A Very British Coup (18 page)

They started with oysters washed down with white wine. Duck in orange sauce followed. “What exactly is a ‘work-to-rule'?” asked Chambers. “We don't have them on my side of the Atlantic.”

“A work-to-rule,” said Smith in between mouthfuls of duck and spinach, “means that my members will do exactly what is in their contracts and no more. There will be no overtime worked, all productivity agreements will be cancelled and, if someone is off sick, no one else will do his job.”

“How long before it bites?”

Smith wiped a trickle of orange sauce from his jaw with a napkin. “The lights will start to go out within two or three days. By the end of the first week there will be lay-offs in the factories. Within a fortnight the government will have disaster on its hands.”

Chambers had finished eating and pushed his plate to the middle of the table. “How long will it last?”

“Until we win.”

“Is your executive behind you?” Chambers sat with his forearms resting on the table.

“More or less.” Smith served himself another helping of spinach from a tureen in the middle of the table. “A couple of them cut up rough. Wanted to know why I was pushing a strike now when I advised against when the Tories were in.”

“What did you say?”

“I gave them the usual.” The waiter removed Chambers' finished plate and the vegetable dish. “Five years of restraint
under the Tories. Power workers now are well down the wages' league. Time we caught up.”

This was not by any means the whole story. The truth was that Reg Smith hated Harry Perkins. For years he and other right-wing trade union leaders had worked to keep the Labour Party in the hands of the moderates. Labour leaders had looked to Smith to deliver a majority of the trade union block vote on crucial issues at the party conference. And for years Smith and his friends had delivered.

The reward for loyal service had been an unending flow of quangos and honours doled out by a grateful Labour Party establishment. For tame trade union leaders there were seats on the boards of nationalised industries and places on the vast array of public authorities, committees, commissions and enquiries that were in the gift of a reigning Prime Minister. The ultimate accolade, and one upon which Smith had set his sights, was retirement to the House of Lords.

The election of Perkins had put an end to all that. Under Perkins the Labour Party was pledged to abolish the honours system and whatever public appointments were going, Smith could not expect to benefit.

Reg Smith was a bitter man and the focus of his bitterness was Harry Perkins. He wanted to see Perkins humiliated, and closing down the power stations seemed the best way of going about it.

“The advantage of a work-to-rule,” he said as the coffee arrived, “is that we don't have to cough up any strike pay because our members will still be drawing their wages. If we had an all-out strike, our funds would dry up in two weeks. With a work-to-rule we can hold out indefinitely and inflict maximum damage.”

Reg Smith proved spot-on in his estimate that the work-to-rule would start to bite within three days. The coal-fired power stations were the first to go out of service. They consumed up to twenty thousand tons of coal a day and required constant maintenance. Each boiler and generator was serviced by a team consisting of a leader, an assistant and several attendants. Under the terms of the work-to-rule, if one man did not turn up, the rest of the team stopped work and gradually the huge boilers became clogged with clinker.

The Littlebrook station on the south side of the Thames estuary was the first to be hit. By noon on the third day the manager reported that his number five boiler had accumulated a thousand tonnes of slag. He would have to close it down. Once the boiler cooled and the slag solidified it would take a team of men with pneumatic drills ten days to clear. Every boiler that closed down meant a 500 megawatt generator out of service and the supply of electricity to the national grid reduced accordingly. Within twenty-four hours of the Littlebrook shutdown, coal-fired stations at Pembroke, Didcot, West Burton and Battersea had each closed down a boiler. By the end of the first week the national grid had lost twenty per cent of its capacity. All that week the temperature hardly rose above freezing. It was the coldest January on record. Demand for electricity had never been higher. Smith could hardly have picked a better time.

As the boilers were closed down, the blackouts began. At the Grid Switching Centre in Streatham sweat was glistening on the brow of control engineer Wally Bates as he snapped out orders to men in white overalls who sat in a circle around the edge of the room before a bank of dials and switches. “Give it back to Lambeth, take out Putney and Southwark.” As he spoke he scribbled calculations on a notepad.

