WESTM NSTER HAUL
Page 7
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Was it, after all, just a dream, a figment of the imagination?
Certainly there were moments in the Commons last week when it seemed that the transport strike, if not just a product of the imagination of the Press and television, was at worst a non-event.
Left-winger Jeff Rooker, for one, believed that the whole thing had got out of proportion.
In apparent innocence, he asked how many shops had run out of food, how many people had died of starvation, and how many million workers had been laid off.
And then, just to help William Rodgers, supplied the answers himself — no-one knew of a single shop which had run out of food, no-one had died of starvation and only 200,000 workers had been laid off.
A total of temporarily unemployed which seemed to bring satisfaction to that other leftish MP Joe Ashton, for he observed that it was "one per cent."
The Minister — asking if he might be allowed to join in — agreed with the implication of Mr Rooker's question — and was "very glad" that no-one had starved to death.
But he would not go as far as Mr Rooker presumably hoped he would — beyond regretting "the hysteria which occurred at the time in some quarters."
Mr Rodgers regretted the strike which, he said, resulted in so much inconvenience and disruption. His opinion was that if we had such circumstances again — and he hoped that we should not — the control of pickets would be such as to make unnecessary the anxieties that existed previously.
Ministerial colleague Harold Walker, the Minister of State for Employment, who had earlier been brought into the picture, was less disturbed by the strike.
He admitted that it was possible that some firms may have lost contracts, as a result of delays in exports for example, but maintained that it was doubtful whether any significant continuing or long-term effects on employment would follow directly.
What's a few lost contracts?
Needless to say, the Tories were not so easy-going. Robert Adley talked of activities unacceptable in a civilised democracy, while Norman Fowler was annoyed about unacceptable picketing.
But it was plain that Mr Rodgers wanted the dispute to be consigned to history.