Bernard Ingham: Speaking as an ancient relic, unions must adapt or die

I joined their ranks in the 1960s when I covered industrial affairs – mostly strikes – for this newspaper and then The Guardian.

We were among the hardest-worked reporters in Fleet Street for several decades, such was the state of British industrial relations.

In the 1970s alone, the Department of Employment recorded 25,924 strikes and 118,040,000 working days lost.

This suicidal mayhem was where the likes of Peter Sissons (ex-BBC), Alastair Stewart (ITN), Richard Littlejohn (Daily Mail columnist) and Trevor Kavanagh (Sun) honed their skills alongside such veterans as Geoffrey Goodman (Daily Mirror) and John Cole (BBC) whose overcoat and Ulster accent inspired the mimics.

I am not sure a reunion in Congress House is the best symbol of labour correspondents’ independence any more than accepting the hospitality of the CBI would be. But I don’t suppose ancient relics can be choosers.

Congress House is certainly not my natural habitat.

For one thing, I ceased to be a labour correspondent in 1967 to become a civil servant and, at the Department of Employment, to brief a whole generation of labour correspondents on the progress of the conciliation of disputes as their deadlines approached.

More damningly, I was closely involved in Barbara Castle’s utterly misnomered White Paper “In place of strife”, Robert Carr’s ill-fated Industrial Relations Act, Margaret Thatcher’s more successful labour legislation and the 1984-5 miners’ strike.

Indeed, I would not be surprised if some ex-labour reporter tonight playfully fingered me as an agent of his demise.

As part of the reunion, the Media Society is hosting a debate on “Labour correspondents RIP: who cares?” Not many, I suspect. Nonetheless, why were they consigned to the dustbin of history?

The short answer is that they died a natural death for want of sustenance; after 1985 there was nothing much for them to do. Nor, in spite of cuts, job losses, public sector pensions reform and pay freezes, is there much prospect of a revival in their trade.

Ed Balls, no less, has just warned the unions not to go in for a 1980s-style confrontation with David Cameron’s coalition. It would just play into the Government’s hands.

In other words, the unions, with their membership halved compared with their 20th century hey-day, are no more popular now than they were when Margaret Thatcher saw off Arthur Scargill’s attempt to bring down her government.

They cannot rely on public sympathy if they disrupt the nation. Moreover, the Labour Party, mainly financed by them, knows that it stands to suffer politically if they cut loose, especially when their leader’s election was clinched by union support.

This puts the unions in a real fix. They only a cut a dash on TV when they are causing disruption. But cause too much of it and they stand to be clobbered by more restrictive laws. Yet the more militant leaders, such as Bob Crow (RMT) or Len McCluskey (Unite), were brought up on the glory of the proletariat’s eternal struggle with capitalism. They are class warriors – and expect everybody else to be so, too.

I recognise that there are still some lousy capitalists. Certainly, the way many bosses (in the public and private sectors) line their pockets while cheerfully sacking the rank and file is contemptible. It is certainly not leadership. But that in no way reduces the pressure on the trade union movement to decide whether its business is a war of attrition or the promotion of successful companies that provide secure jobs and pensions for their members.

It should be obvious to even the most militant that the unions have very little purchase in these globalised days in protecting the livelihoods of their members. They are not even much cop in defending public sector privilege – as the coalition’s current determination to reform pensions underlines.

So, would they do better if they dropped their destructive urge, did a 180-degree turn and made it clear by their actions as aggressive shareholders that their aim in life is successful companies with good pay, productivity, products, pensions and prospects?

It’s a lot to expect of the average trade union leader encumbered with his terrible baggage of failure, and now salivating over Saturday week’s futile anti-cuts demonstration.

But they have to ask themselves what would serve working people best? As for labour correspondents, I fear they have had it whatever happens. There is no future for strikes – and good news isn’t news.