Glasgow Media Group

Most meetings are at 7.30 as we start work. Being on strike, the unions fixed them all for two hours later, which gave us time to read the papers and listen to the radio and in the end the morale went.

(BL worker on the defeat of the 1981 Leyland strike. The Guardian, 4.11.81)

When we began our research we were interested in the picture given of the industrial world: of what were presented as its problems and potential solutions. Our method was to look first at the possible explanations for the economic crisis, for what was causing problems in industry; then to see which of these occurred in news coverage and which were excluded. Secondly, we examined how some explanations were featured prominently and how others were downgraded.

One of our first detailed studies was of coverage of the car industry. We found ourselves looking mainly at strikes and wage claims. These are not of course the only things that happen in industry, but they are what is called the news. In January 1975 a dispute occurred at British Leyland. This received extensive coverage over a period of five weeks. The association of British Leyland with strikes has now entered the

folklore of our society: no football match is complete without a barrier proclaiming that "KENNY (or whoever) STRIKES FASTER THAN LEYLAND". In January 1979 The Daily Telegraph reported: "The public in every opinion poll shows that it believes the trade union situation to be more responsible than any other factor for the nation's problems."

We wanted to see how much this view underpinned television news coverage and how it related it to other possible causes of obviously causes of the car industry's problems.

At the time of our study much 'alternative' information on the car industry was available. This fell into two main areas: low investment and bad management. British industry as a whole has suffered from under-investment for at least thirty years. In the case of the car industry, The Daily Express reported in February 1975 that a Toyota worker in Japan was working with the equivalent of £11,780 worth of machinery while a British Leyland worker had only £1,000 worth. There are a number of reasons for this lack of investment. One is that capital is being exported from Britain to countries such as South Africa where profits are higher. Another is that within the British economy, people with money choose to invest it where they will receive the highest return. This is often not the manufacturing industry. For speculative reasons, literally thousands of millions of pounds have, over the years, been directed away from production into areas such as the buying up of property and land. In the period 1974-75 each of the top three property companies in London had assets greater than the total value of British Leyland. A third factor is the distribution of profits as dividends to shareholders.

The Ryder Report on Leyland commissioned by the government, showed that between 1968 and 1972 the company had distributed 95% of its profits as dividends. In these years Leyland had made £74 million in profits; of this only £4 million was retained for re-investment, while £70 million was distributed as dividends. Leyland had more obsolete and worn out machinery than its competitors. The most important effects of this were that cars cost more per unit to produce and also that such machinery was likely to break down. In 1975, the managements own figures showed that they were losing more through ineffective machinery, and factors such as management errors, than they were losing through strikes at Leyland. At this time Leyland was a hotchpotch of all the different parts which had been absorbed into it and different sections actually produced models which were in competition with each other. Management and organisational structure were obviously chaotic.

Such explanations conflict with the more common accounts that the problems of industry are caused by strike-prone workers.

On January 3, Harold Wilson, then Prime Minister, made a speech at his Huyton constituency. In it he dealt with the future of government investment in industry and criticised the past record of car production using the words "manifestly avoidable stoppages of production". The precise origin of these stoppages and who was to blame was left ambiguous. Here is the way it was presented on the first BBC bulletin of that night:

The Prime Minister, in a major speech tonight on the economy, appealed to management and unions in the car industry to cut down on what he called "manifestly avoidable stoppages". He said this was especially important now that government money was involved. The decision to help British Leyland was part of the government's fight against unemployment, but the help couldn't be justified if it led to continuing losses. Mr, Wilson singled out for particular blame British Leyland's Austin-Morris division, which he said was responsible last year for a fifth of the stoppages in man days lost of the whole car industry.

