Christian Responsibility And Industrial Relations: Reconciliation Or Revolution?

Extract

During the 1979 General Election campaign, industrial relations featured as a prominent issue. Indeed, it might correctly be claimed that the general public in confidently voting in Margaret Thatcher, were voting against the alleged misuse of trade union power. Rising prices, falling standards of living and increasing violence have been popularly attributed to “big unions” striking against each other, against the housewife and against the general public. In a speech only days before the last government fell, Mrs Thatcher outlined the Conservative package to restore stability to Britain’s economic and social order: the statutory inhibiting of trade union activity, the enforcement of law and order, the creation of wealth and the reward of individual success. Such opinion was supported in the press and on television by editorial comment, by criticism of union power from the judiciary, and a former chief of police comparing union power with the Nazi control of Germany in the 1930s. The general election result and subsequent cabinet appointments indicate an important change in British politics. The electorate have voted for a radical change and they have voted for the politics and economics of the right. Characteristically, a society in crisis has opted for regression, the reassertion of old hierarchies, values and judgements, with the hope, in particular, of turning back the menace of union power, which, it is claimed, is a threat to the social order. Such perspectives have become the commonplace explanation of the world and of industrial relations in particular, and they have been clothed in the habit of St Francis of Assisi, setting them in the context of the Christian struggle for peace.