A Very British Coup (17 page)

One reason why the British ruling class have endured so long is that every so often it opens ranks and absorbs a handful of its worst enemies. Reg Smith was a case in point.

He was six feet six in his bare feet. His greying hair was closely crew-cut and this, combined with a broken nose and half closed eyes, gave him a somewhat menacing appearance. Out of earshot, he was known to most of his colleagues as Odd Job. Within earshot he was referred to with deference. Reg Smith had presence.

He started life in a crumbling terrace of back-to-back houses in Chester-le-Street, County Durham. But for the second world war he would have followed his father down the pit, but instead he was conscripted into the army at the tail end of the war. A sergeant by the time he was demobbed, he signed on as a stoker at Battersea Power Station.

Chairman of his union branch within no time, after two years he was sent as a delegate to the national conference of the United Power Workers' Union. At about this time he joined the Labour Party and before long he was attending the annual conference as a union delegate. Those with memories long enough recall the day when Reg Smith was at the sharp end of the class struggle. There was even a time when he would not have taken offence at being described as a Marxist.

But times changed. At the end of the 1950s a ferocious battle was taking place to wrest control of the United Power Workers' Union from Communists. Smith saw the way the wind was blowing and weighed in on the side of the moderates. Not long after, a vacancy as a district organiser was advertised in the union journal. Smith applied, got the job and never looked back.

He first came into contact with the Americans at a conference organised by the Ditchley Foundation in the summer of 1981. The Ditchley Foundation is not exactly secret, but nor is
it exactly public either. Its purpose, according to the prospectus, is “to provide opportunities for people concerned with the formation of opinion from the United States and Britain … to meet in quiet surroundings.”

The ‘people concerned with the formation of opinion' tend to be mainly bankers, businessmen, politicians and diplomats. Occasionally a right-wing trade unionist is invited to discuss how to keep his members under control. That was where Reg Smith came in.

The ‘quiet surroundings' are a magnificent eighteenth-century mansion secluded among oak and beech trees in the rolling countryside of Oxfordshire.

After his first Ditchley conference Smith found that he was plugged into an international network of very powerful people. Like all powerful people they were obsessed with the notion that someone somewhere was plotting to take away the power and status they had amassed.

The American embassy arranged for Smith and his wife to go on an expenses paid tour of the United States to learn about American labour relations. In Washington they even arranged for him to spend five minutes with the President and a photograph of the event occupied pride of place on the mantelpiece of his Virginia Water house.

The powers-that-be knew that one day Reg Smith would come in handy. And with the election of Harry Perkins, Smith's hour had come.

Negotiations between the Electricity Council and the United Power Workers' Union broke down in mid-January. The employers, prompted by the government, wanted to take the dispute to arbitration, but Smith would have none of it. Instead he summoned a special meeting of his executive for the following Wednesday. Item one on the agenda would be a proposal for a work to rule to start forthwith. No one doubted it would be carried. The snow began to settle for the first time that winter.

*

The executive of the United Power Workers' Union met in the seventeenth floor boardroom of the union's smart new premises on the Euston Road. The offices had been an investment by the power workers' pension fund and built on an old British Rail goods yard. The union occupied the top five floors with the other twelve rented out at considerable profit. When they first became public the plans for the lavish new offices had provoked criticism from some members. Several letters were sent to the union journal pointing out that the power workers were supposed to be against property speculation. The letters were not published. Smith saw to that. “Nothing's too good for the working class,” he told the critics.

To the south the boardroom overlooked Bloomsbury and beyond that the Thames. The river meandered in a grey ribbon from Tower Hamlets to Wandsworth. St Paul's Cathedral, Nelson's Column and the tower of the House of Lords stood out clearly, and in the far distance, the television mast at Crystal Palace and beyond that the beginnings of the Kent countryside. On a clear day you could even tell the time by Big Ben. Reg Smith enjoyed nothing better than showing visitors the view from his boardroom, particularly after dark when the whole panorama was a mass of twinkling lights. “One word from me,” he was fond of telling his guests, “and that lot would be in darkness.”

Smith took his seat at one end of the solid oak table in the centre of the room. He brought the meeting to order by slapping the polished surface with the flat of his hand. There was immediate silence. “Brothers,” said Smith in an accent that owed more to Virginia Water than the Durham mining town of his birth, “it's very simple. We're asking for fifty per cent and an extra week's holiday. The Board are offering us ten per cent and no extra holiday.”

He cast an eye around the table in search of dissenters. There being none he continued, “We have made our position clear from the start. If there is no more money on the table, then we will be forced to take industrial action.”

Again Smith scanned the faces. Despite the indignant tone
in which he addressed them, his remarks provoked no nods of agreement. Left to themselves most members of the executive would have settled at ten per cent. They were moderates almost to a man. Indeed most of them owed their seats to the fact that they had featured on a slate of moderate candidates published in certain popular newspapers at the time of the election. Now they were being asked to agree to industrial action in support of a wage demand that most of them privately considered was outrageous. It was a strange old world.

“This afternoon your president,” Smith indicated a balding hollow-cheeked man immediately on his left, “and myself went to see the minister at the Department of Employment. All he could offer us was arbitration. We …” Smith looked again at the president, “…
we
told the minister that arbitration was completely unacceptable and that in view of the government's intransigence we would be forced to take industrial action. To which the minister asked us to spare a thought for the economic situation of the country and the efforts the government was making in other areas. I …” Smith paused, “…
we
told him that this had no bearing whatever on the merits of our case.”

Not everyone could bring themselves to look at the general secretary while he addressed them. When it came to the vote he could count on most of them but their hearts were not in it. Smith came to the point. “I therefore propose that we instruct our members to commence working-to-rule as from midnight tonight.” He paused to draw breath. “Any comments?”

