Did you know that the number of working days lost to strikes last year was the lowest on record, only 157,400? This fact, announced in the summer by the Office for National Statistics, warranted barely a mention in the press. Most would see it as good news, so it fails a key test of news values; and anyway, the public’s interest in trade unions is not what it used to be.
In 1997, the Tories’ ‘New Labour – new danger’ campaign broadcast warned that a Blair government would bring ‘new taxes, new job losses, new strikes, new mortgage rises, new lighter sentences and the break-up of the UK’. While the jury is out on some of those, the threat of new strikes clearly has not materialised. The number of strike days last year was 80 times less than in an average year in the 1970s, 45 times less than in the 1980s and four times less than in the 1990s.
I began to ponder the role of unions when I was nearly called out on strike last month, for the first time in my working life. (The action was postponed a few days before it was due to start, following a deal between Telegraph management and the National Union of Journalists; a relief all around, although doubtless disappointing to members of the public who fancied the bizarre spectacle of hacks huddled around a brazier outside London’s Victoria station.)
At the start of the 1980s, with union power at its peak, few could have predicted how rapidly the tide would turn. Even the SDP, in the person of ‘Gang of Four’ member Bill Rodgers, argued in 1982 for the retention of the closed shop; hardly ‘breaking the mould of British politics’.
No doubt public sympathy for the unions has increased as their strength has waned. Now even David Cameron is happy to meet them for beer and sandwiches. Yet it is lucky that Labour’s forthcoming leadership election looks like a walkover, because a close contest would focus public attention on the electoral college, with its one-third vote for unions and socialist societies.
Last time it was used in earnest was when a few union barons and Co-op committees agreed not to ballot their members in order to fix selection victories for Alun Michael in Wales in 1999, and Frank Dobson in London in 2000. It was New Labour’s unfinest hour. The damage was only limited because the prime minister was in his first term honeymoon and the press treated both selections as regional, not national, stories. In Labour’s contest next year, union members will almost certainly be balloted; but even so, voters would take a dim view if union leaders held the casting vote on who should be PM.
Parliamentary questions are a powerful tool for MPs. But sometimes the answers are so obstructive that they seemed designed to foster resentment, rather than inform. Take this straightforward question from Lindsay Hoyle MP: ‘To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what percentage of homes built in (a) Chorley and (b) Lancashire since 1997 have been affordable social housing.’
Here’s the answer in full, from last month’s Hansard: ‘Local authorities have the powers to bring forward affordable housing policies as part of their local development frameworks.’
Does the DCLG know the real answer? If so, provide it. If not, say the information is not available. They say PQs cost £150 each to answer. Some answers aren’t worth it.