- 9 -

SHOT 87
TAKE 1

A

.... and I think the idea that help from rich countries to poor countries. Well we're all wrong and out of date and the truth was discovered by a President Idi Amin who one day declared England, Britain as a poor country ... (COMMENT)

L

That leads up to my question. I think I just had a ticket for lunch but it didn't include making speeches, but Ken I would like to know why we segregate ourselves as a people, as a preferred people. How you explain the difficulties in, we have all through our country where we have undemocratic procedure. Apaliachia for instance, how do you explain Apaliachia. Are we a preferred nation? How in the hell do we presume to tell other nations to run themselves when we've made a rather sorry promotion of our own, haven't we? Why don't you go to the bad lands in North Dakota and see what we've done to the Indians.

JKG

Well, I'm not actually giving ammunition to 'I' here, because he's more than competent to make this case without your help ...

L

Yeh, but I'm not ... (INAUDIBLE) ...
Presbyterian disposition. I like to help.

JKG

Look don't address this question to me. I think the question was really meant for 'H'.

H

Well I'll be happy to answer it. We'll just have to have the bad habits of all, which pertain to all powers to thinking that as one of the perquisites of power is knowing better than other countries do, the people of other countries do, how they run their countries. I don't think it's a peculiar consequence of the depravity of Americans.

L

Don't you get a little bit fed up with the smug attitude that we're God's chosen people?

- 9 -

- 10 -

H
Yes, but my point was that this isn't a peculiarly American, uniquely American attitude. It's an attitude that the British were accused of having in their day, the French and the Spanish before, an attitude you'll find in the Soviet Union today. Just ask people in Eastern Europe about that. I, we have a foreign practice of national masochism by which we think the sins of great power are exclusively our own, and I think this is the consequence of super powership, not something which is derival from some peculiar depravity in the American culture.

JKG
And I express fear though that you were giving support to 'I'. I thought as a former banker you were supporting, you were attacking capitalism. That was ... I apologise.

I
But I will say that in American and ... (COMMENT) ... your Calvinist past and it was very understandable in the past when the pilgrims have come here, they had to have an idea which could pull them through all the difficulties in the new continent that they were chosen people.

J
May I comment ...

I
New paradise ...

J
I doubt whether the American impact on non-Americans' adverse (?) infallibility is any. I doubt very much whether the impact of the United Stateson lesser breeds in terms of suggesting their infallibility is any less in that, in this regard than that of the Soviet Union and I would say that one great difference between these two, any, all large countries had to see themselves as chosen people but I think that the corrective in the American tradition is a considerable freedom to condemn the conception of America as a chosen nation and to condemn the notion of the infallibility of the American government and I would feel much better about

- 10 -

- 11 -

the Soviet Union had, were there equal
freedom of that sort, for the freedom of
self-condemnation.

I
Freedom is of course always in the last
argument ....

(GENERAL CHAT)

J It's not an irrelevant argument ....

(GENERAL CHAT)

I
I would say that in general I think it was
a correct point that you know, from my point
of view it is a very happy development in
last years that the Americans have become
more aware that they have their own problems.

J We look forward to a corresponding development of the Soviet Union ....

I
The eternal truce ... we know very good that
we don't have all answers to all questions
but I think it was very well pronounced,
these are years of manifest destiny and
to all of this, this was for a long time
part of the ....

J
You think that Marx, that Soviet Marxism has
no concept of manifest destiny?

I
No it is different, it is not national, it
is a belief that the other peoples will come
to this ideas themselves, and here it is
an idea to carry on this eternal truce that
is needed by force of ... in other countries
so I see a definite distinction here.

L
I wonder if I could paraphrase a rather
well known phrase, 'Whom the Gods first
made mad' - I would say whom the Gods first

- 11 -

- 12 -

made smug and I think, by God, that is just
exactly where we are and you're our close
second.

I Well I think your example helped us to avoid
this destiny.

AM I wonder if we could get back to, away from
ideological argument and back to the provision
of aid for the developing world.

J We want to go onto the next topic. We've
already been on this for over an hour. You
want to break up that time some more topics.

AM Yes, well, I think this one is still to be
explored a little ... May I suggest ...

- 12 -

ENDS

"THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY"

ROLL VA.10

SHOT 88
TAKE 1

D

Yes, 'I' mentioned smugness and I think the thing that was missing in this discussion previously has the individual fact is that in the underdeveloped country, or whatever we call the countries that are not industrialised completely, and the industrialised countries the individual tends to count for less and less and we ought to take some account of how people, ordinary people, can express their point of view. The bigger the organisation, multinational companies is an example, the bigger the government administration, the bigger the local authority and the tendency is always to create bigger units and the bigger the trade union, incidentally, the less the individual seems to have an opportunity to express him or herself and without question it seems to me that anyone looking at the world around us and wants to see change, must find ways and means of pressing for greater opportunities for people whether it's in industry or in society to have a say in decision making, influence in decision making. In a way this is what trade unions are about or what they should be about, but in so many countries and in so many trade unions the leadership tends to dominate and the member-ship have little effective say. But nevertheless the opportunities there, the opportunity can be developed. It can be enriched and one would like to feel that in industry the trade unions would become much more democratic than in some countries they are but in society there's a lack of this opportunity. Some form of continuous association, of consumers for example, I remember the Conservative Party, Ted, in before you were the Prime Minister, created the housewives' league for political purposes but the idea was right. I think its purpose was absolutely obnoxious because it was designed to be used politically but the idea of organised representation of people is so very important if we're going to get change. To ignore it, to leave it just to a few people at the top I think is backward looking and represents a little or no advance on almost the fascist conception and we've got to get away from that. I'd like to have Shirley's view particularly on the consumer angle. How far

- 1 -

- 2 -

you can get consumer representation and I'd
like to come back to the trade union position
from the point of view of what we're calling
industrial democracy, which really means a very
decided influence on the part of working men
and women and on management thinking and
management policy making. Pardon?

L With unions, with trade unions, can you have industrial democracy?

D You can help towards industrial democracy with democratic trade unions. We mustn't be too smug about it.

AM 'C'?

C Well, a couple of things about that really.
I think that, and I agree very much with Jack
about the question of the individual being
involved in participating in society. I think
the problem is that we've got to get from the
situation where the individual sees his role as
being one of protesting to the State. In
other words, saying to the State, this is what
you should do as distinct from sharing in the
responsibility of decisions and that as I under-
stand is what industrial democracy is about.
So that its part of this is the devolution
of decision making power from the State itself
down the line as far as it possibly can go in
respect of individual work places, in respect
of local community neighbourhoods, in terms of
their environment and their choices on that
matter. In terms of things like school
involving parents, so that only half the battle
is that the individual should be better
represented in making his protest. The much
more difficult half of the battle is involving
the individual in the sharing of responsibility
and there I think there is two problems I see,
one is that now all adult individuals and quite
a lot of young individuals want to share in
that process. There are no longer whole
sections which are cut out because of their
colour or because of their sex or because of their
occupation as they used to be. There is no

- 2 -

- 3 -

longer a silent part of society, or at least
not silent because of its particular category.
On the other hand, and I think Jack won't
disagree with me here, the danger is that when
people are faced with the business of taking
responsibility, a great many of them leave it
to the most articulate element, so that if you
get a parent-teacher association, it's a few
parents that dominate it. If you get an
industrial democracy situation very often it's
a handful of very active trade unionists or active
management that dominates it. If you get a
handful of consumers, and this is very true
about consumers, it'll be the more articulate
middle class consumers, that will tend to
dominate the organisation and I suppose part of
this is to get people familiar with it at a very
early age and this is why in spite of all the
problems and perhaps we'll come to 'E' on this
one, all the problems of things like student
participation, I think is an essential running
up to the process of taking part in responsibility.
It's a very important stage not to leave out.
So I go with Jack on participation, but I think
the much more difficult stage is the stage of
shared responsibility.

E

Can I add another difficulty before we go on on
participation. We've been talking about under-
developed countries or developing countries
before and some of the world problems. I think
we should be quite clear about in our minds
that we cannot solve all problems by participation
and indeed there's a great danger that people
who have a chance to participate delude
themselves about the influence they have. We
have problems of an international monetary system,
and we won't solve them by participation, and
yet they have to be solved. We have problems
of the control of nuclear developments, we won't
solve them by participation and yet they have to
be solved. We have problems with developments
in many parts of the world and we won't solve
them by participating by industrial democracy
or any other kind of participation ....

D

We're not saying that those question ....

- 3 -

E Yes but I think it's quite important ....

D .... should be separated from the people. The people's future and welfare is affected by the system ....

E I agree with you and yet I cannot think of a sys-
tem which by immediate participation of all citi-
zens helps us to solve these problems, and that
I think is quite a dilemma, quite a dilemma
in which we are in, and I think that therefore
we have to think of other checks and balances for
some of the great international issues, that is
don't let us use participation as an alibi for
those who continue to take the great decisions
without having to ask anybody. That's the point
I was really trying to make. On the other hand,
I believe that one of the really important
political and social tendencies in our societies
and the advanced societies must be to get away
from the over-bureaucratised intermediate areas
and get back to the citizen in all institutions
including the political community, indeed, and
that must start in educational institutions and
in the work place and wherever people are.

B If you take the big issues that Jack's been mentioning, what has gone wrong with the proper means of dealing with those which are the political institutions, and these are political questions. The nuclear defence is a political question. The question of aid to the developing world and other points you mentioned, these are political questions and we haven't political institutions to deal with them, in our country.

Nationally.

B Yes, national institutions, the parliamentary institution. And if you take it down locally, then we have constituencies and within that you have wards and so on. Now these are all the institutions. Well then, what has gone wrong with all of this - and I think one of the things that has gone wrong is that the citizen feels that on the other things which affect him,

- 4 -

- 5 -

B

parliamentary institution no longer really represent his views. And I think there's also a feeling that some of the things which quite rightly lie in Jack's field of worker participation and so on, ought also to be dealing with political issues. Now, I think this is a great mistake because once you get into the field if you're having an incomes policy, you've also got a say in what goes on in nuclear development and so on, then you're in very dangerous ground altogether and there really must be a clear dividing line between what is the sphere, the parliamentary institution, democratic institution which settles it through the accepted machinery, and what are the things which you deal with in other ways because it's a question of training or consultation in industry and so on and so forth. But the parliamentary institutions have got to maintain the confidence of the ordinary elector but what they're doing is roughly in tune with him. Now in our country and it may be the same elsewhere, we've gone and are still in fact going through a difficult period because on certain issues which are political issues but which are also moral issues, parliament has taken a different line from that of the majority of the citizens. And if you take for example, capital punishment, now here parliament has repeatedly stood for the abolition of capital punishment. If you had a referendum in Britain at any time over the last twenty years, there's been an overwhelming majority for capital punishment. That is still the case today, and so you have this feeling amongst the citizens. The same applies to immigration, they feel that parliament has been following a policy on immigration which alright they're prepared to describe as liberal and understanding and so on, but doesn't represent what the majority of people want which is to keep out all immigrants. So you then have a situation in which this great divide appears to exist between the parliamentary representatives and the citizens and this then raises doubt about the way parliament deals with other issues and that's what leads to the whole question of parliamentary institutions coming into disrepute and being able to deal with the great political issues which arise.

- 5 -

- 6 -

D

You've said what's gone wrong. Now I would have thought that in Britain there is a feeling that the individual member of parliament counts for less than he or she used to do, and somehow or other the system of government is moved upwards rather than outwards. That's one aspect, and no-one would deny the need for parliament to have its proper place and government to have its proper place on the sort of issues we're talking about. I was much more thinking in terms of the local issues, the state of the roads, the schools, these things, transport, in which there is a need for local councillors and members of parliament to be closely in touch with ordinary people, whereas of course our local authorities have become bigger, more bureaucratic. The average citizen feels just remote much more remote than they used to do in many ways and then of course you can get that in industry too, and the bigger the company, the more remote top management and in some cases there are more top union, remote top union leaderships can become from ordinary people. We've got to find a way of answering that one in order that people can feel that they really count, because what's the world for, you know, in terms, unless it means that people are going to have an effective say in things.

E

Could it not be, Ted, that Parliament is to some extent operating in the wrong political state? That is, that some decisions could be taken in the decentralised way, locally, and other decisions are in fact taken beyond national parliaments ....

SHOT 89
TAKE 1

(INAUDIBLE)

E

... and parliament is sort of groping between and it isn't really relevant to the extent to which it was.

B

I think the whole question of where you draw the line now is going to become for us a critical one because of the argument about devolution

- 6 -

- 7 -

which we're now going to have for a year and
that affects Scotland and Wales and to a certain
extent Northern Ireland wants to get that
situation sorted out. But you can have on
Jack's point, you can have a much more specific
issue. Let us take London - let us take the
road system in London. Nobody will deny that
London needs a proper road system - alright but
as soon as you come to my borough and its
constituency, they say a main road through here,
not on your life - we'll organise the protestors,
meetings in the schools, going to affect 342
houses and so on and so forth and each borough
down the road does that. If everybody agrees
that overall there ought to be a major road
system, now how do you reconcile that conflict
of overall interest and individual interest
even on a limited area like London ....

JKG

I want to interrupt here. I want to remark
on the unnatural silence that the first man
whose written most extensively on this
subject and in the somewhat alarming terms
on the imperial presidency. What's your
reaction, Arthur, about these ....

J
I've had these problems of being well-managed by
our brethren from across the sea. I suppose
the question we're concerned with is the fate
of the individual in a world of large
organisations and I think it would be a mistake
to identify those organisations with a particular
economic system or whatever. I mean this large
organisation as our host has so often pointed
out is the medium large organisations, is the
medium through which the modern industrial
system expresses itself and whatever the systems
of ideology or ownership you have the problem
of the large organisation and the power of the
large organisation and the self perpetuating
bad habits of the large organisation and the
mystique of the large organisation. And this
has to be dealt with in one way or another, I
couldn't be more sympathetic with 'C's ideas of
decentralisation, decision sharing, and so on
and they ought to be pursued but I was sceptical,
I must confess, as to the extent to which they're
going to solve any of these problems. I mean
you have to look at the structural features of

- 7 -

- 8 -

organisations. Michelle said a long time ago organisations means oligarchy and in the end you're bound to have any organisations whatever the nature of the ideological or philosophical background is going to be oligarchical in character and the problem therefore and I don't think you can transform, I think this is inherent in the structure, nature of an organisation. The problem is to find in 'E's phrase, checks and balances, and the checks and balances to some degree can be internal in the organisation right through the trade unions and so on and I think I see nothing wrong with opposition or protest. I think these are the best devices for forcing some kind of sensitive accountability on the people who run large organisations but most important it seems to me, external to the organisation. Now this isn't a new question, no-one thought about it more profoundly than Tokeville a century and a half ago in democracy in America where he was concerned precisely with the fate of the individual in a mass society and in effect he came up with two points and they seem to me still applicable today and the first is the absolute importance of political freedom. 'I' is rather derisive about the question of political freedom but I do think that it has a perfectly clear meaning that is the right to challenge and oppose the state and the existence of parties or other organisations through which to do it and of a press through which such critique can be sustained - and I believe that he's absolutely right, the individual's going to be dead in the world of the great organisations unless there's some assurance of political freedom. Now political freedom is qualified in countries which have it allegedly for .... is limited as our critics and .... and we ourselves point out, there's still the rights of political opposition however pallid they may be, are better than having no rights of political opposition at all and I think therefore any serious consideration of the fate of an individual in the world of a large organisation must understand that the individual's dead without a system which is devoted however, which has amongst its objectives and alleged rights the rights of political opposition.

JKG Would you include the position of the individual who has no alternative except to work for a large organisation?

- 9 -

J Should he have political freedom?

JKG No. No, would you describe that as an absence of freedom?

J I would describe that as an absence of freedom, yes. And I think that's another point which Tokeville made was the importance of voluntary organisation. That is the importance of the right of the individual that to form his own organisations and to, these organisations do not have to be licensed by the state .... and so on and I think that too is of vital importance. The spontaneous formation by individuals of groups to pursue their own concerns or assert their own concerns and I think those are of great importance and I think Ken's point the existence of enough diversity in the economy so that their alternatives for livelihood outside the great organisations is of vital importance and I would throw some of these considerations into your computer.