One of the four telephones rang. He reached for it without looking up. “Yup,” he barked. It was the West London Hospital. They were in the middle of a major operation and having trouble with the emergency generator. Could he spare them for another hour? He promised to do his best and before he replaced the receiver another phone was ringing. It was the Control Centre at East Grinstead. Could he save another fifty megawatts? They were running low. He groaned. Why didn't they ask St Albans? He already had two boroughs in darkness.

He slammed down the phone, tapped a series of numbers into his calculator and entered the answer on a sheet attached to a clipboard in front of him. Then he shouted, “Tell Horseferry Road to stand by for shutdown in one hour.” He permitted himself the merest trace of a grin. The Horseferry Road sub-station took in the House of Commons and most government ministries.

The phone rang. It was East Grinstead again. No, St Albans were already taking more than their share. He would have to take out another London borough. More tapping on the calculator. More scribbling on his clipboard. “Tell Wandsworth to stand by in one hour,” he barked. Then, drawing a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, he wiped his forehead. “Jesus,” he said to himself, “this is only the first week.”

The Cabinet went into emergency session the morning after the work-to-rule began. Everyone was agreed that the demands of the power workers could not be met. “We'll have every bleeding union in the country at our throats if we give in to this one,” growled Jock Steeples.

The Energy Secretary, Albert Sampson, reported on the likely effects if the dispute dragged on. Sampson was a Yorkshire miner. He owed his place in the Cabinet more to a feeling that the miners ought to be represented than to his ability. Even before the dispute there were those who had questioned whether Sampson was up to the job. “According to my Department,” Sampson read ponderously from the
brief in front of him, “normal demand at this season of the year is around 50,000 megawatts. So far we have lost about 9,000 megawatts generating capacity. Some of that can be absorbed by surplus capacity but next week we can expect to lose double that.”

As Sampson droned on Perkins' attention wandered. He had always regarded Reg Smith as a malicious bastard, but this took the biscuit. In ten years of Tory government Smith had never even threatened industrial action, yet within weeks of a Labour victory he was suddenly posing as a super-militant. Sampson was now listing the emergency measures recommended by his department to conserve electricity. A five-inch limit on bathwater, powers to limit illuminated advertising, shop-window lighting and floodlights at football matches. And if the dispute went into a third week, they would have to put industry on a three-day week.

Outside, the sky was grey. A chill wind whipped up snowflakes which whirled against the windows of the Cabinet Room. Wainwright was calling for a state of emergency. If necessary troops would have to be used to run the power stations.

“Hang on a minute,” said Perkins, “if you think I'm flying up to Balmoral to get the King's signature on a bit of paper allowing a Labour government to use troops against the power workers, you can think again. We'd be a bloody laughing stock if we fell for that one.” There was a general murmur of agreement around the table and Wainwright, seeing that he was outnumbered, did not press the point.

It was agreed that Perkins should ask the TUC General Secretary to try and bring the power workers' union to the negotiating table. The army would be asked to make available generators for hospitals. The Cabinet Office would be asked to draft emergency legislation giving the government temporary powers to restrict the use of electricity for consideration by the next Cabinet meeting. In the meantime the Civil Contingencies Committee would be asked to advise on further measures.

*

Jonathan Alford was the first to arrive at Sir George Fison's home in Cheyne Walk. A Philippine maid in a black dress answered the door. Alford hovered in the hallway while the maid disappeared with his coat and scarf. “Sir's in the drawing room,” she said on her return. Alford followed her up the stairs to the first floor. The wall was lined with prints of eighteenth-century London. There was one of Park Lane in the days when it was a lane and the only traffic were carriages bearing ladies with parasols. Another showed Westminster Abbey viewed from a field in Millbank at about the spot which is now the headquarters of Imperial Chemical Industries.

