A FOURTH year of freeze on public-sector pay - for five million workers such as doctors, nurses, teachers, civil servants and the armed forces - announced by Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, will understandably provoke a hostile reaction.

But is that part of the ploy?

True, the manifest reason for the continuing curb is the government's struggle for scope for tax cuts in November's pre-election budget.

And Mr Clarke has the ammunition of low inflation to suggest there is no upward pressure on pay in the economy.

Even so, he knows there are many good reasons why the workers and their unions may plunge into unrest.

To begin with, in addition to another year of minimal wage growth, public employees will have to suffer job cuts and increased workloads as the funding of what pay increases they do get is to be self-financing.

Add to this the discontent over the government's hands-off approach to bosses' pay - that of the so-called "fat cats" running the privatised utilities and the company directors whose pay rises last year rose four times the rate of inflation.

And rubbing salt in the wound is the 26 per cent pay increase MPs' voted themselves only three months ago.

But if, on the surface, Mr Clarke points to fiscal prudence and low inflation as the necessity for "realistic and affordable" public sector pay settlements, beneath it may he and the government not anticipate the backlash with secret relish?

For was it not the public-sector unions on the rampage that scuppered Labour last time?

Firing them up now might be a cunning and useful election strategy - demonic, even.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.