POLITICS
How the rediscovery of Europe can cause a slight head cold
FERDINAND MOUNT
When seeing oneself at 'a turning- point in history' and suffering from jetlag, one does tend to say peculiar things. On her return from Moscow, Mrs Thatcher told the House of Commons that 'for the first time since the revolution 70 years ago, there is now an understanding that the Soviet system, as it exists at present, is not working. It must become a more open society. . . we should welcome this change of direction.' The Russians, it seems, were all shambling along for 70 years thinking their system was the cat's whiskers, and one day they spotted something amiss and called in this awfully nice man Gorbachev, who had no connection with the old gang and who immediately started spraying glas- nost all over the place and cheered it up no end. Mix in 'the spontaneous warmth and friendliness' of the people of the Soviet Union, and you have a really delightful part of the world.
This is the sort of thing Mr Tony Benn used to get laughed at for saying. Nobody is laughing at Mrs Thatcher. Her trip is generally agreed to be a dazzling success in every sense. Above all, she has left Neil Kinnock scrabbling about in third place in the opinion polls like a peevish squirrel. Her decision on the election date is now regarded as a luxurious choice between May/June, which might allow the Alliance to continue their run, or October, which might allow Labour to stage a minor recovery. The Conservatives' victory is not thought to be in doubt. It is simply a question of whether she wishes to help fulfil her proclaimed goal of killing off socialism, or whether Labour needs to be propped up before all the sawdust leaks out, in order to allow the Conservatives to profit once again from a more or less equally divided opposition.
This is the sort of complacency for which fate usually keeps half a brick in reserve up its sleeve. I suspect that Mrs Thatcher would like to see a more stable run of opinion polls before committing herself. But all the other information — on unem- ployment, prices, living standards and business confidence — is set pretty fair for the Conservatives.
More interesting is what Mr Gorbachev is up to. Why did he show Mrs Thatcher quite such a glorious time, giving her the freedom of the screen and the monasteries, knowing perfectly well that she would not mince her words? Well, he is not the first Russian leader to hand out that treatment, nor Mrs Thatcher the first Tory Prime Minister to receive it. Mr Khrushchev told the British Labour Party that he would vote Conservative. Lenin never concealed his similar views. For them, as for modern Soviet leaders, social democracy was and is the true rival and enemy. And besides, Conservative Prime Ministers are great respectors of power when combined with politeness. Mrs Thatcher's claims that she 'likes and trusts' Mr Gorbachev and 'can do business with him' may sound a bit gushing. But I remember Churchill on Uncle Joe, not once but over and over again: 'I have always found Stalin a man of his word' (to King Peter); 'I like that man' (to Anthony Eden, repeatedly); 'poor Neville Cham- berlain believed that he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong about Stalin' (to the Cabinet).
Yet it would be wrong to assume that either Churchill or Mrs Thatcher were utterly had for mugs. These assertions of trust and affection are partly 'convenient fictions' to help push business along, to make possible certain relaxations and set- tlements. With another part of her mind, I am sure, Mrs Thatcher continues to be- lieve, as she said in 1983, that 'their creed is barren of conscience, immune to the promptings of good and evil'. The Soviet system cannot be seriously reformed; it can only collapse. We have, after all, been here before. Mr Gorbachev is not being scrip- turally devious in seeking approval for his reforms from Lenin's last writing. As a sick and dying but far from gaga leader, Lenin was indeed obsessed with bureaucracy, corruption, parasitism and incompetence. Khrushchev's speeches and reforms 30 years ago had a lot in common with Gorbachev's.
What may be new, I think, is Mr Gorbachev's recognition of the strength of Western Europe. In that sense, Mrs Thatcher's talks with Kohl and Mitterrand before going to Moscow seem almost as important as the trip itself. The pleasant dreams of Reykjavik may now look less alluring to the Russians than they did. What if a 'de-coupled' Europe, far from being left to drift by the Americans, began, on the contrary, to assert itself with re- newed political and military force and to exercise a stronger tug on the Soviet satellites? Mrs Thatcher does not speechify much about European matters. They are still regarded as dull stuff, and she draws much of her support from the nationalist, our- island-story strand of British opinion. But if she is a Gaullist, the anti-Marketeers are her Algerian white settlers, the victims of her promise of understanding. Although neither she nor the Opposition cares to admit it, by fighting roughly at every Euro-summit for 'our money', she has killed off anti-Europeanism as a political force in this country. Not only do the polls record a change in public opinion towards placid acceptance of British membership of the Community, the relatively peaceful passage of the Single European Act ce- ments it. And slowly, very slowly, some of the dividends are coming in — the efforts to shrink the dairy surpluses, the collabora- tion on defence and aviation projects, the renewed military links with France. Mr Enoch Powell made MPs' flesh tingle a little by talking about the 'radical trans- formation' of both our foreign and defence policy which he claims is now in progress. But I fear the outcome of any such process might not be to his taste, since it would be more likely to tilt us still further towards the Community.
Mr Gorbachev likes to talk of the USSR as a European power. This is no mere sentimental nuance. He cannot allow his own vast sprawling country to become typecast as an 'Asiatic' irrelevance, main- taining its grip on Central and Eastern Europe by force alone, falling further and further behind in every other field. Preoc- cupation with Soviet-American relations encouraged comforting illusions of great- ness in the Kremlin. Keeping up in the arms race was the only way of showing that Soviet Communism worked. The conse- quent distortions of the economy made these illusions both harder to keep up and more embarrassing to abandon. In the end, like Peter the Great, Mr Gorbachev has set Out to discover Europe, not because he wants to but because he can see no alternative. Relaxation inside the Soviet Union must entail, sooner or later, some degree of relaxation in the satellites. East Germany and Czechoslovakia cannot be preserved indefinitely as Stalinist relics. And having embarked on the process, Mr Gorbachev is already discovering, like ever-loving Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, that a person can develop a cold.
Previous page
