SECONDARY PICKETING (ABOLITION) (Hansard, 14 February 1979)

§ Mr. Peter Temple-Morris (Leominster)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make illegal the picketing of any premises during an industrial dispute other than those directly connected with the said dispute; and for purposes connected therewith. At the outset, I should say that we are dealing with a real problem. I think that Members on both sides of the House will agree with that. I move this motion in a spirit which I hope will not include union bashing, and I hope that any response from the Labour Benches will not include words such as "jackboots". The hon. Member for Luton, East (Mr. Clemitson) was kind enough to tell me yesterday that he was considering whether to oppose the Bill. Should he be opposing me, I am quite confident that he will approach this debate in the same spirit in which I am initiating it.

I think it is common ground that we face a problem about which the country expects Parliament to take some action. Quite apart from what he said today, the Prime Minister has said that he is not very much in favour of secondary picketing. He has further said that no group has rights over and above the community as a whole. This proposed measure is an effort to translate those bold words into some kind of parliamentary action.

Should the Bill be opposed, it would be yet another example of the Parliamentary Labour Party being fully out of step with the Labour Party in the country, quite apart from the rest of the country. According to a recent MORI poll, which received considerable publicity last week, the Labour Party in the country stands united with the Conservative Party in the country, and, I trust, in Parliament as well. Any hon. Member who opposes this Bill ought fully to realise that, according to that poll by MORI—which, after all, is the Labour Party's private pollster—85 per cent. of Labour voters and 86 per cent. of trade unionists are in favour of a ban on secondary picketing.

The scope of the Bill is limited—I am the first to admit that—to one facet of a very difficult problem. I do not begin to pretend that it is the beginning or end of the matter. Goodness knows, we have 1166 enough trouble from primary picketing. The Bill simply deals with one major sector of abuse, and applies the law to what is potentially a situation which can become criminal. We have seen examples of that. Therefore, the law has to be clear.

By way of definition, picketing under the Bill would be limited to at or near the place of employment concerned", be it a depot, a head office, a factory or whatever.

Why is legislation necessary? First, we should put picketing overall in a proper context. I do not want to be over-legalistic, but there is no legal right to picket as such. That right comes from exemptions to what we all know to be the law. If it is a case of legislative exemptions, the law should properly regulate this situation.

It is claimed in certain parts of the House that the civil law can cover the matter. But the law is confused. I need only remind the House of the occasion when the Attorney-General stood at the Dispatch Box a little while ago and from some of the comments which emanated from his supporters, let alone what the lawyers amongst us felt, it was clear that this House was in a total mist of legalistic confusion. So much for the civil law.

Can this House possibly tolerate the concept of lawful intimidation? The civil law is inadequate in any event because it has to be enforced by a mass of injunctions served individually on pickets. Those injunctions take time to resolve and other pickets could replace the pickets concerned during that time.

It is claimed that the remoteness concept covers this matter, and about that I would add one important comment. If we as politicians begin to rely on a judicially administered remoteness concept, we risk bringing the judiciary permanently into one of the most delicate areas of British politics. That is utterly and completely wrong.

Legislation is necessary so that the police may have clear-cut powers. They should not have to observe picket lines, keeping an ear to the proverbial ground, wondering whether there has been intimidation and whether there is evidence of it, and then, if we follow the Attorney-General's thinking, whether that intimidation is lawful.

1167 It is the duty of the law to protect the majority. The vast majority in these disputes are third parties who have no part in the disputes; they have no say in a code of conduct, concordat or anything else. Most important, they have no say in the way in which that code of conduct or concordat is construed and put into practice. It is clearly necessary for us to legislate about that.

In order to illustrate that there is no other way of dealing with the problem, I shall make two further points. We have heard a lot about a voluntary code this afternoon. As we have seen from recent experience, that will not work. Code or no code, the present situation is part of the far wider issue of trade union leadership control over its members.

The most recent example of this was the road haulage dispute. Whilst I would be the first to admit that the code helped to modify matters in places, I believe that it is a fact that that dispute was not resolved by any code but by the employers conceding virtually the whole claim.

We hear a great deal about the argument that we cannot legislate on the trade unions because we canont enforce such legislation. I suggest that that is a weak argument. This House has a duty, when it sees a clear problem, to deal with it by legislation.

We have heard it said this afternoon that the oft-quoted Industrial Relations Act was ill fated. Remarks such as "Oh, that didn't work. If we could not enforce that, how could we enforce anything else?" have been made. I must say—and I will do so briefly but I hope effectively—that one of the main reasons why that Act did not work was the attitude of the then Opposition. They failed to live up to their previous policies which they knew perfectly well, when in Government, were right. That is why it did not work. If the Opposition of the day realise that legislation on trade unions or anything else is necessary, such legislation is enforceable. Further to this, if we cannot enforce the law, how on earth can we enforce a code of conduct?

