Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [63]
All my instincts told me that we would have strong public support for further action to restrict union power, and the evidence supported me. An opinion survey in The Times on 21 January 1980 asked people the question: ‘Do you think sympathy strikes and blacking are legitimate weapons to use in an industrial dispute, or should the new law restrict their use?’ Seventy-one per cent of those who replied — and 62 per cent of trade unionists who did so — said that a new law should indeed restrict their use.
It would, though, be difficult to go further without support from business leaders. On the morning of Tuesday 5 February I had two meetings with industrialists. The first was with the CBI. Some of them said that the present bill, as drafted, went as far as possible. On hearing this I did not conceal my frustration. I said that, with regard to the timing of more radical measures, there would always be a risk of confrontation with the trade unions, but that it seemed to me it would be better to accept the risk over the coming few months than wait until the autumn when the unions could cause the maximum disruption. I said that I now regretted that we had not brought forward more radical proposals when the bill was introduced. This left us with two possibilities: we could amend the existing bill or announce in the consultative document which we were planning to issue that further legislation would be introduced. The CBI went away in no doubt about my feelings.
The second meeting that day was with the private sector steel producers. There was a sharp contrast between their outlook and that of the CBI. They complained that the private steel companies had been dragged into a dispute not of their making and in which they would be the only real victims. As a result of the strike they were losing about £10 million a week. The ISTC had effectively torn up all its procedural agreements with the private companies and instructed their employees to strike. It was clear that there was no real grievance on the part of private sector steel workers: in the Duport Steels case, when the Court of Appeal had granted its injunction to stop secondary action, there had been a complete return to work before the Lords reversed the decision and the private sector strike resumed. The threat of losing union cards was the decisive factor in persuading private sector workers to join the strike. In these circumstances it is not surprising that the private sector steel companies wanted immediate legislation to outlaw secondary picketing. And there was nothing I was able to offer them except sympathy.
In answer to a letter from a leading industrialist urging ‘caution’, I replied setting out my views:
Insofar as we do not effectively change the law we would be positively confirming what Lord Diplock said [in Duport Steels Limited and others v. Sirs and others]. We would be indicating that we are not prepared to protect the person who through no fault of his own has suffered damage at the hands of another. We should be telling the law-abiding citizen that we prefer to strengthen the powers of those who inflict injury rather than to help those who suffer from it.
… You refer to moderate Trade Unionists. I have countless letters from them pleading with me to strengthen their hand against the militants, telling me that is why they voted for us and that now this Government by failing to take effective action has let them down.
If we flinch from this task now, when we have public and massive Trade Union opinion with us, they are not likely to have much faith in us to do it next winter.
I finished by quoting Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure:
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing