Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Dublin Letter: Brits out: Haughey OutAuthor(s): Dennis KennedySource: Fortnight, No. 114 (Nov. 7, 1975), pp. 7-8Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25545582 .

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FRIDAY 7A NOVEMBER 1975/7

believes that the recent levelling up of local civil service pay to British rates

has had a major impact on salaries in Ulster. The civil service is such a large local employer of professional and administrative labour that any major alteration in its pay trends is likely to influence managerial salaries through

out the province. A glance at the salary levels of heads of function, senior and

middle management in Ulster firms confirms this view.

Salaries received by northern Ireland supporting management com

pare favourably with average UK levels. In fact their pay is on average far better than similar workers in

Scotland, Northern England, or

(excepting senior management) Wales. Unless lower level managers in Ulster wish to move to London or South ?ast

England, they would be far more likely to receive increases in pay by switching firms within the province than by crossing to Britain. The same cannot be said for directors. Levels of remuneration of local directors are the lowest of all regions within the UK.

They are less than half the average salary received by directors in the GLC area. One possible explanation for the relative poverty of Ulster directors is the abundance of branch plants compared with head establishments.

Age might also have some bearing on remuneration. Northern Ireland direc tors tend to be in their early 40's, about

five years younger than the UK

average, although a length of service in the province is on average slightly higher than in Britain.

KEEPING PACE WITH INFLATION Over the last year management

salaries have kept pace reasonably well with inflation. Between 1974 and 1975 the rise in average gross salaries ranged from 21% for chief executives to 28.8% for upper senior managers. Middle

mnagement appears to have fared worse than the rest of the supporting staff, although taxation levelled most increases to around 17-18%.

INDUSTRIAL BREAKDOWN Certain industries reward their em

ployees more generously than others.

Naturally, many supporting managers possess specific qualifications which tie them to one industry group, but in

general fairly hefty salary increases can be had by moving between industries rather than regions. If UK firms with

capital assets of between ?5 and ?25 million are taken as an example, all levels of management are on average

better paid in 'paper and printing' or insurance and banking' than in

AVERAGE SALARIES, 1975

Northern Ireland UK ? ?

Top management Chiefexecutive 10,449 15,853 Deputy Chief Exec. 8,408 13,935 Other directors 7,663 11,194

Supporting management Senior heads

offunction 8,388 8,332 Other heads

offunction 6,256 7,093 Snr management 1 6,209 6,251 Snr management 2 5,836 5,768

Middle man'mentl 5,279 4,848 Middle man'men 2 4,398 4,702

industries such as 'clothing and footwear', 'food and tobacco' or 'construction'. Supporting manage

ment in construction and distributive firms are especially poorly paid.

FRINGE BENEFITS Fortunately the BIM survey also

covers the interesting topic of fringe benefits. The monetary value of these are not included in the salary figures quoted in the survey. Traditionally fringe benefits have been restricted to the highest levels of management and as a consequence their nature and extent are the subject of a great deal of

malevolent gossip by those lower down. The survey reveals, however, that these

perks are far more substantial than the

possession of a key to the executive toilet and shower rooms, but as yet few senior or middle management benefit from them.

Perks confined mainly to directors to directors include free or assisted

housing, free telephones, payment of school fees, chauffeur driven cars or sole use of company car, special pension schemes, and private medical

health insurance. Some benefits have filtrated down the rungs of supporting management, among which are travel accident insurance, car allowances,

ordinary non- or low^contributory pen

sions, life insurance, and widows

pensions. Surprisingly, loans at

advantageous rates of interest are most

commonly obtained by middle

management, although one-in-ten

directors benefit in this way. The most common form of salary

structure both for top and supporting managerial staff is one based on

grading but no job evaluation. This

type of structure is used by nearly half o all the firms participating in the BIM

survey. Over one-fifth, however, either lack any system of grading or job evaluation base pay purely on the latter.

Pay trends in the civil service and the

willingness of staff to move in search of

higher pay are likely to keep supporting managerial salaries in

Ulster on a par with average British levels. While Mr Stewart-Moore is

unlikely to face a demand from Gallaher's lower management for

parity with his pay, he might find it a bit crowded in the shower room in the not too distant future.

Dublin Letter

Brits Out?

Haughey Out As someone rather unkindly pointed out in Dublin the other night, the last time the British withdrew from Ireland under pressure, it led to a civil war. And that war was not between Catholics and Protestants, but among Catholics, and it cost the country a

great deal in human lives and financial resources, and more than half a

century in political growth. Mr Jack Lynch stole the centre ofthe

stage from Dr Herrema last week,

though his enthusiasm for being in the

public eye must have been about at

great as the Dutch industrialist's, under the circumstances. He did it by suggesting another, perhaps less

precipitate, withdrawal. Since then Mr Lynch and Fianna

Fail have been berated North and

South, even more North than South, for both adopting a wrong policy, and for playing politics with the North, Some voices have been raised, however, to point out that while the policy of

calling for a British withdrawal may be

"wrong" in that it will not help things

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8/FORTNIGHT

in the North, it is at least a return to the traditional Fianna Fail position, and an end to the ambiguity on which that

party's Northern stance has been based under Mr Lynch.

