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142 MEDIA STUDIES

tantamount to saying that the opposition is mere ritual and, moreover, will have
little impact on the eventual outcome of ‘national’ negotiations.
When, on the following day, the move to oppose any form of wage restraint
was ‘narrowly defeated’, the Industrial Correspondent back-pedalled somewhat
on his previous estimation of the significance of the decision. He said:

This is not a conference of any real significance in the decision-making
process. But at this stage in the attempt to work out a phase three of pay
restraint, the Government might be quite relieved that even the unions up
here haven’t voted for a free-for-all. (BBC News, 20 April 1977)
In the course of advocating ‘terminating the Social Contract’ at the Scottish TUC,
Mick McGahey had argued that the main reason for doing so was that ‘the
Government had not fulfilled its pledges within the Contract’. An earlier item in
the same bulletin in which this was quoted could have been seen to have
provided some evidence to support McGahey’s case. The opening item of the
bulletin, read out in the studio direct to camera, announced:

As the debate on pay policy continues, figures out today show that the rate
of increase in earnings continues to fall. It’s now well below the current
rate of price inflation. Average earnings in February were 11 l/2 per cent
higher than at the same time last year. The increase in prices over the same
period was just over 16 per cent.

Although the item on the Scottish TUC followed on immediately, no explicit
connections were made, for to have done so would have run contrary to the plot
structure of television’s accounts.
The proceedings of the Scottish TUC, as represented by television, are of
interest only because of the potential threat they posed to the Government’s
strategy. The predominant feature of the plot adopted was to determine ‘how
well’ the Government was doing, a feature which was retained throughout the
following months. In May the information that ‘the rate of inflation was back
where it was nearly a year ago. It’s now 17.5 per cent’ (BBC News, 22 May 1977)
did not lead to any fundamental revision of the plot. Rather, it was transformed
into a misfortune, a test of the Government’s fitness. The account noted that ‘at a
time when the Government is trying to win a third year of pay restraint, the
relationship between pay and prices is not helping’. But later the Government
was redeemed. The narrator (BBC Industrial Correspondent) pointed out that
‘the Government sticks by its forecast of inflation falling to 13 per cent by the
end of the year’, and that ‘the best that can be said about the figures is that they
were expected by the Government, who made it clear before today that inflation
won’t start coming down until the second half of the year’. That the figures were
expected, known about, implies that the Government also knew how to deal with
them.