B No, I was only going to say that going from Jack's point to your point. You see what you're emphasising which I agree with profoundly is in a way a negative sort of freedom, which I think is basic. But if you then come on to Roosevelt, what he produced were freedoms of a different kind which was really linking up with Jack's things that in life you also not only ought to be free, not to have to go to a large company, but you should also be free to have a job there when you want one. Now, this is a different sort of freedom isn't it? In a way it's a constructive freedom which is much more difficult to do. You can ensure by laws in a parliamentary democracy that people aren't made to do things but the real problem today is to go further than that and meet their aspirations, and by saying yes, your freedom is also going to enable you to have the constructive things in life and to remove the uncertainty from yourself and your family. If we're talking about the 'Age of Uncertainty' then it seems to me the uncertainty with which we're really dealing is the uncertainty of the ordinary man in the street and his wife and his family and

- 9 -

what's his future going to be, and what his
children, how they're going to be educated,
and what's their job going to be after that,
and where are they going to live, and who's
going to look after their health and if they're
ill are they going to pay a fabulous bill or
do they find a means either by voluntary contri-
bution or through the state and which is met.
These are all the things which really concern
the man in the street and his wife and his
children.

J

I entirely accept. Matthew Arnold said freedom
is a horse but a horse is to ride somewhere and
the whole point I was just making really about
the minimum conditions, it seems to me, but
beyond that the individual has to be able to
use these mechanisms obviously to get not only
Roosevelt's four freedoms; there are two free-
doms from and two freedoms for and it's
obviously what you can do with freedom and
whether there's no freedom if you can't find
a job or can't find decent housing or decent
educational opportunities and so on. OK - your
department.

G

Well, there are two separate points actually.
The whole point about the leadership in the
nuclear area bothers me because it certainly is
one of the most primary and desperate concerns
to people all over the world and to little people
nothing is going to have a greater impact on
all our lives and yet there is no way that
probably any of us even as sophisticated as those
sitting around here can materially affect the
nuclear policies that are now being made for
sheer lack of sophisticated understanding of
some of the really technical details. And
that means that you have to influence in some
democratic way or process which really does
have to be very autocratically decided and there
has to be some sort of leadership which you
trust, doesn't there? In these areas ...
I would say another thing, that in the 60s here
I think that there was an enormous movement,
people really felt that they'd been misled.
That their government was too big and that their
organisations were too big and that they as
individuals couldn't affect them and ....

ENDS

TAP DOLL NO. V11A
Shot/No. 90
Take No. 1.

THE A UNCERTAINTY

G The third point I would like to make is the difficulty when you have a large organisation of making it possible from the point of view of top management, for people inside the organisation, not only to have an effect, but to feel they have an effect, to feel that they do have some control of their own fates and to feel that they can participate in top management decisions if they have some input they want to be heard on. We've grown, the Washington Post building has grown since I've been there thirteen years, from about 1,300 to 2,800 and I have, I now cope with some very real difficulties because people feel that we are cold, we are impersonal that they're not loved, that people don't want to listen, that management doesn't care, I get that all the time. All I'm saying is that when you do care and you do want to do it right, it's still very hard to do, you have to replace the value of a small institution in which individuals all know each other and therefore can be heard with some very effective machinery through which they can make themselves heard, such as say an open door policy to the top executives.

D Well of course, we have the answer to that in Britain in industry, and that's the shop steward system, a continuous representation system, elected representatives. I think you need to develop that and enrich it. At the same time you've got to find some equivalent in society so that But, Mr. D', some of, as you yourself said, trade unions tend to become very undemocratic.

D Yes, but the way you make sure that they're democratic is to make sure that there is a representative selected at the

/cont

TAPE ROLL NO. V11A
Shot No. 90
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D (cont) bottom of the Union machinery.

G But like every organisation people get lazy, and they don't go out and vote, and they don't participate and then, like every bureaucracy, the bureaucracy takes over and it's more undemocratic than any bureaucracy you can encounter when it gets rigid, and it's the first to prevent management from trying to reach people who work for them.

J Kay, have you come close to any other solution - for getting at this bigness?

G Yes, we thought -

J Besides the open door business.

G No, we've thought about a lot, but -

JKG For example?

G Well, there are meetings you can organise with categories of people, like you can have who have the same interests, you can choose one secretary or one file clerk or one reporter and advertising salesman at a different level, and you can have meetings with them and tell them what management is thinking and ask them what they are thinking. I mean there are various institutional ways and then you've changed that - you've changed that membership and that's a way some companies have used, it's more often used in non-union companies. Unfortunately non-union companies are better at doing it than people with unions who are apt to abdicate to union leadership.

TAPE ROLL NO. VII A
Shot No. 90
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D

That should be corrected, shouldn't it, I mean surely the trade union first of all should start at the bottom with an effective system of representation and I would have thought if you had that in your company, to some extent the answer to your problem would be found, because the existence of the trade union in the background is to ensure independence, but a trade union shouldn't stand in the way of direct and effective representation of employees in the management. That's what a trade union really should be about.

B

One of the big industrial firms in Britain, I am told, has come to the conclusion, having studied all of this, they can't hope to have good industrial relations with a unit which is larger than a thousand.

D

You mean individual factory.

B

Individual factory, and they can't hope to have good industrial relations if that one, if its manpower intensive is along-side one which is capital intensive, because the relationships between the two are too difficult. And they are of course, in a jam because they've got one plant which is fourteen thousand and another plant which is sixteen thousand, and they can't break those up, but from the point of view of future policy they've come to the conclusion that they've really got to have the thing down to that sort of number. I came across a rather interesting case in the newspaper—in my own county a short time ago, because there we have a newspaper, I don't know how many they employ, I should think probably about eight hundred or a thousand, but they've got a new plant which I opened five years ago and I was asked to go back and celebrate.

/cont

TAPE ROLL VII A
Shot No. 90
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

B (cont)

And they'd got a very large area, oblong, on one floor
and they deliberately built it like this, the whole thing
was completely mechanised, the editors were there, it was
open, the sub editors open, reporters came in open, a thing
was put on machines all open entirely on one floor, and I
went to the office of the chap who was directing it to have
some coffee after lunch, and then I said to him where's the
loo? And he said, Oh God, I didn't think you would ask for
that. So I said, well where is it, in your office, and he
said no, I haven't got one here, I'll show you where it is.
So we came out of the door, looked in the far corner of this
place and he said it's right down there. So I said really,
haven't got anything up here at all, and he said no and I'll
tell you why I put it there - in the middle of every
morning I'm going to have to walk from my office right the
way down this side and round the bottom and I will talk to
everybody on the way, and on the way back I shall come down
the other side and back to my office and I shall talk to
everybody on the way, and in the middle of every afternoon,
I shall have to do the same thing, and so twice a day I
cover the whole of the people working on this newspaper
and anybody can come up to me and ask whatever they like
and I stop wherever I like and talk to them.

J Is it a happy shop?

B Very.

D It's a good loo.

TAPE ROLL NO. VIIA
Shot No. 90
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

G

Well I think that is one of the devices, the simplest,
of just walking through the building and people are
pretty quick to jump at you if they feel they can and they
want to, they do, but it does have its limitations.
You see, in a big organisation that really does have its
limitations, Ted, it can only go so far.

(GENERAL LAUGHING)

A.M.

May I ask Mr. 'I' for a last comment on this. Do you
feel there is a problem of individual identity in Soviet
Russia?

I

Well you know - we share this value and actually the
final goal of Communism is, you must know as a good student
of Marx - development man-folded development of
personality, and this is regarded as the final goal. Well,
it was very pleasant to hear such a lot of sound criticism
of this side, and not on Soviet Union but on United States
and Great Britain and I share it and I could add some things
to it as well. But we have our concerns here and a lot of
things are being done here. We are not completely
satisfied, and I think you speak about the right to oppose,
well we could rephrase it, right of criticism which is
cherished in our country, I think it is very important,
we consider it to be very important, but at the same time I
don't think it is enough, and the main problem is, and there
is no simple answer to this problem, how to make people
really participate in decisions beginning from the grass
roots.

/cont

TAPE ROGNO. V11A
Shot No. 90
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

I (cont)

We do a lot of work now in the shops and collective farms
everywhere introduce people to decision making, to really
make them more active, to awaken them to the need to make
it their need, internal need to participate, to understand
it as their job. Well we have some success in some fields,
we have a lot of work to do.

L

May I be rude enough to ask you to speak louder.

I

Yes, excuse me, but in general I think this is one of the
serious problems which we face now -
the countries, it has its social connotations and they are
different in different countries, but the fact that big
factories, big organisations exist, how to - ensure
broader participation of people in decision making is really
a serious process. Of course I have some grave doubts on
how it will be done in the United States, how, for
instance, the steel worker can influence the major decisions
of U.S.Steel or even editorial policy of Washington Post,
but I see - certain search for it here in this
country and I think - very sound development.

J

How does the steel worker in the Soviet Union influence
the policy in the steel company?

I

Well, he begins, you know, with discussion of the plan,
which is made in special meetings, and there is a
lot of criticism and proposals from the workers coming to
the managers, and then the plan has to be approved by them,
and collective farms if you take it, it's a vote, everything
has to be voted, they can have strict limits for decision
making there, elected president, chairman and members of
the board of the farm, so we do it.

/cont

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

I (cont)

We are not always satisfied with it but its being done
and developed.

J

Professor Galbraith will remember our farm policy for a
long time was all based on, and perhaps in some respects,
still is, isn't it, on voting of a sort.

JKG

Yes, although I would suppose that in the United States
as possibly also in the Soviet Union, there might be
certain detours and deviations as between the farm at the
bottom and the decision at the top. I don't think we should
be surprised at that. I want to go back, however, to just
this one final point before Adrian ends this.

I have the feeling that there was a slightly disguised
position here which might be exposed. I have the feeling
that M . . . '9' . . . , was talking about one
kind of union and . . . 'D' was talking about another kind
of union.

G That could well be.

D Well, I don't know enough about the American scene to
pronounce about that other than

I Has the strike ended at your newspaper?

G It has as far as we're concerned. (LAUGH) The union is out
of the building.

D But, the unions surely function -

G Well, they've been replaced.

D The union functions at the place of work, you've got
representatives selected by either work people in the
offices and in the print shops, surely.

G We have eleven unions.

D I thought that was a disease peculiar to Britain.

(GENERAL LAUGHTER)

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

G We have one less than we had - due to
D You disciplined that, did you?

G No, the pressmen struck us and destroyed our presses and struck the building. We went on publishing without them and when they would not negotiate after two and a half months, we gave them notice that if they didn't start to negotiate we would replace them, and then we did replace them, and now we are publishing very well with pressmen whom we've just trained from young kids out of high school.

B Could I just ask one question from the British American point of view because when I was over here nine months ago, it was just after an article had appeared in Time, I'm sorry it was the sort of rival concern, which was entitled 'Them and Us', it was about a British firm called Ruberry Owen, and it wasn't in any way malicious and I'm sure it wasn't meant to be, but what it described was a situation in a medium sized British firm, which is described how the chairman and managing director, which was originally a family business, lived in his very nice Tudor house and his children were taken to prep school in the mornings in his car and how he had his recreation at weekends and so on. And it then described what happened with the senior shop steward in the factory and how he lived in a small local authority house with no garden, and his two children went to the Victorian Primary School and he went off to the pub and so on. Now everywhere I went in the States, whether it was in Wall Street, I was a visiting fellow at Yale at the time and the students there talked to me about it, on the West coast they talked to me about

/cont

TAPE RUN NO. V11A
Shot No. 90
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

B (cont)

it and everybody said but how can you run a country if
you have this situation of them and us. Now is it true
to say that in the United States, you don't have a situation
of them and us. I mean, was this what made people talk to
me about the article. Why did the article strike them so
forcibly? And secondly, if it is true that there isn't that
same feeling then, what is the reason for that? Is it that
basically you have got agreement in the United States about
the nature of the economy, that it is a private enterprise
economy, and therefore you accept that management is living
in a different way from people who are working on the shop
floor, or is there not all that difference or is it a
difference of attitude? We are always told, well the
American chap who sees the manager arrive in a large car,
says my job is to make sure I get a large car in due course.

J

I think the difference is social mobility. There is them and
us in the United States, but it's much easier for them to
become us or whatever. I mean in other words, matters of
birth accent, and all that kind of thing are far less
decisive or at least perceived as far less decisive, and
therefore peanut farmers become presidents.

B

Well, not yet.

(ALL TALK TOGETHER)

J'

JKG

What ... should say, and after I've
talked to him after the meeting I'm sure I'll be able to
persuade him henceforth to say, we have a hell of a lot
better mythology than you, the ancient mythology of Britain
is that of a class structure, and the equally and much more
powerful mythology of the United States is of equality,
mobility, and on the whole -

/cont

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

JKG (cont)
And on the whole - the belief in both countries is strong, but if anything, our capacity for illusion is greater than yours.

E
You haven't read your Marx very well, Ken, if you believe that mythology can be sustained for any length of time without a basis in fact.

(GENERAL LAUGHTER)

JKG
It's astonishing how well we do though, it's astonishing.

G
Ken, that is a very good debator's point, but as you well know it really isn't true. There is mobility in this country, not all that we wish there were, but there really is mobility and there is something a little bit more in connection with what Ted was saying -

In between say union negotiations.

JKG
Oh yea, you and I were both up from the ranks, but name some others.

G
Ken, that's very funny, but let me continue my point.

There really is, I think, not in every place obviously, but in a great many institutions where there is a university or an industrial institution, there is some sharing of identity with the institution that, if its interests are best achieved and if you have a part in achieving it, it will help you, and therefore you have a vested interest in its welfare. I really think that's true in most of this country, not all, but most.

D
I don't think we should get into advertising each other's country.

G
No, I'm not saying, but Ted asked me.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D The bigger the country, the bigger the mythology I should imagine.

G Well, there's a little mythology everywhere and I certainly wouldn't deny that.

D The important thing about this discussion is that, it seems to me we all recognise that there is a problem of ensuring that the ordinary factory hand, whether its a man or a woman, and the person in the street should have a say, and we should encourage this participation. It's how you do it, how to have some form of continuous association either in the streets or in the factories, that we need to look at and develop, and I think in the factories it becomes very much a question of the trade union operation. This is what trade unionism is about, it's not just about concluding a contract on wages and working conditions, it is about representing people and seeking to secure the freedoms that mentioned, the freedom from unemployment, the freedom from insecurity and so on. These are vital factors which people want to do something about and they should be encouraged to do something about them.

........

T Roll NO. V12A
Shot No 91
Take No. 1.

ACCOUNTANCERTAINTY

JKG

I not only remember the discussion, but I remember one
instruction as to who was to start it, so as soon as he's
had a chance to look at the menu, I'm going to ask
'D' to pick up the discussion of this afternoon, start
the conversation, not on the negative form which we all
rejoiced this afternoon as to how difficult the problem
of the individual is in a world of great organisation,
but in the affirmative sense of what can we do about it
and, however ... one minute while everybody assures
himself that he is going to have something to eat.

(General chat)

TAPE ROLL NO. V12A
Shot No. 94
Take No. 1.

AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

JKG
Since I seem to be sitting at the centre of the table,
I hope that there's no biblical significance.

C Not much

JKG
I might suggest general conversation and resume the discussion of this afternoon, we were talking about how the individual asserts himself, or herself, in the increasingly organised society, which in turn is related to the increasingly difficult and organised tasks that now must be performed. Perhaps I might suggest the conversation now takes a somewhat more affirmative turn. Before, we discussed all the problems of the individual in relation to the highly organised society, now I think I might ask Mr. [name] who deals with this from one day to the next, how affirmatively the average trade union member can make his feelings felt through the trade union and through to the instruments of government, through to the Parliament. How can this problem be solved, or is there a solution?

D
I think we are living in a time of very considerable change in this respect, people are, working people are more educated, they even manage to watch television for one thing and see Kenneth Galbraith and take an interest in what he has to say. (BOTH TALK TOGETHER)

There is a new trend in the sense that people question authority, they question authority in trade unions, they question authority of management, they question the authority of Governments. It's how you can apply that constructively.