“The Prime Minister, in a major speech tonight on the economy, appealed to management and unions”

“This is an industry which itself makes a disproportionate contribution to the loss of output through disputes, because with just over 2 per cent of the total employees, 2 per cent of all those working in the whole of Britain, it accounted for one eighth of all the man days lost in 1974 through disputes and that was a year, of course, which was inflated by the coal-mining dispute, which we rapidly brought to an end, and it accounted for getting on for one-third of the total national loss through disputes in 1973. Whether this loss of production was acceptable or not with private capital involved, or whether it was simply that private capital was unable to deal with such problems, is a matter now for historical argument. What is not a matter for argument

for the future, is this: With public capital and an appropriate degree of public ownership and control involved the government could not justify to Parliament or to the taxpayer the subsidising of large factories involving thousands of jobs, factories which could pay their way but are failing to do so because of manifestly avoidable stoppages of production.

There are three points in Wilson's speech which are of interest here. First, the introduction where Wilson is reported as having criticised "management and unions". Second, in all the sections of the speech we are shown, Wilson does not use

the word 'strike' but uses the less emotive term 'dispute'. He even rewords well known phrases such as 'the coal-miners strike' into 'the coal-mining dispute'. Third, he singles out the problems of what he calls "private capital" and notes that and that "whether this loss of production was acceptable or not with private capital involved, or whether it was simply that private capital was unable to deal with such problems is a matter now for historical argument".

On the same channel an hour and forty-five minutes later, these three things have changed. The speech is now introduced as an appeal to workers alone. It is referred to from now on as a referred to as a speech about strikes and the sections on the problems of private capital are no longer shown.

The Prime Minister has appealed to workers in the car industry to cut down on avoidable stoppages. He said the industry had a record of strikes out of proportion to its size, and he singled out, for particular blame, British Leyland's Austin-Morris division, which he said was responsible last year for a fifth of the industry's lost production through strikes. Mr. Wilson said that unless labour relations improved, government help for British Leyland would be put in doubt.

Parts of the British Leyland undertaking are profitable, others are not, but public investment and participation cannot be justified on the basis of continued avoidable loss-making. Our intervention cannot be based on a policy of turning a private liability into a public liability.

What is not a matter for argument for the future is this. With public capital and an appropriate degree of public ownership and control involved, the government could not justify to Parliament, or to the taxpayer, the subsidising of large factories which could pay their way, but are failing to do so because of manifestly avoidable stoppages of production.

The BBC 2 coverage that evening was still working with the definition of the speech as being about both sides. It was introduced as a "blunt warning to the car industry" and later in the bulletin there was a discussion between an industrial correspondent and the newscaster in which they made it quite clear that the speech was not simply a criticism of the work force.

NEWSCASTER: Many of the phrases in the Prime Minister's speech are pointed directly at the unions and the labour force, some are pointed at management, like the need for more efficient working methods. Do the management accept that they have got to do some pretty radical rethinking about production methods and that sort of thing? (BBC2 23:16 3.1.75)

This is important as the speech was referred to on a very large number of occasions (44 in all) in conjunction with the coverage of the dispute at Leyland. This was the last time it was referred to as being critical of management.

The ITN coverage at no point acknowledged these criticisms. In the introduction Mr. Wilson was said to have given "workers a blunt warning". In addition to showing excerpts from the speech ITN also had a reporter on the spot who summarised to a camera what he believed it to be about. These summaries again emphasised the speech as an appeal to the workforce:

This was a stern message to come from a Labour Prime Minister, but it was received politely enough by the audience here in a labour Club in his constituency; but the speech was clearly prompted by the growing number of companies going to the government for help and the large sums of public money involved. Mr. Wilson clearly expects a greater degree of restraint from the workforce in firms where the government has stepped in to help and he has appealed directly to working people not to rock an already very leaky boat.

This bulletin continued with reports of attitudes to the speech and to the source of Leyland's difficulties. Elsewhere the alternative history of these difficulties was well documented. The problems of investment and distribution of dividends were in fact highlighted as early as 1972, as for example in this excerpt from the journal Management Today:

Capital expenditure had been very low for many years, and depreciation was correspondingly small. The high profits about which so many boasts were made, were thus derived from a declining asset base and too high a proportion was paid out to shareholders. (Management Today, August 1972)

But such alternative accounts were reduced on the news to mere tokens. In the above ITN bulletin, the story on Leyland lasted over five minutes, the first four minutes and 50 seconds of this were taken up with the speech, summaries of it and the definition of it as being about the workforce. The bulletin continued immediately with a fifteen second reference to the alternative view. Lesley Huckfield, MP, was quoted as saying that the main problem in Leyland was the management failure to invest. This account was immediately ‘sandwiched' by following it with two other views that refuted it, those of the Leyland management and of Mr. Prior, the Conservative spokesman.

