Chapter 1497 The Cause of Peace

Alan Wilson, who was struggling for a better future for the civil service family, was a little surprised to be faced with the doorstep of Oldfield, the head of MI6, and then gestured to have a seat, “What is it.”

“A machine tool export deal on foreign trade may have violated the ban of the Paris Coordinating Committee, in order to avoid trouble.”

Oldfield has not finished, Alan Wilson has reached out and shook his hand, “Oldfield, to be honest with today’s British machine tools to face the environment, you can not make this kind of to break their own legs, see other people rushing to the finish line of the action, understand?”

The glory days of British machine tools are too far gone, the highs were almost a hundred years ago, but there is no denying that there are still machine tool companies in the UK today.

Machine tools are a big concept, after all, there are quite a few classifications of industrial disciplines, so it leads to the fact that each country has its own strengths in machine tools, and the UK is not de-industrialized yet, so of course it has its own machine tool companies.

Of course in this world is not considered prominent is also true, can only be considered a member of the masses, the United Kingdom themselves are imported a lot of German machine tools to use, but by no means no.

Fifteen years ago the U.S. Bendix company for the first time in the CNC milling machine to achieve optimal adaptive control. Ten years ago, the United States of America’s Fox first proposed the concept of institutional optimization. The British company Molins developed the “System 24” on the basis of the basic concept of a flexible manufacturing system proposed by Williamson.

Originally not very competitive, not to mention facing Germany, even encountered France and other countries are also a headache, it is not easy for someone to be interested in, MI6 do not come out to add to the chaos, do not know that Whitehall is now busy because of the pay rise program?

Oldfield was silent, Alan Wilson said with the tone of a traitor among us, “In fact, as the head of intelligence you understand quite well, European countries secretly exported the Soviet Union how many things on the Paris Coordinating Committee’s embargo list? There’s a lot of pressure on all countries right now, so a little bit of export is a little bit of export. Nothing will happen, and will the U.S. really get into trouble for it?”

Except for Japan! There was no need for Oldfield to know about this heartfelt addition; Japan was in a unique situation, essentially being given a hard time by the U.S. on borrowed time.

First of all, there is a premise that the Soviet Union is not backward in machine tools, themselves in some specific areas of machine tools are very strong, the vast majority of Soviet machine tools for their own use, but also exported to the world.

European countries exported a lot of machine tools to the USSR, and also imported Soviet electrolytic processing machines and electrochemical polishing machines, and I don’t see anyone being penalized for it.

Japan’s machine tools weren’t so advanced that they were more powerful than Europe’s, and it’s important to realize that Germany and Switzerland were the industry benchmarks in this area, and Japan never made an impact on Europe in the high-end industrial sector.

The Toshiba incident erupted in the context of one of the most intense trade wars of all time between Japan and the United States, the automobile trade war. The importance of the automobile industry can be seen from the fact that the automobile industry is the real estate for the whole world, considering that people put houses and cars side by side.

Japan and the United States in the trade war, before the textiles, steel, electronics and automotive trade war is not intense compared to the real estate for the whole world Japan does not want to be caught, but the United States has long been the Nissan car invasion can not stand the same, the determination to reach the unprecedented, this is the two countries in the trade war is the most intense one.

Toshiba incident can not only have the role of Japan, there is also the role of Norway, Norway has long been to the Soviet Union to provide artillery automatic targeting computer, and this computer is also the Paris Coordinating Committee strictly prohibited exports to the Soviet Union.

It is clear that the Soviet Union and Norway had already established a secret channel for the delivery of special goods.

Norway had nothing to do with it, and Japan was screwed over by the Toshiba incident, so there was no need to worry about the ban, which was only effective for specific countries, such as Japan, which had a high status in the free world.

This is just a small episode, Alan Wilson turned his head and busy work together and the union pay rise negotiations to go, of course, he must do his best not to let the union to achieve the purpose, this is the duty, there is no free lunch in the world, although after many years of hard work, the British pound than the historical situation is much better, but there must be recognized, the international mainstream settlement currency is the dollar.

It can no longer be like before World War II, when Britain was free to use the pound to buy the goods it needed from everywhere in the world, and the threat of inflation caused by printing money exists in Britain.

Once the pound is under pressure and devalued, the effect of pay rises will be diluted, something the Treasury has warned about several times, and hopefully the trade unions on their part understand the treachery involved.

For its part, Whitehall wants to add a framework that would increase the five percent limit on weekly pay increases at each of the three-year stages, making it clear that the unions cannot continue to always use the threat of strikes to hold the government to ransom.

“I didn’t realize the general secretary thought the unions were holding the government to ransom by fighting for their legitimate rights.” Union leader Goodman was almost furious.