Cont.

AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D (cont)

Now in industrial terms, terms of trade unions, I think it's very important to provide within a trade union the maximum degree of participation of the membership and frankly in the place of work, because that's where people are together. I think that eventually trade union contracts or agreements will provide for meetings to take place during working hours. I think it's essential for trade union business to be done as part of the normal industrial process in which people express their say about the conditions of working, about the opportunities for leisure activities associated with the plant, the sports club and the rest, and at the same time express a view about maybe how things might be done better in terms of production.

You see, we've learned not all the brains lie with the top, it's a collective experience that's necessary, and even in terms of products, take a motor car, the person who participates in the manufacture of a motor car, these days often will drive that motor car. He is very proud of this product he is part of, but he will have views to express about the performance and maybe the construction of the car that ought to flow up to management. I mean, this is what we mean now by industrial democracy, to involve this expertise of the shop floor up to the level of management. This is not a criticism of management but it does mean if you apply it to the end degree that it puts management to a test, they've got to prove themselves to quite expert practical people, the employees have the undertaking and providing this participation is through the trade union system of the plant, what we call in Britain cont.

AGE OF UNCERTAINTY.

D (cont)

the shop steward system, so that you don't have a division
between non-trade unionists and trade unionists, you're
doing it through the accepted pattern of representation,
we in Britain the trade unionists in Britain, for the most
part, not everyone, feel that it will add to the enrichment
of the life of the worker, he'll feel a part of, much more
a part of management decision making, and in the process
it can add to efficiency. Now how far you can apply that
to society, I don't know. In various ways, the Yugoslavs
are trying this approach, the Germans have got the
supervisory board which has got certain characteristics
which are good and bad but nevertheless they do involve
workers having an opportunity of expressing a view on
management policy, and I'm quite certain that this thing
must be taken step by step.

Do you see the wildcat strike as a failure of the unions
or a failure of management?

JKG

D

What do you call the wildcat strike? I don't like the
word wildcat because you are dealing with people, and
people are by and large not wild men, they re-act to
circumstances. Usually it's a wildcat, an unofficial strike,
a lightening dispute arises from some provocation on the
part of management, not always. I think there is a need for
both of us to work very hard to avoid the circumstance
and this is why in Britain, for example, we have now placed
very great emphasis, and indeed I've had talks with Ted
Heath many times about this, on the need for extended
conciliation, voluntary arbitration, mediation. I know
you use these instruments in the States, in America,

cont...

TAKE ROLL NO. V12A
Shot No. 94
Take No. 1.

AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D(cont)

but over in Britain we are trying to develop this pattern
very extensively as a means by which people can resolve
problems, overcome deadlocks without resorting to the
strike weapon. They must have the right to exercise the
strike weapon, but only as a last resort.

H
I'm not convinced about this union democracy you're talking about. How do you assure it?

D
You would if you were in my union.

H
Well, generally speaking how do you get a sense of the
whole body of union people being behind

J
Well, here we have laws like the act which provide certain
standards for internal democracy for a union

D
No, but I think you meant in practice.

H
I mean in practice.

D
In practice most of our industrial plants in Britain have
this shop steward system where the man or woman is elected
by their workmates, the man or woman who is a shop steward
is elected by their workmates and there is regular reports
to and from, in other words, the shop steward will hold
meetings on the plant, not always during working hours, it
would be during the meal breaks usually, but he or she is
responsible to their workmates for reporting on
discussions with management and those discussions can be
very far ranging. It can be, if you like, the canteen tea
or it can be on the lay out of the plant, or of course, it
can be on some pay issue affecting piecework or some
incentive system, a whole variety of things but it does
mean that the men and women in a trade union organised
plant or industrial undertaking like the docks,

cant.

AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D (cont)

can feel that they have a voice that can be heard because
they've got somebody who will speak for them.

JKG

Tom, your position is that the union is essentially an
autocratic organisation.

H

I think it often is in many trades, and we've seen it on
half way in our industry. It doesn't seem like a broad
based action they've taken many times.

D

Like all big instruments, we've got to try to make them
humane

J

Our means as I said are statutes, supervised elections
and so on, as a consequence of which the united mine
workers are taken out of the autocratic control of
through supervised Government supervised union elections,
which is happening also with the steel workers. So I think
the greater is from the point of view of those who are
complacent about existing industrial relations. They feel
that union democracy will result in stabler economic
relations, I think there is no certainty about that at all.
Union democracy may result in far more unstable relations,
if you have a Jimmy Harper or a Frankford Simmons and no
union democracy, you can make all kinds of deals with the
employers. But union democracy is not, the arguments for
it have nothing to do with the stability of labour
management relations.

C

Can I ask you this, Arthur. My impression is that you see
what Jack said is true of a lot of Western Europe at the
moment.

/cont

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

C(cont)

You've got Sweden, you've got Holland, you've got Norway, you've got Denmark and you've got Germany, all engaged in this great move towards what's more or less democracy, it takes different shapes, it doesn't always take the same shapes as it does in Britain, it's a universal movement in Western Europe and there's even the E.E.C. attempt now to lay down what they call the European Company Statute, which requires union representation, not perhaps again, in the form that everybody is happy with but nevertheless, the move is all in the same direction. Now whether that's because the trade unions are much more a part of the new structure of the state, I don't mean that they are under the State but they are part of the process of consultation about policy, much more in Western Europe though maybe more than ever in Sweden or Holland or Britain, than they are in the United States. My impression is that the United States trade union movement is nothing like as pulled into the centre of policy making as it now is in Western Europe, why this is I'm not quite clear except that it seems to me that the trade union movement in the States has been astonishingly ineffective, maybe it wasn't to be, I don't know.

J

It's taken different forms. There hasn't been the relationship, for example, between the American labour movement and even the democratic party comparable to the organic relationship that exists between the T.U.C. and the Labour Party in England.

/cont.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

J (cont)

I mean, there is also a feeling which may be right or may not be right that the more that labour, business and Government get involved in a collusive relationship and settle decisions amongst themselves, you get into the situation of a corporate society where these decisions are taken to the expense of We only have 28% of labour force in Unions in this country, so that on the one hand all the fears of trade union tyranny are nonsense, but which on the other hand, means that the trade unions can not legitimately claim to represent the entire working force, and the problems of, as I say, collusion between big business, big labour and have subserviant and acquiescence Government are, that's a serious question which the proponents of Professor Galbraith's income policy will answer for us.

B

With great respect, you're begging one of the questions though aren't you, because you're saying a subserviant Government. Now we've got less than 50% of our workers in trade unions. That's also true. But if a Government is going to deal with anybody at all, then the only people it can deal with is the organised trade unions, but in doing that, in dealing with employers, then it has got a responsibility to represent the consumers as we said earlier on today, but also all of those people who aren't in fact in unions, and so by saying you have a dominant trade union, you have employers and a subserviant Government is really, if I may say so, an immotive phrase because we cannot represent the real situation.

/cont

TAPE ROLL NO. V12A.
Shot No. 94
Take No. 1.

AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

B (cont)

You want to have a Government which is prepared to look
after the interests of the more than 50% who aren't in
trade unions and also the consumers as a whole.

J

Our experience recently in these matters has been with
the Government that is only interested in the interests
of the business community and

D That's subserviant to big business.

J

Subserviant to big business, but I agree that still,
given the problematic character of politics, a situation
which allows a Government which is subserviant either to
big labour or big business, that kind of power creates
problems.

D

I don't think this business of subserviance is correct
anyway. I don't think a British Government would allow
itself to be subserviant to trade unions or big business,
I think both make representations, and any Government that
is in an industrialised society must bear in mind those
representations, but I wouldn't accept the idea of
subserviance. I think in America too the trade unions do
make representation to Government and sometimes persuades
them to adopt this, that or the other policy on income
tax or imports and the rest. I think that's how we see it,
but on this business of percentage, I just want to make a
correction here. It's true that the American trade unions
have about 25% of the total employed force and the British
less than 50%.

/cont

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D (cont)

But in fact the big industries, the big manufacturing industries, industries like steel and mining and so on, in both countries the percentage is much more like seventy, eighty, or even ninety percent membership. It's the smaller manufacturing units, distribution in terms of shops and catering, a lot of clerical work, banking, insurance, where trade unions tend to be weak, so that any Government dealing with trade unions in either America or Britain would make a mistake if they thought that trade unions didn't influence a very substantial part of the strong industrialised divisions of society. They do.

JKG

I'd like to come back to you, Ted, you've spent a good part of your life in a party that affirms its identification with the individual. What do you see as the most important single thing to be done to allow a greater feeling of participation and a greater sense of self expression for the individual in a highly organised society. What do you ask for first?

B

Well, I would say first of all that I don't believe that the great majority of individuals actually want to have to take decisions themselves, and when we talk about participation, it is I think, to a certain extent a misnomer because I don't believe they want to feel the responsibility of decision taking on them, and this is quite understandable because taking decisions, on the whole, is rather an unpleasant business. What they do want to feel is that they are informed and their views are heard and taken into account by the people who do take decisions.

/cont

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

B (cont)

Now when you come to firms, I believe that the good firms
in fact do this, and they can do it in a very informal way,
but if their manager is going around talking to people they
feel that they are part of the show. It doesn't really
matter what sort of a firm it is. When you get to larger
firms then you have to have some form of official
organisation which does it. The point I would take up with
Jack Jones is that his analysing leads to the fact that it's
the people in the plant itself who ought to elect
representatives if it's going to be some sort of a formal
thing. Now one of the problems in our country at the moment
is that the trade unions don't take this view, they take the
view that the representative ought to be appointed by the
trade unions even from outside the plant, and this is one
of the ways in which I differ from present trade union
approach. And I think D'S own analysis leads to
the contrary to what the trade unions are asking in our
country at the moment. But the other aspect which I think
is terribly important is this. What we are talking about is
official organisations which will, so to speak, take the
view or the opinion of those who are working. What worries
me more than anything is how do we create a situation in
which the individual who's got the initiative and got the
incentive will in fact, do things for himself.

Now I put this first in answer to your question, not because
the other things are being perfectly done because they
are not.

JOB ROLL NO. V12A
Shot No. 96
Take No. 1.

THE OF UNCERTAINTY

B

But what I think is the greatest danger at the moment, is that the person who has got the says loo, I'm going to do something myself, and I'm going to build up a I'm going to make my own way and at the moment he gets far too little opportunity of doing that. Everything is weighted against him, and if we are going to have any sort of progress at all then I think its those individuals who have got to be given the opportunity of doing things for themselves rather than saying what organisation are we going to have which will do things for people. Now you ask me about the individual and that's the thing that most concerns me today.

JKG

This comes down to a practical matter, to how the small firm, the independent entrepeneur, can make his way against the large enterprise or against the (ALL TALK TOGETHER)

B

Yes, and against bureaucracy and against the tax system and against all those things which discourage him from doing it at this moment. Against every sort of planning regulation, against every sort of restricted practice, against every sort of activity (ALL TALK TOGETHER)

D

How do we ensure that everybody has the right to a job

B

That is an allied question because if you have individuals who get the opportunity of doing this for themselves, they create jobs for other people. Jack once asked me, why do you get worked up about this one so particularly, and I said because my father was a carpenter and after a time he had his own firm,

/cont

TAPE ROLL NO. V12A
Shot No. 96
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

B (cont)

He never employed more than fourteen people, but for him that was important and for me that was important. I didn't know about it at the time, but the only chance I had of going to university was because by doing that he could pay part of the money, the rest had to come from loans which I had to repay afterwards, and unless we have people like this, who do it on even a small scale of only having fourteen people or twelve people.

D

I'm not against the small business man, and maybe there is a case for encouraging the thing, some of the trades, but in fact the idea is a bit outmoded you know, in so many areas of industry, quite frankly the small business man couldn't compete with modern mass production. big

It's the/mass production units where the impersonalisation occurs. (ALL TALK TOGETHER)

J

In services the small entrepeneur still has a role

B

I think in new technology the small entrepeneur still has a role. I think that's still true.

J

I have been persuaded by Professor Galbraith that all new technology comes out of laboratories which only large firms can afford to have.

JKG

Yes, but I have also persuaded you and I'm sure I'll have no difficulty persuading an old musical hand like 'B' that also we have a growing, really a rapidly growing artistic and cultural industry which, generally speaking is an industry of small business or individuals which is something that

J

That's a service, not a production.

(ALL TALK TOGETHER)

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D Amounting to what percentage of the total labour force?

J It's still small, but if one had to ask what is the more rapidly expanding areas of employment, I'd forgotten my figures were at least a year out - this is certainly one.

B From the point of view of individual productivity then the result is very high, but I was talking the other evening at home to a chap and I said what do you do, and he said, I run a packing concern. And I said really, is that a good thing to do and he said yes, and its very profitable and I employ a large number of people, so I said what on earth led you to this and he said quite an accident. I found that people who bought works of art in London, London is the cheapest arts market in the world, had great difficulty in getting them packaged and sent to the rest of the world, and so I said to myself, now here's somewhere where I can step in and I'll make a go of it and do it efficiently. That chap has now got almost 100% of the export of works of art from London because he's got a good business which packages well and gets the thing there at the other end. Now he is only twenty eight, that's an entrepeneur.

JKG I was wondering whether I could ask two more questions. One of them is to 'C' and one of them is to 'E' and I think I'll begin with you, you're farther along with your melon. You made the point this afternoon that there were some areas of decision, for example, having to do with the safety of nuclear reactors or having to do with the intricacies of arms control something we want to talk about tomorrow, that simply has to be delegated to one of two cultures which are out of

/cont.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

JKG (cont)

E

the democratic judgement and decision. How do you safeguard
that? I agree with you on that, it seems to me that any
other notion is quite romantic but then that raises the
further question to which in the negative mood this
afternoon nobody addressed himself to or herself to.,
as to what's the remedy for that, what do you do about it?
That's a very difficult one. May I say that there are quite
a few things that I would like to add to the earlier
conversation. I won't do that now except for one point, and
that's we must not forget that it's just conceivable that
the United States and American society is a society

and that when we use the general term capitalism,
we're really describing one society and not many of the
others we've been talking about. That's a difference which
I think we should keep in mind and not blur by general
terms and general concepts. That seems to me quite
important with respect to a number of our points. But now
to your main point.

This in a sense is the question of the multi-nationals in
another form, because what I was saying and what I will
repeat is that in some ways, the political space to which
we have grown accustomed, is no longer as useful for the
solution of problems as it may have been some time ago and
this is true in both directions. That was my argument this
morning and this afternoon, and I entirely agree with some
of the things which have been said about industrial
democracy here.

/cont

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

E (cont)

Now what do you do about those problems which can no
longer be solved on the national level?

Take the monetary problems. I have been worried for some
time about the fact that the International Monetary Fund,
in a sense recommends decisions. It doesn't take them, but
it recommends decisions which are as important as a whole
year's economic policy of quite a number of countries.
I don't know whether it's a year, or six months or two
years, but I mean there's a long period of economic policy
of a country. Now obviously it doesn't make much sense,
at least I regard it as obvious, to think of a
democratically elected Parliament which sort of controls
the decisions of the International Monetary Fund. I have
been wondering for some time, but I shut up about this
because its a very tentative idea, about the question of
what you might call counter-elitisme whether one shouldn't
have groups of people who know what's what in the
International monetary affairs, and who somehow have a
control function on those who take the decisions, or
recommend the decisions in an institution of that kind.
I would like to see in any case, some further control, at
the very least a code.

That's what we were talking about with respect to the
multi-national, but if possible, something else, some
degrees of public debate in these institutions and perhaps
some possibility of being able to come back to or rely on
other groups of experts.

/cont

TAPE ROLL NO. V12A.
Shot No. 96
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

E (cont)

I hate this, I would like to live in a world in which common sense was enough to take decisions and control decisions, but I recognise that I am not living in that world, and I therefore have to think of second best solutions for checks and balances in some areas, and I believe International monetary decisions are one such set of problems. I didn't say nuclear safety, that's a different one which would immediately get us into reactor building and public protest against that, and what are we to make of it, are we going to respect it or not. And I would tend to say yes, we are going to respect it because a lot depends on acceptability as well as known facts, but I was saying that the whole question that we are going to discuss tomorrow of controlling nuclear developments in general, is one which cannot be resolved by national parliament. And therefore again, one has to find some way of doing that and controlling it, which I suppose can only be done in the end by checking and balancing counter elite.