Mr. Wilson's comments on British Leyland got a cool reception from one Labour MP, Mr. Leslie Huckfield of Nuneaton. He said the Prime Minister clearly knew very little about the car industry, the real cause of the trouble was the chronic failure of management to invest, he said. But the opposition's employment spokesman Mr. James Prior, and the British Leyland spokesman, both supported Mr. Wilson's remarks. Mr. Prior said Mr. Wilson was at least stating some home truths which others have been expressing for a long while.

Huckfield's view is effectively discounted, all the more since it was heavily parenthesised with a double "he said". ITN left us in no doubt as to which side they wished to emphasise. They literally 'underlined' one interpretation of the speech and used this to introduce their coverage of the dispute. The above bulletin continued:

As if to underline Mr. Wilson's remarks, British Leyland's Austin-Morris plant in Cowley announced that 12,000 men are being laid off because of a strike by 250 workers. The striking workers are engine tuners, who want to be graded as skilled workers. They rejected a plea to call off the strike which could cut production by a thousand cars a day. (lTN Late News 3.1.75)

The BBC used the same form of 'sandwich' and also linked the speech and the dispute. We know here that the BBC is about to talk of strikes since it uses the words "and there was more trouble today".

Mr. Wilson's speech has been welcomed by the opposition spokesman on employment, Mr. J ames Prior. He said the Prime Minister had told car workers some home truths, although it was a pity he hadn't done so before, but Mr. Leslie Huckfield, a Labour MP with a lot of car workers in his constituency of Nuneaton, said the speech was disgraceful. The real culprits were the management, not the workers. British Leyland said tonight they shared Mr. Wilson's exasperation at the series of futile disputes in the corporation and there was more trouble today. 12,000 workers at the Cowley plant near Oxford were laid off because of a strike by 250 in the tuning department. (BBC 1 Late News 8.1.75)

This sets the pattern for the subsequent use of the speech in relation to the dispute. It is constantly recalled as the events at Cowley are reported. The apparently routine coverage of a dispute is now underpinned by a series of insertions which point to one interpretation of Leyland's problems.

The last of these references occurred seventeen days after the speech was actually made. As the coverage of the dispute moves further away from the actual event of the speech, so the original definition is reworked, always in the direction of blaming the workforce. Wilson's original reference "manifestly avoidable stoppages" is recalled variously as being about "senseless strikes", "unnecessary strikes" and a warning to "workers in general, but car workers in particular".

. . . and now they're out again, within a week in fact of the Prime Minister's warning that what he called unnecessary strikes were putting jobs in the car industry at risk. And indeed, as a result of this action this morning, 12,000 other British Leyland car workers may well have to be laid off immediately. (ITN 13:00 9.1.75)

Cowley in Oxford, specially picked out by Mr. Wilson in his warning last night about strikes, is at a standstill for a second day because of industrial trouble. 12,000 workers at the plant are being laid off because 250 engine tuners who want to be higher graded are stopping work on Monday. In his speech last night, Mr. Wilson warned workers in general, but car workers in particular, that the government could not justify subsidising large factories which were losing money because of manifestly avoidable strikes. The speech has been welcomed by some Conservative MPs, but condemned by some left-wing Labour members.(ITN 13:00 4.1.75)

First the fresh strike at British Leyland's. The management at Cowley said this evening that despite the renewed stoppage by the 250 tuners there, they have managed to achieve 80 per cent of a normal day's output. The 12,000 other people who work at Cowley, the plant which was specifically mentioned by the Prime Minister last week when he talked about senseless strikes in the motor industry - they were angry this morning when they learned that the tuners had voted to walk out again and that they faced the threat of layoffs for the second time in four days. (BBC 2 Late News 9.1.75)

Alternative explanations of Leyland's problems are not used to organise coverage in the same way. For example, two days after the Wilson speech Jack Jones made a statement criticising Leyland's management. This was referred to three times on BBC 1, three times on ITN and not at all on BBC 2. The Jones statement disappeared very rapidly from the news and significantly was not used as an organising principle for

coverage. It simply occurs as a fragment which is quickly passed over. By comparison, the Wilson speech with its new definition was referred to 13 times on BBC 1, 8 times on BBC 2 and 21 times on ITN.

