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TELEVISION NEWS AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 141

preserving the Social Contract between Government and trade unions, no
less than the Prime Minister will be doing much the same thing at the
Welsh TUC later this week—but again for the benefit of a much wider
audience.
Mr Millan’s message was that the next phase of the pay policy would not
be an easy one to work out. How far and how quickly it was possible to
return to normal collective bargaining without throwing away the benefits
from the last two years in a general free-for-all. A wages explosion, he
predicted, would push prices and unemployment even higher still and
could bring down the Government.
At this point there was a direct actuality extract depicting Millan setting out what
he thought the consequences of a Conservative Government for Scotland would
be.
In this section of the transcript we see some of the key devices employed for
handling not only the expected opposition of the Scottish TUC, but also other
unions already known to be likely to oppose the Government’s policy. The
narration, following the lead set by Millan and the Government Ministers, forms
this likely opposition into a call for a wages explosion. In this case the advocates
of opposition are presented as a ‘pretty left-wing gathering’, which in the register
of television news talk has the effect of marking them off from ‘the moderates’,
that ‘much wider audience’ spoken of in the narrative, which might just be
seduced by decisions taken at this conference.
Following the actuality quote, the Industrial Correspondent set about
contextualizing the decision that the Scottish TUC might take on the issue of pay
restraint. To convey the significance of the decision he said:
Tomorrow the Scottish miners will lead the opposition to interference of
any kind in free collective bargaining. If this move gains majority support,
as it might, although there is some doubt tonight, it will really be the
Scottish TUC doing its usual militant thing; opposing incomes restraint.
And the foreign exchange markets were well-advised to ignore this. A
couple of union leaders up here from London pointed out to me that issues
like the Social Contract and pay policy are subject to discussion between
the Government and TUC—the British TUC, not the Scottish TUC. (BBC
News, 19 April 1977)

The perspective on the Scottish TUC is, from the evidence of the final remarks,
again licensed. It is not wholly the invention of the Industrial Correspondent,
since he reproduces the statements of ‘a couple of union leaders up here from
London’. Nevertheless, the perspective is supplemented by the reference to the
possible majority support for free collective bargaining as the Scottish TUC
‘doing its usual militant thing’ and by opening this part of the account with a
reference to the ‘Scottish miners’. It is a massively reassuring perspective; it is