JKG

What do you mean by that? What would be a practical example of checks and balances? (ALL TALK TOGETHER)

J

For example, we had an elite. Federal Reserve Board and therefore American monetary policy for as long as Ken and I can remember. He was in the House of Representatives, an extremely well informed, fearless, slightly demogoric figure

JKG

Cranky rather.

J

Cranky, cranky figure who in a sense, but if you could have him institutionalised and less easily dismissable I mean, that's how I imagine the kind of thing you have in mind. (ALL TALK TOGETHER)

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

JKG

You would attach a body of that sort to the International
Monetary Fund, and a body of that sort to the Atomic
Energy Commission, which now passes under some different
name, what is it called? (ALL TALK TOGETHER)

J

Would you attach it to the organisation, or would you
attach it to some legislative body to which the
organisation allegedly reports?

E

Talking about that is the problem of the United Nations,
is it not?

I think at this particular time of day I would probably
attach it to the organisation because I don't believe that
the United Nations as we have them today, would be able to
sustain and talk to the body which is a body of experts,
that looks with expert knowledge into the decisions that
are made. But, you know, I mean we have people like say
the former Gover of the Bank of who's got no
sort of formal job, but he's one of those experts who
might like to hear about decisions that are taken in a
formal (TALK TOGETHER)

I don't want to take this too far. All I'm saying is one
must recognise that there are decisions which are actually
removed from common sense and understanding.

I don't want to reduce these decisions to common sense -
since they probably can't be. I have seen one election
campaign fought over a revaluation issue. I suppose there
must have been quite a few in some countries, and I've seen
therefore the nonsense that happens in that process.

/cont

CAPT ROLL NO.V12A
Shot No. 96
Take No. 1.

THE RISK OF UNCERTAINTY

E (cont) Since they can't be reduced to that, I would like to build in checks and balances at the level at which the decisions are recommended.

B. If you're merely going to bring in yet another lot of experts, you're not going to introduce common sense.

E I'm not going to introduce common sense? No.

B. No, and what you're doing is - pretty general recipe for paralysis everywhere.

TAPE NO. A12V
Shot No. 97
Take No. 1.

THE A... UNCERTAINTY

E Public debate and some slight control.

How would you cope with that? I mean it is not a matter
which is easily dismissed because what we are living in,
the world we are living in at the moment, is one in which
some of the central decisions determining our economic
and general conditions are decided, are in fact decided,
way beyond the reach of national Parliament.

B There are very few of them in fact.

In the Community we've got the means for discussing it all.
As far as the I.M.F. is concerned, this can be discussed any
time in national parliament, and the government
representatives can discuss it in the I.M.F., and if you
have government representatives, you may at least have
some chance of common sense. If you're merely going to
have another lot of experts put up who say the I.M.F. are
experts, who want another lot of experts, I really don't
see that gets us very far.

JKG

Ted, how would you feel if not an expert board, but well -
what I just suggested, associated with the I.M.F. an
international collection of informed crank... informed but
very suspicious auditors. I slightly agree with you that
another set of experts would join the company, but we see
in the present debate on atomic safety that there is some
possibility for a very large involvement of lay judgement.

Now, on the more ... matters having to do with the
International Monetary Fund, where by the way, I think
'E' ... outrageously exaggerates the importance
of the I.M.F.

/cont

TAPE ROLL NO. V12A
Shot No. 97
Take No. 1.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

JKG (cont)

I don't think it's as important as he implies, but let me concede that it does something - why not then his board of informed laymen that was access to the secret and archaen and otherwise inside information, and brings the judgement, reflects the judgement of the average citizen. Is that a step?

B

Well, it's a very interesting argument because, you see, in our country there's a discussion going on at the moment, which leads in exactly the reverse direction. This argument is that Governments are always affected by political considerations which is the views of voters, and as Governments have to be re-elected from time to time, then they take notice of the views of voters, and what people are saying is we ought to take things like the control of of the money supply out of the hands of Governments and put them into some independent board which can't be challenged, because only then will we have a system in which we deal with inflation because these people won't be influenced in any way by the terrible considerations which affect politicians and Governments, and they will just go on their happy way fixing the money supply regardless of unemployment or exports or anything else, and they will just say that's the figure and that's done with it. Now this is exactly the opposite of what we are discussing here.

JKG

But I have heard you make an extremely eloquent case against that nonsense.

B

Yes, I was eloquent then. (LAUGHS)

TAP ROLL NO. V12A
Shot No. 97
Take No. 1.

THE A. OF UNCERTAINTY

D

But wouldn't you agree Ted, that there is a case when a
national Government such as the British Government, is
dealing with the I.M.F. for industry, both employers and
unions, to perhaps be with the Government in dealing with
the question of the I.M.F. because of its implications upon
industry whatever happens. I think sometimes certain things
are suggested and perhaps politely enforced, that are done
without the knowledge of and, perhaps practical experience
of, industry which ought to be there, not dominating
Government but at least advising Government on what is
quite important from the point of view of the future of
industry.

B

That I will accept entirely. If you take a specific case
of the I.M.F. I mean say that the British Government today
has to go to the I.M.F. in order to renew its borrowing,
then the question of the terms that the I.M.F. require is
something that ought to be publicly discussed. But I don't
believe that you need to create either a body of experts
or some new lay body to do that, I think with the
existing bodies that they are perfectly capable, either the
trade unions or the employers, the C.B.I. or the T.U.C.
can say to the Government, alright, you're telling us we've
got to do this and then you're telling us we've got to do
this because of the I.M.F. Well then let's hear all about
it and let's thrash it all out, and Parliament ought to
do it.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

D The only point I am making is that perhaps at the stage where the I.M.F. is laying down its conditions, the advisers should be there with the Government.

B Well yes, I would go further than that. I would say that those involved ought to demand when the conditions are being laid down exactly what these conditions are, what the justification is for them and whether or not they are going to be accepted. Strongly in favour of that.

E Democratizations - of these international institutions, if you pardon the dreadful word democratizations. I mean you are in fact saying that one's got to make sure that the recommendations that are made there and which sometimes have the force of decisions because its very difficult to resist them in effect, if you have to put them into practice, are based on full knowledge of their implications wherever these recommendations are supposed to apply, so one's got to do something about it in my view. In a way we are discussing two of international law are we not, whether it's an extension of national law and you can actually pull it back into the national context, or whether it's something which requires its own institutions.

I But that's where the difficulties come, from the problems being so difficult or from national policies.

E I wouldn't attach any moral qualifications to the national policies.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

I

No, I mean because the also detante to your proposal of expert bodies. If it's simply complicated problem then I could help, but if it's permanent controversy and policy which makes up to bad decisions or or decisions which are not satisfactory to everybody, then you cannot solve it in such a way, you have to find another solution, national policies and engotiations and better relationship in this or that field etc., and this is perhaps true, I think of the problems which we discussed before. And I think industrial democracy as you call it, would be in general not a bad thing but what the big point of American and also English labour was that it was made very trade unionistic - and it has to operate in a very political society, and your trade unions didn't manage really to bring in that political awareness and consciousness and interest, maybe, to participate in these decisions, well it was not without exceptions, but in general I think this was one of the weak points, and if the problem really is, as you see, to make more active participation of ordinary people in some important decisions, I don't think you will manage to solve the problem if you move them in this rather narrow bracket of trade union, additional trade unionist, psychology, interests etc.,

D

I'm not sure that we're claiming to solve the problem, I think what we're claiming is the right of work people to influence decision-making.

I

Yes - and this is a very political task.

TAPE V1B A,B & C

Slate 98

H

We've agreed that somewhat fewer than fifty per cent of the working population of Britain is in trade unions, and something less than thirty per cent of the United States, and we've already had something more than fifty per cent of the discussion, but I suppose there's some agreement surely that a hundred per cent of the people of both countries are consumers. Still keeping the affirmative tone which we've more or less successfully tried to sustain, what's the most important thing that needs to be done to affirm the position of the individual consumer?

JKG

You've given more thought to that ..
I hope that that doesn't mean that you'll
lose your meal.

C

No, that's fine. Well, I was arguing earlier on that what we are living in is no longer anything that resembles a competitive market, and that because you've got very powerful companies, many of which can determine the pattern of pricing, and because you've got powerful trade unions which to some extent can influence the pattern of wages, you've got a situation in which you almost have to artificially create an organisation for the consumer, by which we mean our common interest because the consumer is something nobody likes to be called, but if one describes it as the common interest of the whole community, these are both the producer interest which are the trade unions and the management side, then one begins to get the picture. I believe with considerable passion that the consumer has to be at least loosely organised in order to get the balance of society struck again at a different level.

J

Like everybody else this afternoon and
this evening, you're correcting the problems
of the individual with another organisation.

Slate Q (contd.)

C

No, because it won't work like that.
You can't really create an organisation
of consumers. They don't work that way.
Their common interests aren't sufficient
for that. But what you can do, and I
think must do, is give them a bit of muscle
in the sense of the kind of expert
backing that (E) was talking about in
another context. Let me look at three
sorts of consumer interest. One sort is
the straight desire not to be exploited,
in other words not to have a situation
in which you could see the two sides of
industry coming together and simply
passing around to the consumer, and if
the consumer is helpless, that situation
can't be resisted. At the moment it's
being resisted chiefly because employers
and trade unions see themselves as
having different interests, but if the day
came when they saw themselves as having
the same interests, then you could get
a very large passing of costs along to
the consumer, and therefore you've got
to in a sense get the consumer aware of
the need to investigate costs, to see
that resources are being efficiently used
and so on. Secondly, you've got a
consumer interest vis-a-vis government
itself, and government - we were saying
that this afternoon - whether it's central
or local, has links on the lines of
communication in some cases beyond the
point where it communicates at all,
has lost touch to a very great extent with
the man and woman on the street, and tends
to work increasingly through layer after
layer of bureaucracy to the point where its
voice isn't even heard clearly by the
people it's meant to be addressing.
So the secondary interests of the consumer
is, in a way, to act as a kind of booster
for a transmission for what's being said
both ways so that it isn't lost. And
thirdly I think - and this is something
we haven't talked about at all in this
discussion - that there is an increasing
resistance to change. It takes many forms.
This isn't a political point at all.
It takes a form which ranges all the way
from what (D) was saying earlier, people
very much disliking being put into high
flats when their whole pattern of
friendship and family relationships was

Slate (contd.)

C

based upon a very different structure of
housing and residence. It relates to
the fact that people nowadays - (B) was
saying this earlier - will dig in against
a road because they don't want to see any
more change in their local environment.
It's got something to do with the passion
with which planning decisions are being
resisted in my country and in other
countries. Because I think what's
happening - and this is something which in
my view we ought to spend a moment or two
on - is that people in their own lives
have lived through not only great
circumstantial changes ranging from
joining the European Community, living
through the consequences of a couple of
world wars and so on, but in a most
precise way they've seen their own
authority in the family challenged.
Fathers' technical knowledge is no longer
of interest to their sons, because the
sons are not going into the same skill as
the father went into. The whole position
of the older generation is challenged by
the younger generation which thinks that
it not only knows more but is more in tune
with the times, and that simply isn't
true if you go to a country like - one
you know well- India where, on the whole,
the older people are still admired.
The strains on the relationships between
men and women are very great because
there is now a mood running of equality
in society which is in conflict with what
people for a very long time have become
used to. And so, when one talks about
the consumer, one of the features of this -
and it's very, very striking I'll say
again in the field of environment and
planning - is that you've got to consult
the consumer, not just about whether one
should be changed, but about what shape
that change should take. And I think that
many of the mistakes that have been made,
not least by architects and planners,
would not have been made if there had been
the kind of consultation with the human
being at the end of the process that (D)
was talking about earlier in the case of
industry, where he wants the worker in the
plant to be consulted. And yet we haven't
developed really any very effective
techniques for doing this except after the

Slate 98 (contd.)

C

thing has happened. After it's happened we deal with the protests. Before it's happened, we've got no effective machinery for trying to avoid the protest before it happens. You asked me for a constructive view, well I'll give you two. I think in the training of the professions like architects and doctors there ought to be a much greater attempt to try to put young architects and young doctors in touch with the people for whom they are doing their architecture or their medicine. And I think that in the case of civil servants, no civil servant should take up his post or should be promoted until he's spent at least a period of time at what you might call the shop-front, dealing with the individual either approaching him for unemployment benefit or approaching him for a pension or whatever it may be, so that he or she has a real sense of the public with which he or she is meant to deal and to which in the end they are the servants. And, at least in our country, that happens very little, far less than it should.

J Are you rather minimising the role of the consumer movement, and also you don't even mention the CWS, the old wholesale societies.

C

I think that there's far more potential in the cooperative movement in its widest sense than has been realised in the last few years, partly because the coops tend to be looked at as a historic movement, people think they are old-fashioned. But the whole cooperative development, in my view, if it spread far more widely into fields of manufacturing as well as distribution could do a great deal to enhance the position of the individual. And on the consumer associations, I don't really need to say too much about them because they are very effective organisations but their problem is, the problem we were talking about earlier in the case of participation, that's to say they fully involve in a very sophisticated way about five per cent of the population. But the question is how that five per cent touches the ninety-five per cent, and the only way that can be done, I think, is by dealing with the people who are going to deal with the consumer at the end of the line and make them much more consumer conscious.

Slate 9 (contd.)

J In England, the use of the law suit as a means of consumer challenge, and anything that results in a court decision automatically applies therefore to a hundred per cent.

C Nothing like it is in the States. But the pressure of the consumer movement, and here again the parallel with the trade union movement is not bad, is of course on statutes.

J In addition to statutes, the technique of the law suit is a useful one.

H Can I try another one? I've spent twelve hours listening to this high-flown verbage about problem-solving ... and returning it to the people. I haven't heard one mention of the only medium or only media that the people read, television and newspapers. It really quite appals me that this group of heavy thinkers haven't thought about the public education techniques that we've used in this country, with some success I think, and I think the course record on the mass media in this country is pretty damn good. You can just list about twenty successes. I don't understand why this subject doesn't come up. Don't you have access to the mass media in Great Britain?

C Oh sure, and I think the mass media, and particularly perhaps in this respect television, has done a very remarkable job of putting a lot of the claims that are made by, for example, manufacturers through a kind of mill. In other words, the position of the consumer has been immensely enhanced by the willingness of, in particular, television but also of newspapers.

D Very little newspapers.

C Much more television.

B Have you ever heard a television broadcast saying this is a bad product, you ought not to buy it?

Slate 99 (contd.)

C Oh yes, if you've ever seen "Nationwide",
yes absolutely.

......

A Have you found a kind of protection for
consumers from being bombarded constantly
by the advertisements for nonsensical
products.

C No, we haven't stopped people being
bombarded by advertising. What we have
done is to move a bit towards making the
advertiser frightened of making totally
false claims.

A But don't you agree - again I go back to
my poor country - that this sort of
bombardment creates demand in the people
who can hardly afford to buy what's been
advertised.

C Yes, it does.

A And it thereby creates a grievance,
because they can't get it, or they get it
by instalments at the expense of the food
consumed by their children.

Slate 99

C Well, I often wonder why countries which
haven't got great margins of wealth
don't control much more rigidly advertising.

A Yes, I've been thinking about that
because I've seen very poor people in my
country having a stereo-deck, and of course
they are paying by instalments at the
expense of the family menu.

C One of the famous cases is the use in
Africa of dried milk products to feed
babies when they would be much better off
being fed by their mothers ...

All of which shows that conspicuous
consumption is not confined to the rich,
or to the guests of the BBC.

Slate 99 (contd.)

C Certainly not. Probably more to the poor
in many ways.

JKG Could I come back to (H) who I think in
the effort to reduce the verbage from
a high-flown level to some other level
succeeded only in being ambiguous.
Are you saying, (H), that the department
store advertising in "The Boston Globe"
is a great media for consumer education?

H Oh, it's magnificent. It's much better
read than ...

JKG Oh I see. You just have a readership test.

H No. It's fine. The print media in this
country has, I think, a pretty good
record on access.