The definition of Wilson's remarks is used to give authority for a limited explanation around which the flow of coverage is being organised. But the view that strikes are the problem has become so firmly implanted in the normal account of journalists that at times they feel quite able to embrace it as their own. For example on January 4 an ITN journalist gave a report from Cowley and concluded:

The Austin-Morris plant at Cowley is now totally shut down. Twelve thousand men have been laid off because two hundred and fifty engine tuners want their jobs regraded. It's the kind of strike that has contributed significantly to the dire economic problems of British Leyland. (ITN 22:00 4.1.75)

While the theme that strikes are the problem is embraced in this way, there is no point in this five-week period of coverage where any of the other explanations of Leyland's problems are treated in a similar manner. Journalists never concluded: "it's

the kind of chronic investment failure that has done so much to contribute to the problems of Leyland".

Information which contradicts the dominant view, if it at appears at all, exists as fragments and is never explored by news personnel as a rational alternative explanation. It is not used by them as a way of organising what they cover, of selecting what they film, or structuring their interviews. Where alternatives

do occasionally surface, as for example when shop stewards are interviewed, then these accounts are simply fitted into the dominant flow. This may occur even when the content of such an interview seriously contradicts the assumptions that the journalist is pursuing when asking the questions. At Leyland the shop stewards' convenor was interviewed. The reporter set up the interview once again in relation to Wilson's speech, and asked how the men at Cowley were reacting to it. The shop steward convenor argued that this approach did not help, and gave two critical pieces of information that severely contradicted the media view of Leyland. He said that since April of the previous year the men had been. working consistently to avoid disputes: The level of disputes in Leyland had in fact fallen in the period to which he was referring. Secondly, he argued that most of the production had been lost through breakdowns or ,shortages of materials, a point borne out by the management's own figures on production losses. Reports confirming the shop steward's view later appeared in four national newspapers, but were never given on the television news.

SHOP STEWARDS' CONVENOR: .. Since April of last year, we have worked consistently, all of us, to try and avoid any disputes whatsoever. In fact most of the production that has been lost, has been lost through either breakdowns or shortage

of materials and we do recognise that British Leyland has got a problem, a cash-flow problem, and we have worked very, very hard, both union and members, to try and eradicate this position.

BBC REPORTER: How does the prospect of no government cash for British Leyland strike you if the strike record doesn't improve?

In the face of the evidence that the level of disputes at Leyland has gone down and that anyway most production is not lost through this, the journalist persists with the view that the critical issue is what will happen if the strike record does not improve! It is so much on the tip of his tongue that the journalist (presumably accidentally) actually uses the word 'strike' twice in the same sentence.

This treatment of people on the shop floor may be compared with that of The Financial Times. Its journalists were sent to Leyland and interviewed shop stewards. On January 6 The Financial Times reported: "Cowley shop stewards tell hair-raising stories about managerial failings, and point at the moment to constant assembly-track hold-ups caused by non-availability of supplier component parts”.

Journalists claim in their defence that they play 'devil's advocate' in interviews; that it is their role to present the opposition case and that this provides lively television. Our study showed that they simply did not do this. They do not typically attack the management using the arguments of shop stewards. We can compare the above interview with one in which an ITN journalist interviewed a British Leyland manager. One question does take up briefly the theme of Mr. Jones' criticism of management, the other six speak for themselves: -

Would workers at Leyland approve of a one-year strike truce?
2. Jones yesterday said management was largely to blame for stoppages - how do you take this?
What are stoppages caused by?
Isn't this a criticism of the unions as they apparently have so little control over their men?
Do you think there are people at work at Leyland who simply want to disrupt the thing?
What danger is there to jobs in Leyland if these sorts of strikes go on?
With government coming to the aid of British Leyland, aren't workers going to think their jobs are safe anyway?