“Mr. Goodman don’t be angry, it’s just a difference in perspective.” Alan Wilson waved his hand and said, “It’s good to have ideals, but reality often doesn’t allow for too many ideals.”

At this time he suddenly remembered a movie line, you are still young, it’s right to have ideals, but when you are my age and your family needs money, and I don’t know how to do anything and have nothing, you know how important money is.

In the negotiations with the union representatives think of such a sentence, may be a little less appropriate, but it is also true that the heart of the matter, if the union does not ask for a pay rise, the civil servants’ demand for a pay rise is okay to suppress, if the union is not compromised, no matter how much the increase will end up, civil servants have to go up even more.

But Goodman clearly had no consideration for this, demonstrating the fearlessness of the working class and showing Whitehall bureaucrats what it means to say that death does not belong to the working class.

“There are times when I have to admire the blindness of people who have no idea what the problem is.” Walking out of the negotiation site, Alan Wilson turned to Frank and said, “Whatever demands they make, the ultimate beneficiaries must surely have a share of us, that’s how important it is to establish rules.”

The unions, for their part, were clearly not going to sit still, with Goodman then staging a protest from London’s Glenwick, and Whitehall responding with RCMP surveillance.

“Heh, women!” In the Cabinet Secretary’s office, Alan Wilson looked putty-faced with the photograph taken, “Frank, what do you feel when you see this one?”

“Women, such a large percentage of minorities.” Frank took the photo and took one look at it, “But from what we know is this, foreign immigrants and women are instead extremely keen on union affairs, more so than native born citizens.”

“Of course I’m not hiding anything, the average weekly wage for these minorities and that too for women is twenty-eight pounds, a fraction of the average weekly wage of seventy-two pounds, and less than the standard average weekly wage for women.”

“The average weekly wage for women is forty-eight pounds, so that does seem a bit less, no wonder they are so keen to get involved in union affairs. This man, Goodman, has also made attempts to use foreign immigrants to put pressure on us.” Alan Wilson sighed, truth be told if it was Margaret Thatcher in power now he would have given the army advice to take to the streets.

And just now a thought flashed through his mind to leave the other side for Grace to sort out, but on reflection the decision was still in Callaghan’s hands.

Within the union, decentralization had been going on as well. As time reached the late sixties and the post-war generation grew up to make industrial democracy stand out, union members felt they should be involved in decisions, including when and where and whether to strike, which had ordinarily been left to the union leaders to make the call.

“Can we start with public employees?” Frank offered his own suggestion, it wasn’t as if the union didn’t have people who worked for the government, wasn’t the simplest example firefighters.

“We can’t hurt our own people.” Alan Wilson shook his head slowly but firmly, he was the Cabinet Secretary and had to defend the interests of the civil service as a whole, he couldn’t fight the unions at the expense of the government employed people within the unions, it wouldn’t be effective, it would only subject the group to the pincer movement.

“What’s done is done, we’ve done what we’re supposed to do, the decision is still with the Cabinet, with the Prime Minister to be precise. The Prime Minister can think for himself.”

Alan Wilson has been blocking it for three months now, playing the role that Whitehall should be playing, so naturally the Prime Minister will have to sort out the rest himself, and he doesn’t want to concern himself with this crap yet.

After most of the year’s appeals, as well as the South Rhodesian white armed more and more to break through the lower limit began to lay a heavy hand on the suppression of the two sides of the South Rhodesian confrontation finally face up to the appeal of London, there is a hint of want to talk about the idea, Wick informed the news to Alan Wilson, who has just been freed from the matter of negotiation with the trade unions.

Ian Smith, after his last return to Southern Rhodesia, faced up to the advice given by Alan Wilson to make the black armies serving the present government less of a worry. Indeed a series of cohesive efforts were opened to provide material security for the families of the black soldiers and a promise that even if they failed, arrangements could be made for them to go and live in British Kenya to avoid reprisals at a later date.

The battlefield in Southern Rhodesia became bloody all of a sudden, the white armies, though elite enough, had such a small population base that they did not have the strength to fight against guerrilla warfare, and the battlefield depended on the fighting strength of the black armies.

But although Ian Smith rallied the hearts and minds of the people, but after the independence of Angola and Mozambique, the pressure of Southern Rhodesia has been unprecedented, Ian Smith does not have the ability to successfully suppress.

While on the one hand Ian Smith dared not relax his repression, on the other he began to openly threaten to completely destroy all traces of modernity in Southern Rhodesia, forcing a temporary ceasefire in the revolt.

“What French behavior.” Alan Wilson exclaimed, “Let the two sides come to London, the doors of the Round Table are open to all peace-loving people, and, by the way, President Carter can be asked if he should take the lead.”