JKG Do you ever list products that are good
and products that are bad as this surely
suggests?

H Oh, none of your business. Yeah, we do
a little of that.

G We've done a lot of that kind of thing.

JKG Oh, I admit the "Washington Post" is much
better than "The Boston Globe".
But how do you respond, (H), again in
low-flown verbage, to the point that
Kukrit Pramoj makes that in fact the
principle function of the mass media is to
create expectations that cannot be fulfilled,
and also force the kinds of change that
(C), I think correctly, says are
increasingly uncomfortable.

H I can't deal with the papers in Thailand
or Great Britain, but I can deal with the
papers in this country, and I think our
course record is just fine on cause and
effect. I think it's just fine on public
education. I think it's just fine on
access, on issues. I think it's just fine
on balanced discussion of public issues
that are highly complicated. We can handle
the tough issues. The Pentagon couldn't
have been handled by television, and it
wasn't handled by television. It had to be
handled by newspapers. I'm really rather
fed up with this public contempt of the
press. I guess I can only speak for this

Slate (contd.)

H country, but I think our press is in pretty good shape right now. I think it's survived the television onslaught which I think has hurt itself terribly by its crassness. Talk about advertising. I think the hungriness of TV in the Olympics this week has practically wiped out the Olympics.

D Come over and reform the British press. It's all so fine over here but I'm not so sure it's fine over there.

I It's my personal observation. I don't think the British press, however bad it may be, should learn very much from American press.

H What's your problem with the American press?

I We have a lot of them. Many, many political things - how they were handled. I have my observation in general if we switch to this subject that the sensationalism which goes way under the needs of public education, the stress upon violence, upon many other things which has become a sort of public education of a very negative kind, I think, in this country. Although there are exceptions, there are good articles in some papers, but if you take it as a whole, especially those papers which have the widest circulation.

H Of course we can't hope to achieve the balance and impartiality obtained by "Pravda" in these matters, but we do our best.

I Maybe you should learn a little bit from them as well.

A (I), please excuse my extreme ignorance. Do you have advertisements in the "Pravda"?

I No.

...

I We have other papers, in the evening papers we have advertisements.

JKG I would like to move the discussion at this point if I might to the question of how the individual is informed, the topic that we going to discuss after dinner this evening. I half agree with (H), reluctant as I am, that an abstract discussion of the quality of the press which he holds in very high regard, and which I've always been forced in comparison to hold in very low regard, is not probably the most productive one that we could have. But there is the much more specific and much more affirmative question of how, again coming back to the complex issues that grow out of large organisations, the complex issues that grow out of high technology, and the resulting decisions of deep public impact, people are informed. (H), talk to that problem neither affirmatively or negatively but in terms of how you struggle with the matter as a newspaper editor.

H Thank God I don't have to print your speeches because they run too long. I think the only old-fashioned technique I know when dealing with complex issues is to print the pros and cons, and do it over and over again on these complex issues, and to editorialise, and to run columns in the proper place. I think that's a perfectly sensible device that has worked well.

JKG What about the detailed exploration of the kind of technical issues that (E) mentioned? Do you see that as a function?

H I sure do, and we fail miserably at it. We save our conscience by running such a debate once every six months I suppose. I guess one thing I want to emphasise is that we've learned something in the last few years. We're very sensitive to public access in this country. We're very sensitive to the credibility problems. We're very sensitive to advocate journalism. And I think we've learned quite a bit about all of those things. I really don't throw my hands up in despair over ...

C Can I ask you a question? You've got a great tradition in the States for what used to be called muck-raking in journalism, and I suppose at the highest level one might describe the Watergate business as the very highest kind of muck-raking journalism. In a sense the press became the loyal opposition over that. What I want to ask is at what point does the press have a greater responsibility towards matters that are crucial to the well-being of its society, or does it always have a greater responsibility to its readership to give the readership what it may want. This arises particularly in respect to what (B) was saying earlier this after-Noon about areas where the state may take a stand on issues like, say, racialism which is in advance of what the public might want to see at that time. What then becomes the role of the press? To whom then is the press responsible?

H (C), I wouldn't think of touching that question without handing it to (G) which is her entire story.

JKG I think I'm going to shove it over to Kay, also pointing out that I believe the "Globe" was given a Pullitzer Prize this last year for being somewhat in advance of its community on this particular question, wasn't it (H)?

H On the racial thing.

G Well, I think it's one of the most interesting problems the press has, is what is its role in society, and I think there are certain things we can do and try to do, and certain things we probably can't and shouldn't, because there are limitations to what we can do. And there are limitations of time, of space, of the degree of sophistication of the reporters who are handling these subjects. There are all sorts of constrictions. ? used a very good phrase once. He was making the point that the press couldn't replace institutions, that its obligation was to inform as best it could, and that by doing this it was in effect what he called a "restless searchlight in the dark illuminating here and there". If you

G call attention to problems in an intelligent way and get the facts to people, then institutions really do have to take over. I would say that the Watergate instance is an instance of that, because what the press did was to keep the issue alive while the institutions were not working. I would cite as a place where a democratic process worked, one that took place quite a while ago, the Marshal Plan. I think in that instance the press could report that Europe had terrible problems. It could report what kind of problems it had, but it really took the coalition of a democratic society - in many ways it took the Marshal speech, it took the Hurter Committee with the Congressional groups, it took the Harriman Committee of wise men. And then it all came together with people who were informed enough about the problems that they wanted to act. But I think it had to be that combination of circumstances.

F Don't you think it's a mistake to compare the two media as opposed to each other, which is better. I mean, one is better in a certain sense obviously, and the other one is obviously better in another sense. If you're reporting something that has particularly visual implications, something that happens somewhere that is greatly interesting, then naturally television is better. I think the Olympics in the press alone, no matter what you say how badly it was done, would not be the same as seeing the Olympics with your eyes. Other things can be discussed in depth by the press much better than on television.

G That's a separate subject and an interesting one, but what I was speaking to was what could the press do to inform on these very complicated problems. The one that we have, for instance, right now, is energy. Do you get there before people are ready to hear about it. That's one constriction, because if you're there too soon they don't want to hear and they don't listen, and there's no use printing things they're not going to read. Now the energy problem, I think finally we got there too late, many of us. We did our best. We did learn how to report a more difficult kind of problem. Now the lines at the gas

G stations have gone away, and to some extent people's will to do something about the energy problem has gone away, so no amount of printing of information by the press is really going to make a democratic society move unless they want to move, unless they have the will to move on a problem like the energy problem.

F I would like to ask (D) one question which has been on my mind all evening and I can't redeem it any longer, and that is, we have a very great problem in Canada now where various unions are fighting with each other. And what is the employer or the government supposed to do when the French-Canadian nurses are refusing to work and the English-Canadian nurses are working, and people are actually dying right now, this week in Montreal because emergency cases are not accepted in hospitals because they're on strike. The union says it's the government's fault because it didn't give in, and the government says it's the union's fault because, you see, the English accepted it, why not the French. And we have two problems of this kind, and I think all bilingual or bi-racial countries are very likely to have similar problems. The air traffic controllers at Dorval Airport, which is the Montreal airport, the French-speaking ones insist that in a French-speaking country which is eighty-five per cent French-speaking, French should be allowed as a second language. They admit that English should be used as a first language if you don't speak French, but the French-Canadian pilot should be allowed to speak in his own language with his own controller who is also French-Canadian. In fact they did strike and threatened other strikes, and that issue meanwhile messes up the whole Olympic travel and causes the country enormous complications. What do you do? They don't accept arbitration by the government.

D I think the great problem there is that you want the answer at the time of a crisis. You have to prepare before a crisis.

F All right, let's prepare for the next crisis.

D All right. To avoid the next crisis, I think you should first create one trade union movement where you've got two. You've got a French...

F We have one, but they want to separate. They threaten to quit...

D That's one aspect. The other aspect, frankly, is in these sensitive services such as health services, there is really a need to try to build up confidence in voluntary arbitration, but that confidence can only be sustained if people feel they're going to get justice. If they feel the government or some other interest is going to intervene and prevent them getting the sort of reasonable and rational appreciation of their case which maybe a strike would force, if they are denied that, then they will go on strike.

F The fact that they refuse government arbitration ...

D I know, because there's a lack of confidence in it.

F Well, what can we do about it?

D You have to build the confidence in arbitration. This is one of the problems we've had in Britain, to get sufficient degree of understanding that if you are going to have a weapon or a method other than strike action, a voluntary method, then that has got to be clearly seen to be just in the sense that our normal approach to the dispensation of justice is seen to be just and is actually just. This must apply very much to arbitration if you're going to use it as a weapon. I do think that when it comes to the health services and the essential services, certainly we should encourage arbitration ...

F Encourage or enforce?

D Encourage it. Voluntary encouragement.

F In Canada, it was even enforced, and they disobeyed the law, and so many people disobeyed the law that there wasn't anything to be done about it. You can't put everybody into jail.

JKG I think I'll exercise the prerogatives of the Chairman and relieve (D) from answering what is after all a very difficult question.

......

F I don't think the docks was a labour problem at all. It's an ethnic problem which happens in Canada. It will certainly bring in the future much more crisis than we would think.

JKG I would like to come to an ethnic problem and come back to (H) and ask him to talk a little bit about the decisions that lay behind the position that the "Boston Globe" took when it found itself in a measure of hostile conflict with the community over the problems of Boston's schools and segregation, and the extent to which a paper, in effect, can risk the angry reaction of a community, and the degree of concern which you felt over the particular period, perhaps giving us a little bit of the background of the situation so that you can talk about the decision itself.

H Well, the integration order came down two years ago, and it grew out of a state racial imbalance law ten years earlier than that. We always supported it which was the conventional wisdom of all of the conservative and liberal groups in the community. It wasn't a very daring thing to do. But we were stuck in our opponents' minds with having been for integration from the beginning. So it comes down and two years ago, when the order went into effect, we got eleven bullets through the building and we got all kinds of protest, all kinds of threats of the paper being boycotted and one thing and another. And it was a very uncomfortable feeling. We spent sixty thousand dollars putting shatter-proof glass, bullet-proof glass,

H in our building to make everybody feel more comfortable. How did we deal with it? I think it's a lesson for what we're talking about here. There's only one way to deal with this crisis, credibility problem. (G) has been through it on other issues. You over-cover things, and you make doubly sure that you give both sides an immense blanket coverage. And it worked. We didn't lose any circulation to speak of. It has become less of an issue. The Justice Department nearly tipped it over this spring. We were saved on that issue. But it's a very hard thing to do. We lost a lot of friends. Oh, it taught us so much. It really taught us to communicate with our constituents. I guess the only message I have, which isn't much of a message, is that you go to extravagant lengths to be fair, and it works. It really bothers me on that score. (B), you seem to think that the print media doesn't give that much of a shake to controversial issues.

B No, I wasn't saying that so much. But I think that our discussion has wandered a long way from the point where (C) started it....

TAPE V14

Slate 101

JKG Well, Secretary, we thought you would be
lonesome if you didn't have some television
cameras and so you will not be lonesome.
We've been having general conversations
on the question of how the press and
television, but particularly the press,
informs on the kind of complicated issues
on which there's something less than mass-
participation, of which foreign policy
might well be one. (H) has been talking
to that, (B), (G). And I rather think
that over the years you've perhaps had
some relations with the press, which might
cause you to want to enter into a
discussion.

K Why don't you talk for a bit and let me
see where it goes.

J (K) can't come in cold on this.
Ken, after all, don't be modest, you've
been involved in foreign affairs yourself,
you've had some reflections on foreign
affairs from each side of the barricade.
If you would convey your background on
this, then the rest of us would be happy
to make our contributions.

JKG I mentioned earlier in the discussion
that the proceedings for these two days
were designed to relieve the television
audience from seeing so much of Galbraith.

H We'll cut this out of the tape.

JKG Oh, I see. Good. No, I'm going to turn it over to you, Ted.

C Whatever it may be.

B What are you turning over?

JKG I'm turning over to you now to shift the
question of whether... How does the press
serve, help, hurt in informing on the
complex and technical issues which have to
do with, for example, a large issue like
your entering into the Common Market.

V14

K The last time I spoke on this subject, (G) walked out.

G Henry, I hate to tell you, I don't even remember that. I think you've made it up.

B We've been arguing about the present various aspects and so on, and the media as well. I would have thought, broadly speaking, that on foreign policy the press does a better job than it does on many other aspects of international life, because in most countries at any rate there is still general agreement between political parties that foreign affairs is something which ought to be kept out of the ordinary dog-fight, and ought to be dealt with on a rather higher level than most of the discussion in the press or even in Parliament. Now, of course, it can be that foreign policy does at times become so entangled in domestic affairs that it's very difficult for them to do this. But it does raise the basic question: Is it a good thing to have the whole of foreign policy discussed in the press? And here I think we get into a very difficult sphere. I think there's a whole area of principle, so to speak, in which it's a very good thing to have the press discussing the matters as fully as possible. I think there's a certain sphere of operation in which it can be extremely damaging to have a public discussion on aspects of foreign policy or foreign policy operations, which can only be effective if they are carried out quietly and without ...

... leaks in negotiations.

B Yes. And I think there are certain security matters which are better, on the whole, not publicly discussed if you are going to maintain relations over a wide front with a whole lot of countries.

JKG How do you make this distinction?

B Well, it's very difficult to make the distinction. I think here the British have had considerable success. They've done it because of our continuing relationship between the Foreign Office and the press, in which the press have accepted that they are given a great deal of information which they then don't publish. Now, to the purist this is horrifying.

V14

G It is. You are right.

B Absolutely. You've put on your best horrifying look. Because they say we must never have anything which we can't just publish. Now, I don't accept that, having been in our own Foreign Office for three years. I think it's a perfectly justifiable and understandable arrangement that you say to people, look, there are great national interests concerned here, and we are trying to protect those national interests. And we will give you all the information, but you must realise that it's a very heavy responsibility on yourselves in the way in which you treat this.

D Would you justify the completely monolithic approach of the British press on the Common Market issue when the referendum was proceeding?

B On the Common Market, they were entirely free to say and do whatever they liked.

D But they were all on the one side.

B It was entirely the weight of the argument which carried. There's no question about that.

D We have a monolithic press determined to persuade the British public they must vote yes in the referendum. I've accepted the referendum, but I would have thought that the argument should have at least been presented pro and con more effectively and properly than it did.

B I think in the news coverage they did the pro and the con in the leaders, and they were very much con, I agree about that. But it was the weight of the argument.

JKG I think I must intervene violently about that. Kay cannot control herself.

G Oh yes I can. No, I don't want to explode. I think it is a difficult issue, but I think it has to be resolved in our country, which is really very unlike yours. We do not have a parliamentary democracy, and to some extent we don't have the questioning devices that exist in Parliament

V14

G or the Royal Commissions, or the devices that you have to question the government, or in fact the ability to make the government fall if people want to. So you have to start from the fact that we have a different problem. And in this country for a long time, I think that the press was not sceptical enough and did not report enough, and I certainly don't think that in the early days of Vietnam enough people were reporting what was going on in Vietnam. We were taking the official version of it much too lite ally. I think that when you say there are government secrets, we all know there are, and I think it is the view of the press in this country that it is up to the government to keep those secrets. But once one of them leaks, it really does more harm than good to then say, we want to get it back and you all have to agree not to publish it. I know that the Official Secrets Act seems to work in England, but I feel that it would be very damaging here.

B They are under criticism from both points of view that, in fact, the existing Act is not effective in dealing with breaches of security which matter. But from the point of view of the parliamentary system, you see you have a security question. The Prime Minister can stand up and say: this matter has been raised, but I must assure the House, this is a matter of security, and the Parliament will not press the Prime Minister on that. And he will say: I am perfectly prepared to tell the Leader of the Opposition in the usual way under Privy Council oath the whole of the facts about this. And the Leader of the Opposition comes along to his room directly after question time. He says, look, this is the whole situation. And then Parliament says this is a matter of national security and we are not going to expose all this in public. I would only touch on the CIA because I was in the studio at the BBC at which it happened. But I was absolutely horrified that there was a man who was in the CIA actually naming people who were in the CIA, and their activities and all the rest of it. This seemed to me to be absolutely appalling. Men's wives put in danger because of what this man was saying, and to us it was absolutely appalling because it couldn't happen in our country. Take another example.