We may also note that the shop steward was interviewed with his back to a wall outside the factory gates while the Leyland manager was brought into the comfort and style of the ITN studios for a lengthy face-to-face discussion with the newscaster. What is at stake in all this coverage is the routine processing of information, reports and interviews around one view of industrial crisis. Information that contradicts this is either discounted or ignored and at times is actually used as if it supports the dominant view. In one instance, government figures were released showing that overall car sales were down. The main cause of this was the oil crisis and the increasing cost of fuel. Television programmes showed fields which were full of cars that could not be sold. These were cars that had been completed and had left the factory. They were unlikely, therefore, to be affected by strikes. Logically if there were less strikes there would be even more cars which would not be sold. Yet ITN news actually ran the story of the unsold cars directly in conjunction with the alleged strike problem at Leyland.

On the day that it has been announced by the Government that new car sales last year were down by 25 per cent on 1973, the Director of British Leyland's Cowley plant has warned of a calamity if the strike situation there gets worse. Figures out today show that private car and van registrations dropped from steward, complete non-actions are sufficient 1,688,000 in 1973 to 1,273,000 last year and all vehicle registrations were down nearly as much by 20 per cent. The warning came in a letter from the Plant Director, Mr. John Symons, to Leyland employees as the Company and the Engineering Union agreed to talks tomorrow at the Conciliation and Arbitration Service to try to solve the strike of engine tuners at Cowley. Mr.Symons said that the strike had meant that Cowley was failing to meet what he called its survival budget. He also gave a warning that a further deterioration would be calamitous with the strongest likelihood of a major reduction in manufacturing and employment at Cowley. (ITN 22:00 22.1.75)

The news is one-dimensional in that it pursues one explanation at the expense of others. A count of the causes of Leyland's problems which were referred to in the Cowley coverage gives some indication of this. Excluding all of the references to Wilson's speech they were as follows. On BBC 1 there were 22 references to the strike problem of Leyland, 5 references to the problem of management, and only one to investment. On BBC 2 there were 8 references to the strike theme, 3 to management and 2 to investment. On ITN there were 33 to the strike theme, 8 to management and none to investment. Such a count actually over-estimates the presence of alternative explanations since these occur only as fragments and are never pursued. By contrast the strike theme runs through the coverage of the car industry. The news is organised around the logic of this explanation. When strikes

are presented as a source of industry's problems we know and are informed exactly of what strikes do. The resources of the media are organised to give us this information. A kind of chain of information is set up by which we know what a strike is, what it does, who it affects, the damage it causes and who is to blame. We are routinely told who is on strike, who is responsible, who is left wing, if there are splits in the unions and how many exports are lost. When themes such as left-wing influence and deliberate wrecking are inserted they create the links in how we are to understand what is happening. Such insertions may occur quite gratuitously, even when there is immediate story. In this sense, to be on the news you do have to do anything 'newsworthy' at all. For a left-wing shop steward, complete non-actions are sufficient to have a personal history of months ago once more regurgitated. In this piece of be ITN news, also 'unavailable for comment' was Mr. Alan Thornett:

Other officials refused to comment at all. These included he district secretary Mr. Malcolm Young and shop steward Mr. Alan Thornett. He was the man at the centre of last summer's strike when Leyland sought to have him removed from union office, because they claimed he was seeking deliberately to disrupt production.(ITN 22:00 6.1.75)

Similarly the view that strikes are the problem becomes so routinised that it may occur even when the immediate subject who is does not call for it, as for example in the description of a new Leyland car which was about to be launched:

Onlookers outside the Cowley factory gates have been getting an unplanned preview of a new British Leyland car. It's the successor to the Austin 1800 range, code-named 8071 and due to ere is no be launched in spring, strikes permitting. British Leyland hope it will revive interest in their cars in a sagging home market.