Lynch's leadership But then as a policy statement on the

North, the Fianna Fail document may not need to be taken seriously at all.

Was it, the men in informed circles are

asking, a policy document on the

North, or on the leadership of Mr

Lynch? Mr Lynch's leadership has, of

course, been in question since the day he won it in 1966, slmoing in between the conflicting hopefuls such as Charlie

Haughey, George Colley and even

Neal Blaney. He turned out to be a surprising

vote-catcher, and a very popular Taoiseach as far as the country was

concerned and for those qualities a

party will forgive almost anything. But the vote-catching just failed to make it in the 1973 general election, and since then Mr Lynch has looked less and less like a leader and potential prime

minister. He himself dithered over the chance of the presidency when Mr Childers died and has been a less than forceful party chief ever since.

What has kept Mr Lynch in business is not so much the lack of an obvious

successor, as the presence of one?Mr

Charlie Haughey. There have long been people in the party dedicated to

keeping Mr Haughey out of the chair for personal rather than political reasons, but the real objections to his

leadership date from his dismissal from the Government and the arms

conspiracy trial of 1971.

Rehabilitated Mr Haughey has, indeed, been rehabilitated and restored to the Fianna Fail front bench, but has also been regarded as the representative of a more traditional line on the North than Mr Lynch's moderation through ambiguity. Now Mr Lynch has been forced to back-down on the North, not so much because the party really wants a change of policy in that area, but because it wants a change of leader, and the Northern line is the only policy area with which Mr Lynch is ciearly personally identified.

To the generality of the party, the

argument runs, a change of rhetoric on

the North means little or nothing, other than a way of pushing out Mr Lynch. But if in time it puts in Mr Haughey, then the repercussions for the North could be dire enough. Apart efltlrefy from what sort of policy Mr Haughey

might adopt if ever he became

Taoiseach, the presence in power in Dublin of a man who had but recently been charged with conspiring to import arms in defiance of the government of

which he was a member?never mind

that he was found not guilty?would not be the sort of thing helpful to

peace-makers and bridge-builders. Is there an alternative to Mr Haughey?

Inside the present Dail party only Dessie O'Malley?Mr Lynch's Minis ter for Justice at the height of the Northern crisis?has been mentioned as a possible leader. His admirers, who

probably include Mr Lynch, say he has the ability, but he is far from being a

popular young man with his fellow FF TDs.

Dennis Kennedy

Crossing the Sectarian Divide

As an antidote to Jack Lynch's tribal statement of last week we print here

an article by TREVOR WEST,

independent member ofthe Irish

Senate, which looks realistically at the long term responsibilities ofthe

governments in both Westminster and Dublin.

In the context of John Simpson's article on an autonomous Ulster (Fortnight, 26 September) it is interesting to look at the various moves made by

Protestant political leaders to cross the sectarian divide. Terence O'NehTs was

the first and he failed to bring a

recalcitrant Unionist party along with him. The formation of the Executive under Brian Faulkner indicated that a

considerable number of Protestants

(supporters of the UPNI, Nl Labour and Alliance parties) were prepared to work together with the majority of

Catholics represented by the SDLP, but the Executive collapsed because its

political base was not broad enough. The recent move by William Craig and

his supporters away from the UUUC

position of no compromise with the

SDLP seems to be a signal that another

group of Protestants who would have

opposed the power-sharing Executive are now convinced that a genuine

Protestant-Catholic deal has to be done

If peace and stability are to be achieved in Northern Ireland.

The Craig move, which is given its

political teeth by the backing of the UDA (who are now having second

thoughts), is an (admittedly one-sided) indication ofthe growing realisation by the Ulster people that they, and they alone, hold the key to the problem. A clear view of this important development has been obscured by the

tendency of the two communities in the North to look over their shoulders one to the Republic and the other to the

U.K. The emergence of a common

identity as Ulstermen involves a

process of looking forward rather than backward and the pragmatic accept ance of the fact that no real progress can be made without true partnership.

If Craig and the SDLP were to reach

agreement on a form of government for Northern Ireland would the right wing Protestants on the one hand and the Provisional IRA on the other have

enough support to scupper this

attempt at a solution? The answer to this question is probably Yes while UK

policy remains as it is at present and if no indication is given of Britain's long term plans for Northern Ireland. In

spite ofthe fact that everyone distrusts British intentions (same issue of

Fortnight) almost every political party (including those in the South) is happy to use Britain's presence to shield it from its real responsibilities.

A clear statement of Britain's long term intentions should be accompa nied by a statement from the

Government in Dublin that if a

Parliament were established in Northern Ireland which manifestly obtained the support of both communities that (a) Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution would be amended by referendum to remove the sovereignty claim and that (b) an extradition treaty be signed between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Since any such arrangement for an

Ulster parliament would require the

prior approval of both the Westminster and Dublin governments it is reasonable to expect that financial

support for the new Northern Ireland administration would come from both these sources. Although there has been a dispute over the amount ofthe British

subvention to N.L there is no argument concerning its source. The burden which Britain has borne up to the

present should be shared for a time at

lease by the UK and the Republic. Southerners who, by omission or by

design, may have contributed to the violence in Ulster would view the situation differently if a subvention for Northern Ireland became a charge on

their exchequer.

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