Political Commentary
The General Election Show
Ilatrick Cosgrave
In the last week — and particularly since the announcement of a recall of Parliament, not to mention Lord Carrington's somewhat hasty remarks on the subject — debate about the
imminence of a general election, which had been rife, has become rabid. I myself have continuously taken the view that, unless ministers lose their collective political and constitutional heads, there will be no early election. Nonetheless, the possibility of one, esPecially in the nation's present predicament (about the causes of which my colleague Tom Puzzle has something to say on another page), does raise some important questions, which rleserve canvassing. Broadly, these are three. In the present situation, does the present government require a new mandate? My answer is, yes. Then, would an election, Whatever the result, and particularly if it Produced another Conservative majority, solve anything? My answer is, no, subject to a qualification which depends on your assess!Tent of the Prime Minister. Finally, is it in the ,rrime Minister's interest — we must consider "MI, since he is the only one who can demand an election from the Queen — to call a general poll? My answer is no, whatever you think the result would be.
The answer to the first question depends on an understanding of the Government's Present tactical position in respect of the Miners. Now, there is, I think, little doubt that there are several and complex strands to that ,Position. Most ministers do, quite genuinely, nelieve that, if the miners are not defeated, or Persuaded to accept a settlement within the n,arameters of Phase Three, all hope of knefeating inflation is at an end. They further tlelieve that the miners, or important elements ttitbin the NUM,are out to destroy, not only tis government, but the present parliamen:TrY structure of this country. A few think 'tat, the miners having defeated the Govern:tient badly in 1972, they must not be allowed '0 do so again, whatever the merits of the ease: such men think that even quite respon!Ible trade union elements would be driven istr9nn beneath by such a second victory to play ;!ighwayman with ministers. A further 2rnplication is added by the fact that Mr ,,whitelaw is new to his job: coming in as he 4°es without a detailed understanding of ,What has been going on he, however exceptional his character and ability, must hope
rticularly as he is an ex-junior minister at
e Ministry of Labour — and the media must '31)e for him, for a mollifying formula which 1fl4Y not be achievable. The inspired stories ‘00ut a resolution by paying miners for 8Dending time washing, provided they spent a rneat deal less time on their ablutions than e rest of us, is a sufficient indication of this SYndrome of thought. The situation is, in any event, confused. It is confused even more by the intervention 2f Mr Benn. On the whole, his facts have been 'flocked down; but I am not sure his artrnent has. The essence of the Benn thesis is at the three-day week is a covert method of Introducing a deflation the Government ,iteared otherwise to introduce; and that this ration is, by Government decision, to be aMed on the miners'go-slow. I am as certain 14.18I can be of my own name that ministers ave had neither the time nor the cunning to nthink
up any such scheme, but the looseness
their propaganda, their extraordinary :.:q.relessness with words, and the willingness tuir_ the Prime Minister in particular to argue 4e nonsensical proposition that a dispute with the Coal Board is an attack on the constitution, have all led people to equate the three-day week with the miners. By arguing — out of confusion and worry and anxiety to do well and serve the nation well, rather than out of calculation, I am quite sure — themselves into tighter and tighter circles the , Cabinet have ended up defending the last ditch of Phase Three. But Mr Boardman said on television the other night that the threeday week could not be ended even if the miners went back to full time work pronto. And anybody who talks to government spokesmen nowadays knows perfectly well that he gets entirely different emphases from each one. So, tackling their own inflation through deflation may be one motive of ministers.
But, if we are talking about the defence of a statutory incomes policy, then the Government of course needs a new mandate. For one of the clearest things about its manifesto in 1970 was its opposition to such a device, and its conviction that such policies were unfair and unworkable. Moreover, the Prime Minister repeated that view in an interview with the Sunday Times on the first anniversary of his election triumph. A government that has made and repeated such statements, not as the expression of a prejudice, but as the outcome of a judgement, has itself no right, no moral right, to make judgements about the behaviour of others. If the Government says the miners are, and the miners say they are not, attacking the constitution, the government can have no moral nor political authority for saying it is better and wiser, having already admitted and proved its lack of ability in analysis. The miners say compulsory incomes policies are unfair; the government has said they are unfair: wherein lies the difference? It can, of course, lie only in an appeal by a Cabinet in sackcloth and ashes, admitting it was wrong, and begging on bended knees for another chance.
But, would an election achieve anything? If Labour won it would probably achieve the profoundly useful and important objective of getting Britain out of the Common Market, but it would be unlikely to solve the current domestic problem. True, the Leader of the Labour party and his former Chancellor, Mr Jenkins, are powerless to achieve the commitment of Labour to an incomes policy; but the opponents of that policy in the Opposition are themselves the proponents of violently inflationary socialism. You cannot, as some Labour men seek to do, control prices without controlling wages: true mechanistic socialism, of which there are few proponents in this country, involves the control of both, as in Russia. On the other hand, even if Mr Heath and his colleagues were returned, their policy is as unlikely to produce results then as it is now. Moreover the lines would then be drawn for such a confrontation with organised labour as Baldwin feared and, by his brilliance, averted. On the larger questions of trade union monopoly power, which badly needs to be resolved, the Government would remain as helpless as it has been since its abandonment of its own industrial relations Act.
So, to seek a new mandate, while it would be morally desirable, would be nationally profoundly dangerous, for it would solve nothing. Further, it might exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, the social wounds from
which the nation suffers. These, however, are large questions, and most political generalisation since Machiavelli — always excepting that most important and fundamental final chapter of The Prince — has been created out of small rather than large considerations. Politics should be about national unity, prosperity and aggrandisement. More normally, it is about the gaining and holding of office by individuals. Only in moments of real and felt crisis do we pull out of the cupboard the rusty machinery of fundamental debate and discussion, always fearing we are too late to employ it. Since we have not yet arrived at that moment, or at least have only a superficial understanding of the possibility that we may have arrived at it, we must consider the imminence or otherwise of an election in terms of its effect on the man empowered to call it.
If the Tories were returned, in a who-runs-the-country election with a majority of 1959 proportions, and if I am right in supposing that that event by itself solved nothing, then no man in politics would be more vulnerable than Mr Heath. A renewed mandate and renewed failure would ensure his departure. And, even if recalcitrant unionists were momentarily cowed by the will of the people expressed in an election, there would be other matters to consider, and notably the continuing disaster of the Common Market membership of which he is the only begetter. Mr Heath's hope must be to ride this present storm out, and by doing so to quell the incipient storm over Europe. He would not long survive an election triumph.
And be sure he knows this. The Prime Minister does not have the large imagination of a great leader. But he does not suffer from the incurable small-mindedness of a Neville Chamberlain either. He is a man possessed at once of great will7 and of considerable tactical sense. His tactical sense lets him down only when he has allowed his temperament, his angry will, as George Gale once described it, to get the better of him, as, indeed, it did during the last dispute with the miners. As long as he keeps his cool he is certainly the most formidable politician around, especially when he is concerned with his own party, of the whims and impulses of which he has an exact understanding. At the moment he is poised, not between success and failure, but between survival and extinction. He is always inclined in such situations to believe that he can will his way out; it is necessary, however for him to think his way through. If he calls an early general election, and if the industrial situation is not resolved immediately thereafter, we can put a brief term to his future.
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