The news is underpinned by a key ideological assumption. It is that production in our society is normal and satisfactory unless there are problems with the workforce. All of the other problems which may be generated by a productive system based on private interest - such as the export of capital and the flow of investment funds away from manufacturing, the running down of some sections of the economy and the rapid expansion of others, the need to keep shareholders happy, and came out on unofficial strike. They said they w to distribute dividends - are closed off in the flow of coverage. Although these factors are clearly responsible for major disruptions in the economy they remain unexamined by journalists as sources of trouble. For them production is normal until there is a dispute. As for example in this coverage from ITN:

For a week now the company-has been keeping production up to eighty per cent of normal and stockpiling cars for the tuners to attend to when the dispute is settled.

What is crucial is that normal production and full production are treated as synonymous and are equated with being strike free. In the coverage of the above dispute ITN informed us that:

With the engine tuners back at work at least for the time being, the Austin-Morris plant, singled out by the Prime Minister for particular criticism, was also back in full production.

A production stoppage or a problem in industry becomes groups equated in general usage with a strike. This occurs across industrial reporting. Here, for example, in coverage of Chrysler, a reporter notes that stocks must be good because there have been no strikes:

With a touch of irony, Chrysler point out that they'd had a run without production stoppages, without strikes, so stocks must be good, but for all their optimism their workforce is going on a three day week for the rest of January.

The journalists view of the 'normal' covers up the nature of a system which through its own logic can produce chaos and decline, independent of the wishes or actions of the workforce - but it is at their door that the blame is laid.

In February 1979 we took an additional sample of coverage of a Leyland dispute to compare with earlier results. For two weeks, we recorded the main evening bulletin on BBC 1 and ITN and the Sunday evening News Review on BBC 2. On February 7 the workers at the Longbridge plant in Birmingham came out on unofficial strike. They said they were protesting at management's refusal to make backdated parity payments which had been agreed by both sides in return for higher levels of productivity. In the context of the agreement the unions had conceded that redundancies could take place. The shop stewards pointed out that 7000 redundancies had occurred and claimed that management were attempting to conceal the true levels of production at both Austin-Morris and Jaguar. Management claimed that productivity had not been high enough to justify the payments, that the men had misunderstood the terms of the agreement and that the shop production stewards were breaking procedure.

Given that management and unions had competing explanations to offer for the dispute, in principle each of these might have been explored in an even-handed way. In the main however, coherence and rationality are granted to management and not to the workforce. The different ways in which both groups are interviewed reflects this. It is not enough to analyse formal balance in terms of the time allocated to the two groups (in this case the workers and their representatives had more than management). The style of the interview also matters. Questions put to management tend either to be an open invitation to give their views or to lead directly to these.

As a result such interviews are fairly harmonious: the 'devil's advocate' role and the 'difficult' questions are reserved largely for shop stewards.

Interviews with Pat Lowry (personnel director of B.L. cars) and Ray Horrocks (managing director, Austin-Morris) began with an open invitation to them to elaborate upon their views. These were allowed to stand without interruption or challenge. On the rare occasions when a second question was put to them, it was encouraging rather than challenging. Thus on BBC 1, a journalist interviews Horrocks:

JOURNALIST: .. . when I spoke to the boss of Austin-Morris, of which Longbridge is the biggest part, I asked him if the workers had been deliberately misled by the stewards. HORROCKS: I am saying they were given wrong information without any shadow of a doubt at all and that is now very evident. Because against the background of the same information, 66,000 workers in 27 plants right across the country have voted to stay at work.

JOURNALIST: If Longbridge doesn't go back, Leyland say other plants are going to be hit. And there is a long-term threat too.

HORROCKS: In what I think is the unlikely event that Longbridge stay out - there's no doubt at all in my mind, I shall have to ask the Chief Executive of B.L. Ltd. that I should reappraise the Austin-Morris plant, and that will have long-term implications for the Company.

The aggressive questions put to shop stewards and pickets stand out in marked contrast. Here, for example, a BBC journalist interviews the Longbridge convenor of shop stewards:

the end of British Leyland. After this one would there be a plant or a job to come back to?

