BRITAIN/SPECIAL REPORT
"This battle will continue when I have finished. This will always be the case. I shall never solve it. There will always be people like myself to carry on and do this. There has got to be us and them. There has always got to be us and them. "
−Doug Peach, Union Convenor
"I think the unions have got so much power now in our plant and in the country as a whole that they don 't quite know what to do. If they wish, they can prevent management from doing anything. We are no longer in a position to manage except with the consent of the unions."
−John Owen, Managing Director
The battle between labor and management in Britain took a small, hopeful turn last week. At the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress in Blackpool, delegates representing more than ten million workers voted to accept Prime Minister Harold Wilson's recently announced program of wage restraints (see box page 61). Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey called it "a unique achievement" and there was euphoric speculation that the "I'm All Right Jack" era of union truculence might be over. The optimism is probably premature. The social conflicts that underlie Britain's labor problems are nowhere near being resolved, and the budding spirit of union self-sacrifice may well prove too fragile to withstand the forecast winter of continued inflation.
Labor conflict is by no means limited to Britain. In the U.S. most industrial unions have acted with restraint during the recession. But last week one big American city after another faced walkouts by workers who were making difficult demands in a time of shrinking resources. The "English sickness"−the affliction that makes work almost an afterthought amid the ceaseless shop-floor broil of whispered conferences, noisy confrontations and tense negotiations−is most virulent in its native land. But the rest of the industrialized world knows that it has no guarantee of immunity against what is happening in Britain.
In the early 18th century, the question "Who rules Britain?" could be answered with a simple tautology. Britain was ruled by the ruling classes. More specifically, although swayed by commoners and clergy, it was ruled by one monarch, 25 dukes, one marquess, 81 earls, twelve viscounts and 63 barons. In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution brought with it the need for a new cultural catechism, and by 1843 Historian-Seer Thomas Carlyle was prophesying the emergence of new leaders: from an "Industrial Aristocracy as yet only half-alive, spellbound amid moneybags and ledgers," would arise noble captains of industry to lead Britain's work-hosts in the fight "against Chaos, Necessity and the Devils."
During the sun-drenched days of Empire, some believed that Carlyle's prophecy had come true. But today Britain is still bedeviled, and the captains and the work-hosts have been fighting each other instead of chaos. Indeed, the conflict of power between workers and employers has produced such widespread havoc in recent years that it has come close to destroying Britain's future as an industrial nation. Inflation, fueled in part by excessive union wage demands, is running at a disastrous 26.3% rate, and Britain's very economic survival depends on