May I remind Labour Members, and hon. Members generally, of the serious- 1168 ness of the overall situation and put some simple facts to them? It is a fact, and I defy anybody to say otherwise, that we are tolerating the possibility of minority power being able to blackmail the nation. It is further fact that there has been intimidation, extortion and blackmail. The problems associated with those three matters were admitted by Mr. Kitson and Mr. Moss Evans—and hon. Members can put that in their pipes and try to smoke it.

Another fact is the losses to individual workers, companies, production, exports and shipping. They have been enormous.

What has happened is an abuse of democracy. We all know that what has happened could happen again. It was summed up by a judge in a judgment. I shall not go into the details of that judgment or discuss whether he should have said it, but a judge was reduced to saying that there was a presumption that Parliament would not legislate to bring about its own destruction. If we get to that stage, this nation screams out for some action from Parliament.

I commend this motion to the House.

§ Mr. Ivor Clemitson (Luton, East)

The hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) has addressed himself to some serious and important matters concerning picketing. It is important that such matters should be discussed in this House. It is also important that in discussing these issues we do not rush into hasty judgments, however serious the situation may be at the time, or fail to consider all the arguments and counter-arguments coolly and soberly.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the MORI opinion poll. It is important that the public outside the House should be made aware of all the arguments in the matter. We have a duty to inform public opinion.

The object of the Bill, as I understand it, is to ban what has become known as secondary picketing, or, to put it more accurately, to limit the immunities from civil actions for breaches of contract which pickets enjoy to picketing outside their own place of work. Why does the hon. Gentleman wish to impose such a 1169 limitation? The answer must be because of the effect that has been achieved by secondary picketing. It has had an effect. If secondary picketing had had no effect the Bill would never have been introduced, because it would not have been needed.

In other words, we are saying that a large number of people have not crossed picket lines. Why have they not crossed the picket lines? Surely there are, logically, only two possible answers. The first is that the pickets have peacefully persuaded people not to cross the picket lines. People have, of their own free will, decided not to cross the picket line. The other explanation is that people have been prevented from crossing picket lines by violence, threats of violence, extortion, intimidation, or whatever else it may be. All the incidents that have been drawn to the attention of the House in recent weeks fall into the second category. If they were true—I do not wish to judge any particular incident—they are criminal offences under the law as it stands. It is against the law to use violence, to threaten to use violence or to obstruct the highway or footpath in order to prevent people going about their lawful business. It is also against the law to extort money from people or to attempt to do so. Whether they are connected with primary picketing, secondary picketing, tertiary picketing, or whatever, all such actions are against the law. They are actions that should be totally condemned by the House. They have nothing to do with the true spirit and purpose of trade unionism.

The real problem is not whether picketing is primary or secondary but whether it is properly conducted. That is the problem. If criminal acts are taking place, the answer lies not in changing the law but in seeing that the law is properly enforced. If it is said that one of the difficulties of enforcing the law is the difficulty of interpreting it in any situation, because situations vary, the answer surely lies not in attempting detailed legislation but in sensible and agreed codes of conduct. My first objection to the hon. Member's Bill is that he has wrongly identified the problem.

However, if the hon. Member says that he objects to secondary picketing, however peacefully or properly it is conducted, he is really saying that he objects to the 1170 degree of power which trade unions have. That brings me to my second objection to the Bill.

The hon. Member appears to share the analysis that we have heard on a number of occasions from the Leader of the Opposition that the balance of power between trade unions and employers is tilted too far in favour of trade unions and that that balance must be redressed. One of the ways of redressing it is to curb the effectiveness of picketing by banning secondary picketing. That is the argument that the hon. Member was really advancing this afternoon.

I believe that that argument is profoundly misconceived, and therefore we should resist all the practical proposals that flow from it. I am not saying for one moment that trade unions do not have considerable power; of course they do. Neither am I saying that the trade unions' power has not increased over the years; of course it has. But to approach the question of the power of trade unions in quantitative terms—whether it is too little, too much or just right—is negative and sterile. The approach that we should adopt is a positive one. We must ask ourselves how trade union power can be used and channelled into constructive and productive directions. In other words, how can we develop democratic ways of running our industries and services?

The hon. Member has said that he wants the House to give a lead to the country in this matter. I believe that we should give such a lead, but I differ from the hon. Member about the kind of lead that we should give. I believe that the lead that we should give should be in stimulating informed debate on the subject, and encouraging codes of practice for picketing. The hon. Member believes that new laws are needed. I believe that he is wrong in two fundamental respects. He is wrong, practically, in confusing the real problem of abuses of picketing with the question of where it takes place, and he is wrong, philosophically, in his negative approach to the question of trade union power. For those reasons I oppose his Bill.