Midway down the table a large, debauched looking man raised the forefinger of his right hand. His shirt collar was concealed beneath an overhang of chin.

“Brother Walker.”

Tommy Walker represented the north-east division. His support was a certainty. “I agree with the general secretary.” He paused to muster synthetic indignation. “I think it is a scandal the way we've been treated. All these years we've been sliding down the pay league and now the time has come to put the power workers back where they belong. At the
top.” He underlined the last phrase by bringing his hand down with a slap on the surface of the table.

“Thank you, Tommy,” said Smith. A man at the end of the table was indicating he wished to speak, but Smith ignored him and scanned the other executive members. No one else indicated and so he returned to the man at the end of the table. “Brother Clwyd.”

Barry Clwyd was a younger man than the rest, in his mid-thirties. He represented South Wales. There was no love lost between him and Reg Smith. Smith had been through the rule book in search of reasons to declare Clwyd's election invalid. “What I don't understand,” said Clwyd, “is why we can't go to arbitration. Why is the general secretary so keen on industrial action all of a sudden?”

“You're the one that's supposed to be a revolutionary,” sneered Smith.

“If you'd let me finish, Brother Smith,” Clwyd's lilting Welsh voice contrasted with the harsh tones of the general secretary. “Everyone here knows that if there were a ballot tomorrow our members would vote overwhelmingly against this work-to-rule.”

“You're out of order.” It was Smith again. “Under the rules a ballot is only required before strike action. A work-to-rule is the responsibility of the executive.”

This time Clwyd did not attempt to respond. He knew from experience that it was useless to argue. Few executive members could be swayed by argument. The rest took their cue from the general secretary. Three other members contributed to the discussion. Two for, one against. Then Smith took the vote. There were only three dissenters. “Right then, brothers, that's it.” Smith stood up. “We take action from midnight.”

Picking up his file he walked to the window. Far below, the lights were coming on all over London. The Euston Road was gummed with traffic. A train sounded its two-tone horn as it pulled into St Pancras. “Pity Downing Street has its own generator,” said Smith quietly, “otherwise I'd pull the plug myself.”

*

After the executive meeting broke up Smith spent an hour dictating a memorandum on the conduct of the work-to-rule for circulation to all district officers of the union. He also issued a terse statement to the Press Association blaming the dispute on the intransigence of the government which, he said, was refusing to allow the Electricity Board to negotiate freely.

He was then driven to Victoria Station. The pavements were thick with snow pounded to slush by the footfalls of rush-hour crowds. Along the Strand an automatic salt-spreader was stuck in a traffic jam. The last of the day's commuters, bent double against a cruel wind, trickled into Charing Cross. Newspaper vendors sought refuge from the cold in shop doorways. At Victoria, Smith dismissed the chauffeur, waited until the car was out of sight then walked briskly away from the station and into Buckingham Palace Road. He crossed the road and continued in the direction of St James's Park, perusing the shop fronts as he went. After about two hundred yards he came to a halt outside a restaurant called Bumbles. Reaching in the pocket of his overcoat he drew out a piece of paper and checked the name against a scribbled address. Then, looking to the right and left, he pushed open the door and entered.

The American, who was already seated at a table towards the rear of the restaurant with an evening newspaper spread before him looked up when Smith entered. He was wearing a white raincoat, open at the front, the one he had worn when he had last met Fiennes of DI5 in the coffee shop of the Churchill Hotel.

“Jim.” Smith bore down upon the American, his right hand extended.

“Reg.” The American was on his feet now. A waiter took Smith's overcoat and scarf. His heavy briefcase he placed on the floor by the table. “I see you boys are in the headlines.” The American indicated the front page of the paper he had been perusing. The headline story was about the impending power dispute. Smith turned the paper towards him and glanced at the story which included a rather unflattering
picture of himself taken at a press conference two weeks earlier.

The waiter fussed around them. Did they want apéritifs? The American already had a Scotch and Smith ordered the same. He specified Chivas Regal; nothing was too good for the working classes.

“To victory,” said the American raising his glass.

“Victory,” said Smith, his heavy jowls emitting a modest smile. Victory over whom or what, they did not say.

The American was Jim Chambers, first secretary, political section, at the embassy. The British Labour movement was his brief. He had a caseload of middle-rank Labour MPs and trade union leaders. His job was to pinpoint rising stars and get in close. It was all above board, so far at least. In the three years he had served in Britain, Chambers had become a familiar face in the bars at Labour party conferences and TUC congresses. Every snippet of information or gossip he had carefully noted and filed away. As a result he had identified the drift to the left in the Labour Party long before it had become apparent to his masters in Washington. At least three members of the new régime were regular guests at the dinner parties Chambers held at his home in Connaught Square. He had entered into the spirit of his job. Many was the drunken evening he had spent with his arm around a Labour politician singing the Red Flag or a chorus of Avanti Popolo.

Chambers was an old hand. His earlier assignments had included spells in El Salvador and Portugal. President Ford had claimed that saving Portugal from Communism was one of the achievements of his presidency. Jim Chambers had played his part.

Now Chambers was in London. He had thought he was in for a quiet life. At least there won't be a revolution in England, they had joked with him in the State Department, when he was posted. Little did they know. But Chambers was ready. He had been one of the few to tip a victory for Perkins. Now he was one of the few to predict that Perkins would not last the course.

Chambers had assembled his British caseload with precision.
It offered him contacts in every significant faction of the Labour movement. He even had a contact on the central committee of the British Communist Party. It was he who had set up Reg Smith's visit to the United States three years earlier. He had persuaded Smith to attend the conferences at Ditchley. The beauty of it was that no money had changed hands and no one had done anything they would have to lie about. His only outlay had been the occasional bottle of Scotch, the odd expenses-paid tour of the States and a little harmless entertaining.