V14

B Take Northern Ireland. I don't think many people in Britain are in doubt that a very large amount of the coverage given by television and by radio to the IRA in Ireland has impeded to an enormous extent the ability of the forces to deal with the IRA. No doubt about it at all. What that has meant is that a large number of civilian lives have been lost and forces lives have been lost.

H Why should television coverage have impeded..

B Because television takes the view that if they can get a secret interview, so called secret interview, with the IRA in some back-street in Belfast or Londonderry, then they will do that. They will not reveal where the IRA are operating, and it gives the IRA the opportunity ...

BBC has been an intelligent service in British government?

B Well, to the extent that the IRA will send a message to the BBC saying if you meet such a man in such a place at such a time, you'll be taken unbeknown and blindfolded to another place, and there we will give an interview on television or on radio, and the conditions, of course, are you don't reveal this. In any case, you're blindfolded, you don't know where you're going. And if you do reveal it, your life is in danger because we'll take jolly good care that you're bumped off after it.

D I think it was some time ago, that.

B What, interviews with IRA? It's been fairly systematic throughout the whole of the province since 1969.

C But, Ted, let me ask you this because I don't wholly go along with you. I think that we've taken secrecy too far in the British system. I suppose one would say maybe there's not much reason to believe that MI5 ever actually had an assassination list of foreign heads of government, but if you had as free enterprising an agency of government as the CIA, and that much in a sense out of the control of the elected executive, and it does look as if it was very much out of that control

V14

C then I can't see how the press or even commerce has much choice except to pursue it. I mean, in a way I think what you've done is to take the example of the CIA but not take the other side of it, which is that the CIA went far beyond what would be normally accepted as the guide lines for an agency in the British system, which guide lines it would be expected to stay within. The CIA has gone well beyond the guide lines which one assumes the Congress would ever have agreed to. And that does seem to me to raise a quite different question.

H How do you handle abuses of power?

C And very extreme abuses in the case of the CIA.

B Yes, this is a very difficult question, but as Shirley was saying, she assumes these are the guide lines. Well then, I think that a parliamentary body, Commons or Lords or Senate or House of Representatives, fully entitled to discuss the guide lines and what they are and so on. And if they find there is a breach of that, well then, of course, raise it. What I do not think they are entitled to do, which is the example I cited and which has happened, is that individual people who are doing a job which every nation has to have done, having their names exposed.

J No Committee of Congress did that.

JKG Nor any American newspaper.... The Church Committee did not do that. The "Washington Post" did not do that.

G No responsible newspaper that I know of, and certainly not ourselves, have printed the name of a CIA agent in the field. We would not do that, and we haven't done it.

J Nor has any committee of Congress done it.

B But it's happened certainly in Britain.

J That was a CIA defector, impossible to control, and he did it on the BBC. He didn't even do it on American television.

JKG Arthur, how would you draw the line?

V14

J Between what and what?

JKG Between what should be published and what shouldn't.

J One thing is that I would not take the unilateral judgment of the executive branch on where the line should be drawn.

G It seems to me that's been plainly demonstrated that the Government has this tendency to conceal anything that's in the slightest bit embarrassing or any mistakes it's made, and it says..stamps it top secret and there you are.

C But, Kay, it's a bit more complicated than that. Let me take Ted into the realm of foreign affairs for a moment. In a funny way, it seems to me that governments abide by an unwritten set of rules. Now if you take one historic example where governments didn't obey their set of unwritten rules, it was the case of the British Government at the time of Suez, because the matter was not an issue which came to Cabinet and was resolved at Cabinet level. It was resolved by a much smaller group of ministers who, in effect, concealed from the Cabinet what they were intending to do. Now I think the press was not wrong to pick up this sort of issue and to fight the Government on it. In a way that was perhaps a parallel - not a parallel but it wasn't dissimilar from some of the things that the American press did about Watergate, because the Government of the day stepped over in a sense its own unwritten rules which were that it would, in fact, reveal to the whole Cabinet what it was doing and why it was doing it and so on. And I think you have at that stage, I mean in a way the press has the responsibility to write those rules out loud, if I can put it that way. I think the American press was absolutely right to drive home and, as Kay put it, if the institutions aren't operating the way they are meant to operate by their own rules, then in the end it's only the press that can say, you're playing off-side, you are not obeying the rules and therefore we are going to break the rules too.

V14

C I think the press has a right, in a sense, to break the rules if the Government itself in a democracy breaks the rules.

B Yes, but if you go back to Suez and you say, the press broke the rules, the reason wasn't that they believed the Cabinet hadn't been informed of the decisions. In actual fact, of course, the Cabinet was fully informed about the decisions.

C Well, not at the beginning.

B The press took this view because they were against this particular venture. You could argue they were perfectly entitled to be against the venture. After all, the American administration was against the venture and so on. I don't think that you can say that the press, insofar as they broke the rules were entitled to do so because they thought the Government had broken the rules. Not at all. You can say they took the view that the Government had split the country in the action which it took. Therefore they were perfectly entitled to voice a criticism, which they did very loudly, but of course a considerable part of the press supported.

JKG I want to ask Ted, what I proposed to ask you and then (A) and then (K), what rule you would make ... What would you lay down as the rule as to what the state has the right to protect as distinct from what it seeks to have understood. This is a matter on which you speak out of a good deal of past experience, and then I am going to ask (A) to react out of his past experience.

J It would differ whether you were in power or in the Opposition.

JKG When I get to (K), I want him to make the difference between what he would like to have now that he is in power as distinct from five years hence when he's a Harvard professor again.

B It's complicated from the point of view of analysis, and I think the first part you have to divide up is the defence/foreign affairs aspect from the domestic aspect insofar as you can have that division.

V14

B And here I think you are dealing with confidentiality as compared with what I would call security. On confidentiality I take the view that a Government is just as entitled to be able to discuss policies with its administrators, with the civil servants and its colleagues, as any other organisation in the country is. Now, I do not find that the press accept this. In other words, if Kay found that one of her senior executives after every Board meeting was going out and telephoning the "New York Times" and telling them what had happened, she really wouldn't be very amused. And yet the press takes it for granted that a civil servant ought to be able to do this, ought to be able to ring up the press and say: well, there was a meeting of the Cabinet today. There was a row between so-and-so and so-and-so and you ought to know about this.

J ...between a private organisation and a publicly-elected, democratic government.

B I don't accept this. I don't think there is.

G I think there is a great difference, that the government is the servant of the people who elected it.

B But the servants are entitled to discuss matters amongst themselves and decide what policy they are going to make.... But that isn't accepted at home.

J Well, it's accepted here. I would believe, surely it's accepted .. In England, you even have trouble ten years after the fact publishing Dick Crossman's diaries, or something,

B It's a much more immediate problem than that. The press claims the right .. We've just had it over the Department of Health and Social Security, as Shirley knows perfectly well.

J If the press gets it, they'll publish it. They don't claim the right of the wire services to be present physically at Cabinet meetings.

V14

B No, but they do claim the right to take information which is, in fact, stolen and to publish it and to say: this was the duty of the press.

J I don't think it's a moral issue either way.

B I think it's very much a moral issue, but it also affects the whole of the general question of confidentiality.

J If a Government can't keep its secrets, that's its fault. I think Government has every right to keep secrets for a period.

B I don't want to give it even as long as that, because I think once a Cabinet has the opportunity of discussing various proposals and they find options, they ought to publish the options and say to the public: right, this is what the possibilities are. Now you have a general debate about it and argue about it, and we take all this into account when we finally produce a Bill or finally produce a policy or whathaveyou. I'm all in favour of that. It's the earlier stages in which some hare-brained civil servant comes up with some cock-eyed idea and it's immediately passed out to the press, who say the Government is now going to ...

J What if it's true what this hare-brained passes out. What if it's established that it's true?

B Well then, we come to the general question of how you influence the public, and if the press publishes this with banner headlines: Government going to shoot all immigrants; Government's going to abolish all income tax. and some hare-brained civil servant's come up with this... Misleading democracy, it would be impossible for a democracy to operate.

Slate 103

J You're ignoring my ... What if it's proved rapidly true? Is it not a bad idea to have headlines?

B But the truth is that some hare-brained civil servant has come up with it. All right, but it isn't government policy.

V14

D Isn't there a difference, Ted, between what might be regarded as a major state secret as against some of the things that perhaps ought to be publicised such as, maybe, the Child Benefit Scheme. Or ought it maybe to have been a secret issue. A lot of problems were created because there was an attempt to keep the discussion private.

B Then you come on to my second category which is proper security proper, so to speak, and this is foreign policy and defence.

D I think there's a distinction between that...

B Yes, that's why I drew the line, quite definitely. And when you come on to defence security and foreign policy, then I think perhaps in some ways you've also got a difficult problem. For example, in our own case, we publish documents now after thirty years. People say that's very long, but there are documents concerning Spain in the Thirties which I would never agree to being published now, because I believe that it would be damaging to our national interest. I still believe that. And would still affect negotiations which may have to be carried out in the future.

H We used to have those arguments. When Kennedy insisted publishing the documents, the State Department predicted all sorts of terrible consequences. Some of these had to do with Thailand and some with China. The documents were published, had absolutely no consequences at all.

JKG The mention allows me to ask the former premier of Thailand what rule he would invoke.

A It depends on the responsibility of the press. The press in the United States of course are different from the press in England and, as regards the Thai press, they are unbelievably irresponsible. So my rule is never to give information to the press on national security or national interest. They'll invent it. If you don't give it to them, then you can always deny it. That's about all there is to it.

V14

JKG How do you define national interest
and national security?

B Well you know you're coming, Ken, to
one point which is final in a democracy.
There are some things on which you have
to trust a government. Otherwise a
nation cannot survive. If the Americans
haven't learned that as a result of the
last ten years, then it makes us, their
friends and allies, despair of them.

H But don't you agree, surely, that the
Government has to earn trust. When
the government has given every evidence
of abusing that trust, it's destroyed
its part of the contract. The notion
that there's an infallibility about
government...

G Ted, we went through two weeks of
prior restraint in court over the
Pentagon papers, in which the government
began by claiming that all forty-nine
volumes were top-secret. And when we
ended up after going through three courts,
they had backed off to claiming a few
paragraphs were secret. And much of
what was in them had already been printed
elsewhere, and some by government
officials. And worst of all, nobody
read it anyway.

H And none of the consequences predicted
in the government briefs about the
damaging effect this would have on our
relation with .. and so on, so far as I
know, had any result. No one cares about
secrets one way or another.

B I'm not so sure about that, you know,
because you'll find that the heads of
government of your friends and allies at
this moment are very, very careful about
any communications they have.

H I can think of other reasons besides
disclosure for that.

B No, in fairness, because if you know that
you can enter into confidential
communication with a head of government
and, all right, thirty years hence
well and good. But if you find that all
this is going to come out within three days
or three weeks, you're jolly careful
about what you do communicate. Now, that
can't be for the good of friends and allies.

V14

J If it's against their own interests, then they'll start pleading for that.

B No it isn't. In fact, it's in our own interest when this situation arises that we shouldn't send confidential information or communications.

J I don't know why I'm talking when all the others are better qualified.

B I think it's all too easy an assumption that this doesn't affect anything. A government says this is serious, and you say, what's happened, and it appears in the press the next day and then nothing at all happens. The impact longer-term is deeper than you realise at the moment.

J But there are other factors in the equation.

JKG Henry, how do you make the division between what's obviously necessary to know and what must be .. And indeed, how do you make it. How does one go about insuring that it will be known, which is after all not unimportant, as distinct from what categories would you seek to see reserved from use, reserved from the public, kept secret.

K I think one has to make a distinction between what the government should tell the public, and what civil servants should have the right to tell the public. I believe that it is imperative for presidents and prime ministers and other leading Cabinet ministers to give the public the fullest possible explanation of what they are doing, and to do it revealing as many of the choices they think they have, the reasons why they have chosen as they have, as possible. On the other hand, if every official believes that when he loses an internal argument he can then peddle his papers to the newspapers, it has a disintegrating impact on the government. I have sympathy for what Kay said, that it ought to be the government's responsibility to be able to keep its secrets and not the newspapers. How you bring about the degree of discipline which I think is needed, I have not really thought through.

V14

K

But I can say now, for example, that I received a cable which I should simply note. Since I am assuming that it will leak I write an answer, so that if it leaks either to a Congressional Committee or to the press, I have a record of my point of view. This already destroys the process of government. People ought to be able to communicate with the Secretary of State without engaging in an endless internal debate. Many things, if you speak about the impact, and I repeat, I'm not blaming the newspapers for it, I'm simply describing the situation, the impact on the government now is that almost any paper that is being written for internal deliberation has to be looked at also from the point of view of how it will appear in print. You may say that's the way it should always be looked at, but there are many intangibles in decision-making in which it is absolutely necessary to work through carefully a number of options which you would later reject and which, if every adviser has to worry about how he will look in print three weeks later or three months later or a year later, is going to have a debilitating impact on decision-making. Therefore I would think that it is quite clear that presidents, prime ministers perhaps ought to be more candid in the situations that you describe. This does not, in my view, entitle officials except under conditions of a total breakdown of public confidence to play their own game, because what very often happens is that precisely the people who have some hobby-horse who are pushing it most strenuously, and it is almost impossible for the press to distinguish between the validity of the various secret documents that are now practically being forced on them. I don't know what I would do if I were a publisher having stated this problem. The easiest solution would be to get discipline in the government, but how you can get that with all the present impact I have no answer to. Now, the fact that I may not get the floor again knowing this eloquent group here, I'd like to make a few comments on some of the other things that were said here.

V14

B Can I take you up on one point, Henry, on this? Let's take a practical point in negotiation. We both know perfectly well that you can have a situation in which one side will make an advance to the other and which, if it's reciprocated, you're going to have a successful outcome and therefore you can stand the cost or the racket or whatever you like at the advance you make. On the other hand, if you don't get the response, it's extremely damaging to the government, the Secretary of State, the Foreign Secretary, whoever it may be.

K Very good point.

B Now, that, I believe, is a crucial instance where if the press come to know about it, there's a very heavy responsibility on them not to publish it because it endangers the success of the operation, because the other side is also in the position that if they respond and don't get success, they're in danger as well. Now, if this is known in State Department or the Foreign Office, wherever you like, and the whole thing is likely to be blown, and there is no responsibility in the press, you won't get initiatives. And the result is the possibility of solving world problems is greatly diminished. Now, in those circumstances, is it asking too much of the press that they should exercise responsibility, and if it comes to that, or in one particular case which affected our friends country here, we, because we thought there was a danger of it becoming known that we were sending back 105 Russians to their home country, we said to the press: look, we will tell you the whole of this story and we ask you to take no action about it. Now the British press took no action about it. It was only when Moscow made a fuss about it we said to the British press: of course, you are at liberty. You can now say everything which we've told you and which you've had for some time. I believe that was the right approach of a government. It was a very responsible response by the press, and it served the national interest. I don't think that's asking too much. If you don't ask that, you damage to a very large extent the possibility of taking initiatives in foreign policy which are the ones which are required when you don't know whether you

Slate 104

V14

B are going to get a response or not.

J Initiatives like the Bay of Pigs?

B That was a military operation, and if it
had been successful we should never have
had anything but praise for it.

JKG I think I'd better get you back to
attack (C).

