Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'— that they are occasionally attended by the Secretary of State for Employment, yes,' completed Lucas, cutting short the waffle. Gryce, to the surprise of Vaart, raised an arm, brought it down again in an extravagant swoop, at the same time snapping his fingers in a gesture of exasperated triumph. He had been trying to remember all along who the important minister was. He knew the name, knew the face, had seen him many a time on the television news but just couldn't place his Cabinet appointment, the present Government chopped and changed about so much. When he had given the man's name to Pam he hadn't liked to parade his ignorance by asking which minister he was when he was at home, and she of course would have assumed that he knew already, so she hadn't enlightened him.

The Secretary of State for Employment. It was beginning to make sense.

'On the first point,' Lucas was saying, 'I was only trying to underline what I was about to go on to say: that the Board very much have the interests of all British Albion personnel at heart. They could of course meet anywhere in London, but they have all along insisted, not only in our case but in the case of all the other equivalent companies, on holding their deliberations in-house, on the premises, where any problems that arise can be immediately dealt with. Think of them if you will rather like the governors of one's school on their annual inspection.

'On the second point, no of course we didn't shout it from the rooftops when the Secretary of State insisted on visiting what he was pleased to call "the front-line trenches". If you ask me why we didn't shout it from the rooftops, then we arrive at my purpose in standing on this platform and addressing you this evening. The plain truth, as of course you will have gathered from shall we say our reticence in other directions, is that we do not want the public at large to know what we are doing at British Albion and elsewhere; because if the public did know, then it would bring the Government down.'

Lucas allowed himself a pause to let this sink in. He changed his stance, leaning slightly forward to stress the importance of what he was about to say and looking rather as if he would have liked a lectern or reading-desk to support him.

'What do we do at British Albion, ladies and gentlemen? I think many of you, perhaps most of you, already know the answer, although you have perhaps not wished to look it in the face. We do not do anything at British Albion. The office in Gravechurch Street, like similar establishments up and down the country, exists to provide employment. It has no other function.'

'Don't you know, Mr Christ?' Copeland had said. ' Of course you know. We all know.' And Gryce had known, for some time now, but he had never wanted to admit it. He didn't want to admit it even now.

Evidently that was the general reaction, for as Lucas paused again there was an uncomfortable silence, almost an ashamed silence Gryce would have said. The only sound was of shuffling as members of the audience examined their feet, or in some cases straddled the backs of their chairs, with affected airiness and looked up at the ceiling or at the walls: anything but look at one another, or at the speaker.

'You all read your newspapers, or if you don't, it's certainly not for the want of leisure to do so in most cases! You know about the economic difficulties that have to be faced, by the Western world in general and by this country in particular. You know the unemployment figures and you know that they are moving in an upward rather than a downward direction. What you may not know is that if our unemployment statistics were to be calculated in real terms, that is to say if we were to add the numbers of people who are technically employed but who are not engaged in productive or useful work, the figure would be so astronomically high that any remaining confidence in our prospects for recovery would be dealt a mortal blow.

'That is one reason why institutions like British Albion are maintained. Another is the strictly practical one that it costs marginally less to keep you employed than it would to keep you unemployed. In the first place, your salaries cost the taxpayer little more than would have to be found in unemployment benefits, bearing in mind that you are still paying income tax and national insurance contributions; and on top of that, you are in effect servicing your own welfare. Imagine the army of social security officials who would have to attend to your financial and other needs if your jobs at British Albion had not been created for you! So to that extent, ladies and gentlemen, you are self-sufficient and a burden to none. I'd like you to think about that, if you will.

'That being said, I don't want you to run away with the notion that the Government set up British Albion and similar companies with the premeditated intention of creating a honeycomb of sinecures. That wasn't the original idea at all. The original idea was to assist smaller firms that were in difficulties for one reason or another. They were to be given Government support. In fact, not to beat about the bush, they were to be acquired by Government as going concerns — call it backdoor nationalization if you like. Indeed you could go further and call it clandestine nationalization, for the essence of the scheme was that no one should know the State had anything to do with it. To Joe Public, it would look as if these ailing companies had been taken over by a bigger company that had mushroomed up from nowhere and was anxious to diversify its interests. It made sound commercial sense: these small firms would now reap the benefit of centralized resources. Instead of buying their materials individually in small quantities, they could rely on one big buying department to do their shopping for them. Instead of a dozen or twenty small fleets of broken-down vans and lorries, there'd be a streamlined, up-to-date transport pool. Accounting would be centralized: look at the saving there. And there'd be a powerful sales division, with export contacts far beyond the reach of a tiny family-run business out in Rugby or Harrow-on-the-Hill.

'Now I know what some of you are thinking — that Government was ducking its responsibilities. If the scheme failed, no one could point a finger at policies of State intervention because no one would know that the State had been in any way involved. That's fair enough, the point is there to be made. But supposing the scheme had succeeded! What a shot in the arm for business confidence! And the private sector would have been given all the credit, since all and sundry would believe that British Albion was a part of the private sector. So really, your Government was hiding its light under a bushel.

'In the event, British Albion as it was originally conceived never got off the ground. Nor did any of the analogous concerns such as United Products. The rescue operation came too late. All those small firms, those "subsidiary companies" of ours so assiduously investigated by Mr Seeds, had simply had their day. They had gone to the wall even before Albion House opened for business. Even more regrettably, the company from which British Albion so to speak acquired its credentials, namely the Albion Printeries, had also collapsed, as had the various export firms and so on from which British Albion's companion companies likewise took their antecedents. We now believe that this was the wrong way of going about it, that these firms couldn't possibly have survived the burden of reorganization and expansion that was thrust upon them. It was a management failure from which we have learned much.'

Gryce heard a smacking sound. It was Vaart repeatedly ramming his right fist into the palm of his left hand. The knuckles were white.

'What to do? Leave all these shining new office blocks empty? A fine shop window that would have been for British industry! Besides, ladies and gentlemen, there was another problem. With business continuing to contract, there was an immense shake-out of labour, particularly clerical labour, as one firm after another embarked on a ruthless programme of rationalization. But of course you know that only too well, for you were the ones who were shaken out.