SHOP STEWARD: I'm confident we shall have a plant and a job to go back to. I note that Mr. Edwards might not have a job. Indeed, he's already seeking tax exile. I wish that some of our members on the wages that we get could seek tax exile, at the

JOURNALIST: Leyland workers over recent years have got a reputation with the public for perhaps doing things very quickly and doing sometimes stupid things - is this one of them?

SHOP STEWARD: I wouldn't have thought so. But you know, you were here last year when we persuaded our members not to. If anyone's adopted a responsible attitude it's the workers at Longbridge.

JOURNALIST: There were clashes this morning between pickets and drivers trying to get building materials through to a plant that will build the new Mini - the car that is the key to the Company's future. Aren't the men cutting their own throats?

SHOP STEWARD: We're on strike. It's been forced upon us. We've got no alternative. And we intend to use the full force of our membership in picketing this plant to ensure that nothing moves in and nothing moves out. We regret that we have to do these things. But until such time as the management come down to earth, that's how it will continue.

Management or official views tend to form the basis of such news accounts. At times, they are embellished to give them maximum emphasis, as in this report by a BBC correspondent:

"B.L. management wasn't slow to blast back at the Longbridge stewards for acting unconstitutionally, breaking procedure, overturning the secret ballot vote and spreading inaccurate information." He refers to output and productivity figures and tells us: "Now the extra productivity is measured against output in 1977 - goodness knows, a bad year for disputes….”

An all-out strike could mean B.L.. revising the corporate plan it has submitted to the NEB, cutting back investment, cutting back jobs. The failure of British car companies to produce cars means a boost for imports which, we learn, accounted for 54% of all sales last month, when incidentally, B.L. cars were market leader for the fourth consecutive month.

Management are not typically challenged and they emerge as victims - having to revise the corporate plan, cut jobs and investment because of the strike. There is no longer any for a logical alternative view. The last phrase - "B.L. cars were market leader for the fourth consecutive month" - is literally treated as incidental information. It could within an alternative frame have been used to contradict or at least challenge the conventional view that B.L. IS failing to produce cars because of frequent strikes..

The effect of all this is to produce a critical distinction taxpayers between responsible citizens and those few individuals or unions who are rocking the boat. The solid consensus of right-thinking, decent, law-abiding, hardworking taxpayers is compared with the wild, irresponsible minority. At its crudest, this is presented as the unions on one side and the taxpayer on the other. On February 8, 1979, ITN opened its main news with the headline:

LEYLAND UNIONS SAY: LET THE TAXPAYERS PAY. This was a factually incorrect report of the unions' views. At the time Leyland was desperately short of capital. The chief negotiator of the unions recalls to us that he told a reporter that Leyland would be a good investment for the National Enterprise Board. The state already owned most of the assets of Leyland and had lent it money. But on such loans up to 15.5% was being charged in interest - the taxpayer was not giving anything. More importantly, such a statement misses the issues of who are the taxpayers, and what are their real interests. At this time over half a million people were employed directly or indirectly by Leyland. They paid about £750 million procedure, in tax a year, which is very much more than the state lends to Leyland. It is absurd to imply that Leyland workers are different from other taxpayers and even more absurd to suggest that taxpayers as a whole would be better off if Leyland collapsed. The effect on the economy would be, at the least, to put an enormous number of people out of work, given all the industries that depend upon car production. Unemployment pay would then have to be met by those that are still paying tax.

Such headlines are no more than crude ideology. The blaming of the unions on the one side and the championing of the 'taxpayer' on the other lays the foundations for the most conservative economic policies. It plays right into the hands of monetarism - the belief that market forces should be unleashed for a competition in which only the strong survive. In this bleak vision the state should no longer intervene to hold back unemployment and recession. Instead, these should be allowed to develop so that wages will be forced down to the benefit of those who employ labour. Television has to make this scenario possible. Working people are presented as having brought unemployment upon themselves. The taxpayers, those that are left, can rest easily.

"They have skills to rival any market research organisation, combined with a name independent researchers would die for." ~ The Sunday Times

"They have skills to rival any market research organisation,
combined with a name independent researchers would die for." ~ The Sunday Times