K I was going to make a partly irrelevant
point to one of the questions we've now
reached. I don't believe that the
intelligent investigation is necessary to
prove the influence of the press one way
or the other. First of all, almost all
of the so-called transgressions of the
Intelligence agencies were ordered at
the presidential level. It was not that
the Intelligence agency had run wild,
but maybe national policy had run wild.
So it was not a case where the press
policed the agent, and probably the
Congress would have approved almost all
of these things in the climate of the time
in which they were ordered, with the
exception of the domestic use of the CIA
which, however, is ascribed with
considerable extent to the breakdown of
the organisation that was opposed to
domestic Intelligence. So almost all of
the disclosures of the Church Committee
were contained originally in an internal
investigation that the CIA had conducted
at the time of Watergate. And when they
were flushed out by the Church Committee
the press printed it. The press did not
have a major oath in the disclosures,
and I don't blame the press for printing
what the Congressional Committee had
already disclosed, for it was a slightly
different problem from the problem of
malfeasance by the government exposed by
the press as, for example, in the case of
Watergate. ... on the Pentagon papers.
I think the government got itself into
a hopeless position when it was supposed
to defend the secrecy of individual papers
that extended over a period of years,
because it was quite impossible to demonstrate
in any individual case the secret aspect
of the paper. In fact, the mere
requirement of forcing the government to
prove why something is secret and thereby

V14

K
revealing the secret, will make the government most reluctant to contest the case. The impact of the Pentagon papers was the cumulative nature of forty volumes of secret documents being able to be published, and the caution it must have inspired in other governments in their ability to deal frankly with the United States and also for opening the flood-gates for the sort of situation which now exists and which, in my view, has to be brought under control after the election, in which almost every civil servant feels free to go public with any point of view which he may have had and which he wants over-ruled, or uses either press or the Congress to bring pressure on the administration. Now I am quite sympathetic to Kay's point that the primary responsibility is to the government and not to the press, but the consequences in the foreign policy field, I would agree with Kay.

G
Would you not also say that the government itself releases confidential documents when it wants to sell its point of view quite often, Henry. And would you reserve the right of the government to use them when they saw fit, but not to the right of the government's opposition?

K
We should assume that the Watergate phenomenon was an exception and not the rule of government. One should assume that the government requires a minumum of trust. Of course the government will reveal some confidential information. If it is a responsible government, it will not reveal confidential information that is, in its judgment, damaging to the national interest, and it ought to do it with the utmost restraint. I think it is in a better position to decide what should be released than the individuals who, very often, pursue self-serving ends. Now, I admit if some outrage is commited, if somebody feels that the government is going totally in the wrong direction, then it will become increasingly difficult to control the problem of leaks, but that is not our major problem. Right now it is an exercise to a considerable extent of self-will. They are not issues of moral principle that are being released to the press.

V14

K
It is very often tactical positions and very often people who want to show how important they are. I can give, since this will not appear for several months, last week we had a difficult situation in Lebanon in which we were trying to evacuate Americans, and in which their departure was delayed. We deliberately, not because we wanted to hide anything from the public, refrained from blaming the PLO because we did not want to turn it into a test of strength with the PLO, and because we thought that the lives of people were more important than some grandstand play. Within days it was leaked, what the obstacle was, what our concern was, and until we get these people out, we still don't know whether this does not greatly complicate the issue. Now this is a case where there is no policy dispute within the government at all, and where it's simply some official who's trying to prove to some .. that he's a big-shot and he's in on some information. He's releasing information that, next Wednesday or Thursday, would do nobody any damage and that does nobody any good this week.

J Is that release from the field, Henry, or from the State Department?

K
In this particular case - the State Department is guilty enough in these matters - in this particular case, I don't believe it came from the State Department. It came from somebody who wanted to prove how able his organisation was in effecting evacuations. It wasn't even malicious, it was just self-serving, but potentially very dangerous. We hope it won't be dangerous, but the reason we kept that particular sequence of events secret is, even though we revealed the general fact that we couldn't make the evacuation, the particular condition which inhibited evacuation we kept secret simply so that we could complete the process, and once completed there would be no objection whatever to make clear who did what to whom and what we did.

B
Why is the press so anxious to damage the national interest wherever it can find it?

V14

JKG That's a good question, Kay. Why?

G Ted, really.

JKG That question was obviously addressed to you, Kay, so...

G I'm being asked if I'd stop beating my wife.

JKG We're reaching the end of the maximum allowable time for any form of discussion in one day. (D) says we've probably exceeded it, any conceivable union rules.

H When do we get overtime?

JKG But I don't want to shut this off if I'm shutting off any final comment.

B Are we going to discuss foreign policy tomorrow morning?

JKG We're going to resume, at what time tomorrow morning, Adrian?

AM The cars will leave here at nine o'clock or thereabouts. The issue will be then foreign policy, nuclear disarmament issue, arms race.

JKG I think there's nothing that would keep us from continuing this discussion then. We want to discuss foreign policy in the large. I think we particularly want to discuss the great question of what the hopes are of getting the nuclear terror under some further control. That's the topic that I think above all has been on our minds. And I suggest that, unless there's some other urgent observation, we postpone it until tomorrow morning, and that anybody continue informal discussion who wishes. After all, the Secretary of State has gained three hours coming here from California, so for him it's only something like seven o'clock.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V1b
SHOT NO. 110/1

1.

JKG:

I was operating in that precise truth, that adherence to total fact, that is so marked in Kissinger diplomacy, as I read about it in the newspapers. I'm not going to lead the discussion this morning, other than to interrupt on occasion, perhaps just to change its venue. I was reproved sharply last night by Jack Jones for having trangressed normal working hours, and perhaps what he hopes one day to regard as a normal working week, so my thought is that we could meet for an hour, at most an hour and a half, this morning and then do no more - break up for whatever informal discussion or amusement everybody can find, and I thought the question I would hope we might discuss this morning is how we escape from the nuclear terror. I hope that it wouldn't necessarily be confined to narrow issues of negotiation but would invoke the larger question of foreign policy, but I must say I do hope that we can for once talk about the affirmative question of how to do it, rather than the past questions of blame. As Mr. (I) and I were discussing earlier this morning, in the ashes it would be very difficult to determine who was responsible, and before getting on to that subject I wanted to ask whether there were any further thoughts growing out of last night's discussion from (G) or others when we cut it off somewhat arbitrarily at bedtime - you wanted to pursue, or Secretary's or anybody else?

K:

I don't even think we can remember what we talked about last night. (LAUGHTER)

JKG:

All right, I couldn't be happier than to leave it. Ralph, did you have some further thoughts? Well then, let's return to the subject of the day. How do we ensure that we do have some grandchildren? Ted, you stand between the relevant powers, so you lead off.

B:

I'm not sure it's a very good thing for me to lead off on this one. I thought that the two super powers would really set out their positions.

JKG:

It's only appropriate ... they be given a suitable sense of modesty ...

B:

Because you said that we don't necessarily want to concentrate on negotiation, but after all that is going to be the main feature.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V16
SHOT NO. 110/1 CONTD.

2.

JKG:

I think I mis-spoke on that. What I don't want to concentrate on is past blame. (I) has persuaded me that we're wicked and everybody else has persuaded me that the Soviets are wicked, of course which I deeply believe, and having established both of those points I'd like not to pursue them further.

B:

Well, let me just give a brief introduction so that the others can carry on. My experience has been over the last fifteen years that the way we make progress is by negotiation, which one has to accept is very hard bargaining and which takes a certain amount of time to achieve - in fact much longer than anybody realises - and that when an agreement is reached, then it has stuck, and if one takes the various agreements which we've had in the Test Ban Treaty which we negotiated as the government with the American administration and the Soviet Union, it took us a long time for us to get it and there wasn't everything in it which we would have liked, but on the other hand this has stuck. And then when we came to the non-proliferation there was a similar long period of very hard negotiation, but once this was reached it stuck, and so I think there is room for reasonable optimism about this. It does mean that one's got to be prepared to take a considerable amount of time and it's pretty rough going before you reach a conclusion. Now I think that the other good thing which has happened recently is that there is an agreement now for on site inspection which is the first time that we've reached this. Now we worked for this in the late 50's, so it's really taken fifteen years before we've reached that point. But now we've reached it, it ought to stick, so far as the agreement is made, and this I think again gives cause for hope in the future. Well then, when we come to the broad sphere which you want to deal with today, I think there are perhaps more difficulties about handling it in public, and if I could speak from a European point of view, then there is always this underlying question as to the extent to which the two super powers are going to agree about something which is in their interests and Europe is going to be omitted. I don't myself believe there is cause for that anxiety, but one cannot ignore the fact that it is there and it goes very deep. Now this is a complication particularly for (K) in carrying on negotiations of this kind. The next complication is that we're moving into a period in which there are other nuclear powers, not only the super powers

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V16
Shot 112/1

1;

E:

Well I think that (B) has stated the case admirably and there's very little I'd like to add so far as Europe is concerned. Incidentally my own history is nothing but the negotiation of the verification agreement between the European community and the international atomic energy organisation relating to the non-proliferation treaty, but there's one point that I'd like to add and I'd very much like to have some discussion, and that is if the nuclear future of the world was simply determined by em relations between the United States of America and the Soviet Union I would not be particularly worried. I'd be quite prepared to settle for the kind of cautious optimism which eh (B) has expressed. However it seems to me that the real problems we're going to face are the two problems of eh nuclear proliferation which you mentioned and of nuclear terrorism, and it seems to me that we really haven't devoted enough thought to these two problems, and I would like to underline the latter problem of nuclear terrorism. Many countries now have nuclear power stations; we are in the nuclear age whether we want it or not; whatever people say in places in which such nuclear power stations are erected they are there. We therefore have nuclear waste, we have the whole problem of disposing of nuclear waste, we've dealt with this at least in some countries. I believe in a rather cavalier manner, I could give examples from within the European community, and yet it is quite evident that we are producing things as by-products of nuclear energy, which could be used by relatively small groups of people and do tremendous damage, indeed in the end endanger whole cities and perhaps even more. And I wonder whether we shouldn't devote as much attention to the related questions of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism as we do to arrangements between the two super powers, and I would very much like to see some sort of discussion on this. Frankly I was asked in the course of our discussion by Tom in fact whether I was on the whole optimistic or not about the future of industrious societies and of mankind, and my answer was and is that if it were not for the nuclear threat, I would probably be on the whole optimistic and believe that we can cope with all the major issues ahead of us in the developed and in the developing world, but the nuclear threat itself is something which I believe we haven't coped with at all, and I'm profoundly frightened about the next twenty years and what might happen quite apart from what the super powers do.

JKG: Well I suppose we should get back to the super powers.

I: Well, you know, we have discussed Angola a little bit yesterday. I really don't want to begin ....

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V16
Shot 112/1 CONTD.

2.

JKG:

I propose we put a moratorium on Angola ...

I:

I don't want to begin just now. But the only thing I would like to see in this connection, that we can have in the future events which either of the countries wouldn't like and if this would be protectful put in ..... our agreements in this crucial field and I think that the core of Soviet/American relations, the core interest there, our interest coincide and also corresponds with the interest of other countries is the prevention of nuclear war and arm control. So if we postpone it or delay it the, because of some events, we won't have very much progress, and I think you cannot separate absolutely this event from other events, but nevertheless I think it must be regarded as the core problem of our relations and we must go on with it. I think we cannot underestimate the things which we have done already. One could suspect that the picture would look much gloomier if we hadn't this agreement in '72. I have in mind a special agreement on KBM. If we hadn't Vladivostok, maybe the things would be still worse, but nevertheless we have to look, to be very realistic about it and we can see that despite detente, despite many agreements we have concluded, the arms race goes on and on some very dangerous points it intensifies. And I am very much concerned. Well, I'll keep to your advice although it's nice even in such boom situations to know that you are morally right, but I feel that we have the satisfaction. I won't speak about it but I'll put out one of the problems which makes me especially concerned, that the political process of negotiating arms control lags very much behind technological progress in the armaments field, and so we're getting some sort of vicious circle when we have to try to solve all problems and meantime new weapons systems are created which bring in even more complicated problems. And this vicious circle has to be torn somehow. Our proposal was that the only means to do it is to stop this development and deployment of new weapons, at least for a time so that we can sort things out and really ...... and we have made some proposals which are well known, I think, on this point, but I think it is important not only the weapon systems mentioned by ...... but the idea that we stop development and deployment of new weapons of mass destruction, because otherwise it would be difficult. I think that it is a very urgent problem because the time is running out politically, militarily and also maybe economically. Politically - well I don't think we can have for a long time detente if it goes on together with almost unrestricted arms race. Military - I don't think that new weapons systems really show a way out of this strategic nuclear impasse which makes it suicidal for any side to start a nuclear war, but at least illusions can be created with ...... new weapons systems that it can be done, and illusions in political field. They are also very dangerous, they are very destabilising, if one side fears that the other side can acquire.1...... or something like this, this

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V16
Shot 112/1 CONT.

3.

I:

is a destabilising factor in itself. Well, economically, I think the rules of expenditure of new arms it goes ...... If you compare the course of most modern weapon of the worst period of the World War Two, the present ...... you will see that if it lasts for a long time it will be very heavy and may be an unbearable burden even for the richest countries. It appears they will have to suffer very much, so I think, well, practically we have Vladivostok. It was in my opinion, despite some denials on American side, the progress on it was sacrificed to some internal political difficulties which United States had this year ...... I am very sorry about it but we have to start from it, to conclude it as soon as possible, not only for its own merits which are there but also because it will open the way for more substantial and more radical agreements in the future, which must really have to do not only with the old problems but the new dangers including the dangers you have mentioned ...... which are really bringing such danger to our future. And I think this is a point of major importance. I'm absolutely sure that this mutual interest of Soviet Union and United States or other countries but there are many difficulties, a lot of inertia, and many things contribute to it which have to be solved somehow otherwise we'll find ourselves ......

Shot 113/1 ...

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V16
Shot 114/1

1.

K:

I think that there are two basic categories of problems relating to nuclear peace. One is the political relationship of the two countries, the other is a strategic relationship of the two countries. (I) wanted to separate these two and say that the nuclear relationship can be stabilised in the absence of stabilising the political relationship, but given the enormous complexity of discussion on nuclear control and nuclear ... given the fact that it really is a very unusual approach, involving unconventional thinking, there's no practical possibility of getting a significant degree of nuclear disarmament, nuclear control if there is not also a matter of restraint in the political field. I don't think it is possible to advance the proposition that the two countries can press each other to the limit in the political field while they should regularise the armaments with each other, and I think both sides, not just the Soviet Union, have an obligation to keep in mind that they're living in a very unusual world. The sort of games that one can make on the level of traditional balance of power are really quite marginal compared to the risks that are involved in terms of our long term future, and the permanent benefits that can be achieved from it. And while it is of course true that the Soviet Union and United States are two super powers impinging on each other all over the world, are bound to be in competition, and while ideology is going to produce friction, it is also true that the leaders of both sides need a new dimension of thinking and not press every opportunity to its ultimate conclusion. In this respect I have to say that Angola was a tragedy because it wasn't just a gain for a side that the United States did not approve of. We could have lived with an MPLA victory in Angola as we did with the Prelimo victory in Mozambique. But the introduction of Cuban combat forces and these large amounts of Soviet military equipment created a new problem which made it that much more difficult to make progress in the nuclear field, and when I think back over the last 15 years - we were talking about it informally before - I was at the very fringes of the Kennedy administration without any influence whatever, and I know that in 1961 my colleagues entered the government with the firm intention of making progress with relations of the Soviet Union and then the Berlin crisis set matters back for three years to no benefit to anybody. I would therefore urge that there must be selective detente, and I want the record to show that this word has been introduced by (I) and only politeness as a host country induces me to use it. Under no circumstances would I otherwise disobey firm instructions, but it isn't possible either to have detente that is applied to the nuclear field and not to the political field, or detente that applies to the centre of Europe but not to Africa - or Asia. This doesn't mean that we will not be competing to some extent but some limit has to be put on the competition, some restraint has to be exercised, and if this

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V16
Shot 114/1 CONT.

2.

