a power strike. But Ministers will also have the heavier duty of rallying the nation to a sense of where its true interest lies, if necessary by fighting a General Election on this issue.' The government knew they had no immediate answer to a power strike, he said. For him the issue was far more nakedly one of who holds the power: capital or labour.

Take this passage from his article:

'Old veterans like the free economy do not die every day. Far from it. Such momentous occasions occur very seldom.

'Might not the trade unions be missing an opportunity of lifetime if they did not insist taking over the family lock, stock and barrel. They killed the old boy intentionally because he was rotten to the CULC and incorrigibly antisocial. The very last thing they want to give him is a quiet and decent burial.

"They want to put his head on a pike and parade it around the city, as a warning that they are the masters now Worsthorne went to discuss the possibility of calling an election on the issue of 'Who governs the country, parliament or Congress House?' and the possible outcome of a General Strike.

If the talks break down, he said, the Tories will attempt to pin the blame on the unions. But even as they are doing so 'there will be a power cut, leaving everybody to grab what he can in the dark' In such situation Worsthorne, who a few weeks ago was talking about the implementation of 'policies that should properly be called national socialist' and the need for 'a strong man', falls back on faith in the Tories' ability to wield naked, repressive, ruling-class power.

'One would like to think,' he wrote, 'that the Tories, being in situ, would know their way around best-even in the dark. After all, they have had plenty of time to prepare for precisely this eventuality' This is the language doomed, but desperate class. We may not have been much informed last Sunday. It we were certainly warned.