The maid pushed open the ornate double doors that led from the first-floor landing and then stood aside to let Alford pass. The drawing room, which extended from front to back of the house, was illuminated by table lamps, one on the marble mantelpiece and two on low coffee tables in the left-hand corner. Fison, brandy glass in hand, was standing alone by the front window, apparently gazing at the traffic on the Embankment. He turned as Alford entered and lumbered towards him, hand outstretched.

“You'd be the chap from the BBC,” said Fison in his poor imitation of an upper-class accent. Alford nodded. The maid lingered. “Get Mr Alford a drink,” snapped Fison in the harsher tone he reserved for addressing servants.

“A whisky and ginger, please,” said Alford relinquishing Fison's weak handshake.

“Glad you could come. Peregrine Craddock told me you could be relied upon. Just as well. Reliable chaps are thin on the ground at the Beeb, these days.” Alford's chest swelled. He was flattered to think that he should be known to the chief of DI5. The little Philippine maid presented his whisky and withdrew in silence. As they drifted towards the window, Fison rumbled on about left-wing extremists who seemed to be running the BBC these days. Alford contributed only the occasional nod.

Downstairs the doorbell rang again. Fison was still denouncing extremists in the BBC when the maid reappeared to announce the editor of
The Times
. In the ten minutes that
followed Alford found himself being introduced to the owners or editors of just about every newspaper in Fleet Street. There was also the chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and the editor of Independent Television News. My goodness, thought Alford, this is for real.

Like his father before him Alford's view of the world was fashioned by Winchester, Oxford and in the Guards. It was at Oxford that he had first become aware of the extremist menace. He saw how Communists and Trotskyites wormed their way into the Oxford Union. How they used the union debating society as a platform for promoting their extremist views and how easily ordinary students were misled by smooth-talking agitators. It was at Oxford that he first resolved to do whatever he could to resist the rising tide of extremism. Alford's opportunity came when his tutor offered to put him in touch with “someone in the right line of business”.

The result was an interview with a man from London who gave his name as Mr Spencer and who left a telephone number where he could be contacted at any time. The number connected with the switchboard at the Department of Trade, but led in fact to an office in the West End. Alford used to ring the number about once a month with snippets on who was organising meetings on Ireland and demonstrations against the military régime in Chile. He also reported on Iranian students organising opposition to the Shah.

Alford had never lost touch with the secret world. Soon after obtaining his commission in the Guards he was seconded to Military Intelligence. He did a spell in Ireland, mainly desk work evaluating reports from agents in the field. The Ireland tour ended abruptly when two of his agents were assassinated by the IRA.

There followed a year in Hereford teaching political theory to SAS recruits until one May morning in the early Eighties he was summoned to Curzon Street and asked how he felt about leaving the army for a career in Civvy Street. “As what?” he had asked. “Television,” they said. “Job coming up at the Beeb. Nothing very taxing. Just want you to keep the airwaves
clean for us.” There followed a crash course in journalism at a polytechnic in Harlow and six months in the Ministry of Defence Information Department until the BBC advertised for a Defence Correspondent. Alford was told to apply and was boarded for an interview. “A formality,” said Curzon Street. Sure enough, Alford was appointed. Now, still only in his late thirties, he was Editor News and Current Affairs, and responsible for every syllable the BBC addressed to its subjects on the state of the nation and much else besides.

“Gentlemen, if I could have your attention?” Fison was tapping a wine glass with the blunt side of his fish knife. They were seated around a polished oblong table which fitted together in three sections. Including Fison, there were a dozen of them. The maid had withdrawn, leaving them alone with the port and the cheeseboard. “You all know why I invited you here,” said Fison. “We've got to decide what we're going to do about this damn government.”

The cheeseboard reached Fison and he lopped off a generous portion of Stilton. “In the coming months,” he continued, “things are going to get pretty rough. Perkins has already made it clear that he intends to evict the American bases, and that will destroy the Atlantic alliance and play straight into the hands of the Russians.”