K:

is an injunction I would make it both sides, not just to
the Soviet Union. Now with respect to the nuclear field,
it is unprecedented situation for a nation to face the
problem of having too much useable power. Until the end
of World War Two it would never have occurred to anybody,
that a country could have more power than was either
strategically or politically useful. People who have
spent their lives in military services, and I would suspect
on both sides, find it very hard to come to grips with this
so that in their own analysis they tend to speak of
superiorities and dangers that are really quite theoretical
when casualties involve hundreds of millions locally and
probably over a hundred million in each of our societies in
case of a general nuclear war. So I do agree that there is
a moral and political obligation to push back the danger of
nuclear confrontation and to put some stability into
nuclear armament and then to reduce it. It's in fact
not - it's a practical necessity because I don't think
either side has focussed on the fact that if there is no
agreement in strategic arms they will have to set arms
level entirely unilaterally without knowing what the other
side is doing and under conditions in which the decision
they make today will not take effect for six to ten years,
so that they will either do too much and spark an un-
necessary race or they will do too little and produce an
inequality which whatever its strategic significance may
have a very unfortunate political effect. Even in the
1960's we could set the level of our strategic arms at
almost any level that we desired because we were so far
ahead. The Soviet Union could set the level at any level
they desired because they were so far behind. It had
almost no impact on the calculations on the other. Right
now if the interim agreement ends in October 1977, we'll
be in a never-never land because whatever decision is made
in October 1977 the other side won't see until 1981, and it
is therefore in my view absolutely imperative that we come
to an agreement on strategic arms. Now this is an in-
tellectually complicated problem because the rate of
technology changes more rapidly that up to now has been the
case in negotiations. In order to inject some controversy
into this debate I must say that just as there has to be
restraint in pushing our political contest, we also ought
to be careful in not making proposals which to the other
side tend to appear slightly cynical. For example it's an
eloquent proposal to stop all new weapons deployment. It
would be more convincing if it did not happen at the precise
moment when the Soviet Union has completed its research and
is already in production, and just before we are in produc-
tion of comparable weapons. If the Soviet Union were
prepared to stop the deployment of the SS17/18/19, then we
could talk about stopping the deployment of the D.11 and
Trident. But to be asked that we should stop the new
weapons we have just because they are twelve months away
from production, while the Soviet Union is 12 months into

3.

K:
deploying its new weapons, it's the sort of debate that makes
propoganda out of the negotiation. I believe however that we
can cahieve the Vladivostok ceilings, and I even have the im-
pression that it might be possible to reduce these ceilings into
process of negotiations, if that were without the additional
problem of how you compose - each side ought to be free within
these ceilings to compose them whichever way they choose because
if we could get into a debate of what is a new weapons system and
what is an old weapons system, we'll never end the discussion. I
think this is achievable, it will be difficult in the United States
and I suppose there will be difficulties in the Soviet Union that
we don't know about. I think if that is done while there will
still be large armaments, it will be then so patently absurd to
conduct general nuclear war when there is essential equality on
both sides that this will be a new international fact which will
make it easier to go on from there, and I consider the strategic
arms limitation negotiation an absolutely imperative. They'd
really have to succeed. I agree with (E) that the problem of
nuclear proliferation is one that is approaching with enormous
rapidity and on which we don't have the intellectual grip that
we have on the, the intellectual grip that we have on the SALT
negotiation. I think we know what needs to be done in SALT;
what we don't know is whether we can find a formula to express it,
but there's intellectually very little disagreement even between
the Soviet Union and us; differences apply to categories of
weapons systems, how they should be counted, and I think we will
solve it. In nuclear proliferation I have to say candidly that
I don't have an intellectual grip on its co-dimension. We have
official position but neither the official position nor the
alternatives put forward by our opposition in the debate which
are not really all that different fully satisfy me that we have
understood how to handle it, and I remember that in 1959/1960
there were some seminars at Harvard and M.I.T. on arms control
that made a seminal contribution to all of the debates that have
gone on since, and I would think that this is a problem that could
stand outside investigation and for which the governmental process
is not really all that suitable. With respect to another point,
the role of the European in these negotiations, I think it is in
everybody's interest that these negotiations......

Shot 115/1 ....

K:
... contribute to a sense of security and not enhance a feeling
that a new condominium has been created. On our side we will
try our utmost to consult and not to develop schemes that make
our allies feel insecure. It is getting to be an increasing
problem of how one can consult when the level of confidence
differs so enormously, but it is a problem that we have to solve.

JKG:
Omit Angola as a fundamental point of disagreement. You don't
mind a slightly authoritarian approach here do you?

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V16
Shot 115/1 CONT.

I:

Well, it is understood differently of course by us for a euphemism, and United States, Angola situation. I think that the issue was really over blown out of proportion. I think that would the United States take more care of this problem just at the moment when it became clear or even prior to it that the Portuguese Empire cannot survive, there could be another way of development and there was interference already in this moment. Well, some clandestine support outside of United States, ... overt support on the side of South Africans, and we who pledged our support in accordance, by the way with some United Nations General Assembly resolutions approved in seventies, our support to MPLA felt simply in this situation that we have to ....

JKG: I propose we agree to disagree on Angola ....

K: I express my admiration with the control you have over your families.

JKG: I propose we agree to disagree on Angola and ....

I:

But here is one of the points which is essential. As (K) has said that, well, you cannot have selective detente. I agree with it, you cannot have detente only in political field and go on with arms race as before and this is true vice versa. But I think we have also to understand that there will be events which will - which won't be liked by Soviet Union or won't be liked by United States because the world is in ferment and I think Senator Church expressed this idea very clearly in the Democratic Convention, and it must not stop all the efforts to find ways for solution in this crucial field. And I would disagree with you, (K), on the point that the proposal to stop development in deployment of nuclear weapon heads .... because we have concluded development of some weapons of ours, and here I have to return to history a little bit because, actually, for the whole post-war period the United States had the lead. The had the nuclear weapons, we hadn't; therefore, at the time they had the means of delivery, we hadn't. And it happened all the way. And now as we look at the picture, I think a question arises. Who runs after whom in this arms race actually? I feel that we are trying to achieve well, hard facts of life, so hard that they are cast in metal and .... American weapons all the time. At the same time in United States there is some picture of what the Soviet strategic forces will look or can look in ten or fifteen years, and there is a begin for the weapon systems, and this makes it very difficult. This weapon system that you mentioned - they have an answer for decision made by United States in early seventies - missiles - and this was such a new introduction in arms race that it was clear, I think, for all Americans that we have to do this. If we have agreed that we have approximate parity, then we have to do it. But now United States begins a new round in their defence programmes, and if it is made then we'll follow. But in this case I don't see any way really to break up this other vicious circle, and I think when the proposal was introduced to stop this development, deployment of weapons system, it was not a propaganda. It was, I'm sure, a very sincere offer to United States to discuss these things.

K: I'm sure it was sincere. It was just unilaterally to the
Soviet advantage.

I: No, we only had to reach the level you had achieved a few years
before that.

K: It seems to me that if we talk about the complete realities of
the near future, I think it is possible, with difficulties in
this country but nevertheless possible, to achieve an agreement
on the Vladivostok basis. That will involve some negotiations
to some weapon systems that some of our people have questions
about in the Soviet Union and some on weapon systems that you
people have questions about in the United States. I think that
it's going to be a difficult but manageable negotiation and we
shouldn't forget that in my view ninety percent of the agreement
is either conceptionally or actually completed, so we should
con entrate on that remaining ten percent and get it done. That
can be done without this issue of banning new weapon systems.
That could be put into the next negotiation, but if we complicate
it now by introducing the ban on - I mean we could after all
count within the ceilings all the weapons (COUGH) ... that now
exist on both sides. If we can introduce this new idea of
stopping the development of weapons which has been going on here
for eight years and which are just on the verge of going into
production, then it will lead to enormous complications that will
delay the achievement of the Vladivostok ceilings.

I: But otherwise they will simply be deployed, out of negotiations
anyway.

K: Otherwise they will be deployed because you introduced the idea
of new weapons and we inevitably are going to introduce new \_A\_ weapons, the idea of new weapons, then we will have to define
what is the new weapon, and then we will run into complications
that we can't even imagine today because the experts on both
sides are going to get into endless definitions of what new
weapons are; it's going to be hard enough to get the Vladivostok
agreement negotiated but that I think is manageable. Once that
is done, the concept that there should be a moratorium on new
weapons could well be part of the next phase when we are also
talking about reductions. And so I don't object to the concept.
I object to introducing it at this late stage of the negotiations
in a way that whether you are right or I am right in what is new
will lead to an enormously decisive debate in at least this
country.

B: Are you really saying that the way to deal with this now is just
to be specific about weapons up to the value of stock totals, and
not to try to have an overall principle so to speak which will
lead to all these arguments. The Vladivostok agreement is that
there should be fixed ceilings on 2,400 for both sides, within
which each side can compose it of whatever weapon it wishes that
has been defined as strategic in this agreement. I believe it
may even be possible to reduce these ceilings prior as part of
the SALT negotiation and that would be also important. We are
down now essentially to the two issues. ..... That we go ....
in the Soviet Union, and our cruise missiles. Within the

THE AGE ● UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL V16
Shot 115/1 CONT.

6.

B:

missiles category we really have substantial agreement on about
sixty percent of the issue, so within any two or three month
period that both sides are determined to make a major effort,
there is a good chance of bringing this to a conclusion. If
you now introduce a definition within this agreement that no new
weapons can be part of the 2,400 or 2,200, or whatever the limit
will be, you are starting an entirely new level of negotiation
that I think will set back progress by, well, by probably years
because both sides will then have to define what is a new
weapon. Is there an improvement of a Minuteman or an SS18, a
new weapon, what is new? Is it enlargement, precision? This
I think we ought to leave for another negotiation, (INAUDIBLE)
... the qualitative race. At this moment we have to put a
ceiling on the quantitative race and turn it towards reduction,
and if that is done - what we should get clear is once these
ceilings exist ....

END TAPE ROLL V16

TA-E ROLL NO. V17 A/B
Shot No. 116.

THE AGE OF CERTAINTY

E

I'd really like to raise a question, and perhaps it's slightly polemical question to Mr.... and in a sense to K. I appreciate the point that a concentrated intellectual effort is needed and if K says so it's bound to be true.

I would nevertheless like to hear a little more about how we should see the main actors, who might be the main actors in trying to come to grips with this issue of proliferation and if I may say so, my own naive impression is that as in the whole question of the North/South dialogue and the future of the poor countries, the Soviet Union might well turn out to be somewhat irrelevant to the whole discussion of nuclear proliferation and what happens in the rest of the world.

Certainly it is not my impression, as a reader of newspapers and occasional attender of conferences, there is a major interest, a major interest on the part of the Soviet Union, to try and devise ways in which one could actually control the proliferation of nuclear weapons or the use of nuclear weapons by terrorist groups, or indeed I'm tempted to say, terrorist countries which every now and again happen. That is one side of my question and I'm really sort of trying to get at the political future of this. The other side is really a question for K. To what extent would you believe that it is the United States and the Soviet Union or perhaps the United States alone which has a major role to play in the attempt to control nuclear proliferation, or putting the question the other way round, to what extent do you think there is a function for international institutions which will have to be revived in order to cope with the problem.

/cont.

TAPE ROLL NO. V17 A/B
Shot No. 116.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

E (cont)

Is it a matter of arrangements between major powers or is
it a matter of setting up or reviving existing institutions?

K

Let me say one thing on behalf of the Soviet Union here.

In the field of nuclear proliferation, I must say that the
Soviet Union on the whole has behaved responsibly. It has not
pushed the question, it has not pushed its own export of
nuclear installations to anything like the extent that say
the European community have, and in the nuclear - peaceful
nuclear I'm speaking about, nuclear proliferation

B

But you weren't dealing with that.

E

No, not really, but of course.

K

But that's what you're really talking about. I don't think
that any major country or any country is going to give away
nuclear bombs, so when we're talking about nuclear

proliferation to me it suggests the utilisation of peaceful
nuclear technology for weapon purposes by the receipient
countries. This is my definition of the nuclear proliferation
problem.

B

It limits its definition.

K

Well, there hasn't been any case of a super power except in
our relationship between Britain and the United States which
had its historical origin in the co-operation during World

War II. I don't know a case of the super power making
available nuclear technology for weapons purposes to another
country.

TAPE ROLL NO. V.17
Shot No. 116

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

B

No, I wouldn't challenge that for a moment. What I'm meaning is that when one talks about nuclear proliferation perhaps proliferation is the wrong word, what I mean by it is other countries having nuclear weapons even though they've produced them themselves. I think that, I mean what has been happening is that everybody's been hoping that this problem will go away.

K

If you ask yourself how other countries are going to develop nuclear weapons they can do it in two ways, they can do it either like China by developing the whole nuclear programme on their own. This is one set of programmes. That has happened only once maybe twice in China and in France. The second is that - it could happen again - the second is whether countries develop nuclear weapons on their own but with the indirect assistance of the advanced nuclear countries in the form of peaceful nuclear technology, and both of these problems have to be dealt with. First is much more complicated because the countries that have developed their own nuclear technology are going to start at a very rudimentary level and they're going to interpret any attempt to limit it as an effort to keep them in a subordinate position. The second one could perhaps be affected by the decisions of the nuclear suppliers, but if they do this it runs into major partly ideological and partly psychological problems because it must look to the developing countries as a form of nuclear condominium, and the only effective way you could do it which nobody's prepared to do, no country is prepared to accept, would be to stop the export of nuclear reactors.

/cont

TAPE ROLE O. V.17
Shot No. 116

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

K (cont)

On the other hand, given the price of oil and given the fact that it is a limited resource that will be depleted or substantially depleted in the foreseeable future, the spread of nuclear technology is very probable and will accelerate. That is the basic dilemma, that as these nuclear reactors spread, how does one prevent the diversion of the product to terrorist use, or to national use. This incidentally cannot be done by the United States or the Soviet Union alone, this is an area in which the European Community, for example, and or at least the European individual exporting countries have to participate on the level of total equality, it's not something that we and the Soviet Union can negotiate.

JKG

The case that I have followed with some care is that of India where I think most of us over a decade or more knew that at some juncture, a small amount of plutonium was going to come or a small amount of explosive material was going to come from that Canadian unexpected reactor. But in the absence of, given the quantity and the absence of a delivery system and in the absence of a very plausible purpose, I had the impression that the alarm over the explosion of a nuclear device, so-called in India, while it must have been extremely rewarding for the Indians, had very little world significance, and if this is a pattern of the perspective proliferation there's some danger that we have it slightly out of perspective. I'm constitutionally incapable of minimising this sort of issue but I do have a feeling that it was exaggerated in that case.

THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

K

But I think they're two separate problems. One is, will the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a developing country change the balance between it and the super powers. I think not and I think it may enhance its inferiority because it will - take the case of a country, well let's not mention countries, the case of any of the forseeable developing countries - it will take at least a generation before they can - before they can create any plausible threat to a super power, and would be totally destroyed unless they made themselves part of a nuclear alliance. This would in fact be true even of the European forces. On the other hand, in their relations to each other and in the terrorist use of nuclear weapons, an enormous amount of damage can be done if materials can be diverted and then can be used by people who have demonstrated that they don't care about their own survival, and that can be done relatively easily. In this case it is not any one country's programme but the way it will spread. Now, as between, for example, Pakistan and India. There are a few nuclear weapons on the part of Pakistan might redress a military balance which cannot be redressed by conventional means, or as between Israel and the Arabs.

B

I wouldn't disagree that - threat to an individual super power is unlikely in any sort of time phase in which we are dealing. On the other hand, they are capable of creating a situation in which a super power becomes involved, or finds it very difficult not to become involved.

K

Especially if its part of an alliance system with the super powers.

TAPE ROV. NO. V.17.
Shot No. 117

THE AGE OF CERTAINTY

(ALL CHATTING TOGETHER)

C Yes, and I was asking that rather than the power station one which is more difficult to detach isn't it?

K Well, the power station is the process of enrichment and that is the reprocessing, and each of them has its own problem.

JKG Maybe I can interrupt again, there are three things I would like to here discuss and I'm here reacting to suggestions of my colleagues. First, how the former Premier of Thailand reacts to the slightly condescending tone with which we have characteristically been dealing with countries such as this, admitting I believe that Thailand has no immediate intention of becoming a nuclear power, and I wanted to have a word from 'J', who not uncharacteristically takes strong exceptions to the positions of both K and 'I', and finally in response to a suggestion of 'C', how we assess the problem of the accident of the soldier or sailor all alone by himself in an aeroplane or submarine with a nuclear weapon and the danger that this will go off. Do I state you correctly, K?

B Can one broaden that into mis-judgement - because I think accident is unlikely, mis-judgement is possible.

A I don't think it was a condescending sort of conversation at all. On the contrary I thought it was a very cosy conversation between the super powers. I felt completely out of it, although I felt the cosiness. I was very happy to hear it, but after listening to all that, I just can't help asking myself and the question of what are people like us to do.

/cont