Bernard Ingham: The same old story of futility as BBC journalists stage a pointless protest

We are also entitled to doubt whether they know why they are depriving us of their endless chatter. Is it over the proposed method of filling a 2bn hole in their pension fund or discontent with the pay and perks of the bloated and increasingly bizarre bureaucracy above them? Or are they merely dupes in the Left's determination to de-rail the coalition by wintry manifestations of "discontent"?

We can safely say that we would have had a lot more industrial trouble by now if the hated Tories had won the election outright. The presence of Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats in their unaccustomed role as Ministers has somewhat cramped the loony Left's destructive style.

But that is by the way. Whether the BBC's journalists know what they are about or not, the nation has so far bravely borne their imperceptible interference in our daily lives with, if necessary, recourse to ITN, C4, C5 and Sky, not to mention the Press, radio stations galore and computers.

Which brings me to the moral of this tale. It is futile to withdraw your labour in a modern economy if you do not belong to a monopoly that can hijack the public as hostages in your dispute with those who pay you. In other words, the right to strike is worth potentially more to some than others.

This explains why the likes of Bob Crow, of the RMT transport union, would love to see the railways all neatly wrapped up in a nationalised parcel with one owner of locomotives, rolling stock, track, signals and stations.

He would then be able to cause extensive chaos, enforced on his

members by the twin tyrannies of traditional union solidarity and flying pickets, the democratic equivalent of Mafia thugs.

I write all this as an ex-labour correspondent – a now virtually extinct breed since Margaret Thatcher brought the unions within a framework of enforceable law and privatised them out of their cosy monopolies – who spent several years covering strikes in the 1950s and 1960s.

I had plenty to go at – and plenty to cope with when I ended up handling disputes in the Department of Employment, then the Department of Energy and finally in No 10.

Official figures show that in the 1970s the Employment Department recorded 25,924 strikes and 128,040,000 days lost over the decade. That works out at an average of 50 strikes and 246,230 working days lost every week.

No economy can survive that sort of continuing abuse of power. Thatcher put an end to it. But she did not go far enough. She did not answer the question as to why a sectional interest should be allowed to inconvenience and possibly put at risk the general public in the name of human rights.

I do not ignore the need to protect workers from oppressive management. I have seen too many stupid and exploitive managers in my time. Their penchant for awarding themselves huge salaries and privileges speciously in the name of the market is a denial of responsible leadership.

But that does not give unions the right to impose their will on an employer at the expense of the innocent public. We therefore need to define those roles in society, apart from the military and police, which are deemed essential to its proper functioning, create strike-free zones and devise mechanisms for ensuring fair play between the respective employers, workers and public.

Let us not worry ourselves about what is fair play. Unfair settlements will not last. How fairness is to be ensured is more tricky, but not beyond the wit of man.

The Tory MP for Haltemprice and Howden, David Davis, has canvassed a form of arbitration practised in some American states which bars splitting the difference and encourages reasonable behaviour on all sides.

The arbitrator has to decide which is fairest – the offer or the claim –and award one or t'other.

Where there's a will there's a way. I don't expect the Neandearthal men of trade unionism to exhibit much will. They glory in the struggle. They think it is ennobling for workers to fight capitalism.

Our ambition should be to complete Thatcher's revolution and convert them into the positive role of making enterprises more productive, profitable and secure instead of wrecking them. Britain would then be a fairer country. Meanwhile, on with the futility.