Political Commentary
Relish for the job
Patrick Cosgrave
The coincidence of a singularly depressing and substandard commons debate — Monday's, on prices — and the publication of Nigel Fisher's biography of lain Macleod (reviewed elsewhere in this issue by Reginald Maudling) started me thinking about the Place rhetoric and oratory should have in poiitics, not merely as an inspirational ingredient, but as part of the essential stuff of government.
Inspiration is, of course, important. Whatever the objective merits and demerits of the Government's economic policy, it has a kind of crazy grandeur about it. But nobody could have been encouraged or inspired to see or defend that grandeur by Mr Peter Walker's shambling and awkward account of it given to a two-thirds empty House of Commons on Monday. I remember the effect of inspirational oratory at a far lower Point in the fortunes of Mr Heath and his Party. It was during the last election camPaign. Those of us who worked at the Conservative Research Department in Old Queen Street normally dined in Queen Anne's Gate, occasionally stopped for a drink at The Two Chairmen, and then returned to the office to digest the latest TV news and do some more Work. Just after National Opinion Polls' announcement of a 12 per cent lead for Labour our morale was at a singularly low ebb; and a dozen or so of us decided over our pints not !o bother going back to the office that evening: there seemed no point.
Then somebody remembered that Macleod, Who had been out of the campaign for several days, because of his mother's death, was making his comeback that night. A small Spark or enthusiasm was ignited, and we trooped along to watch the news. The bulletin oPened with Macleod, hunched in his crippled Way over a rostrum, his mouth twisted, his hand cutting the air, his eyes gleaming. He Was expounding the significance of an OECD report which said that Britain was twentyfifth out of twenty-six industrial nations in levels of industrial investment and that, in the following year, she would be last. Then he added:
Imagine planning to make your country last. Suppose your child came home from school and You asked him how he was doing and he said, " Not too badly, mum. I'm second last this term. But don't worry, mum. Next term I'll be last." What would you do with a child like that?. I'll tell you. Send his name to Transport Rouse as a Labour candidate.
He spat out those last words. His audience rose to cheer him. Our hearts, in our dingy, battered office, lifted; and I am as certain as
an be that our productivity rate for the rest of the campaign doubled.
Yet there was nothing very special in his Words. He was not the kind of orator whose s_Peeches go down, imperishable, to history. Lie was sharp, and cunning, and often brutal. 'slit what came across most when one watched him or talked to him was his — there is 00 other word for it — relish for his job. He did not merely confront difficulty: he leaped at it; and he was liberated rattier than dePressed by responsibility and misfortune. Zest and relish are singularly lacking in today's Political oratory. But even if they were present — if Mr Wils?ri was, say, consistently in the form he Snowed in 1963 and 1964 — that would do no 'pore than enliven the political scene and pararnentary reporting. Liveliness is a not
unimportant quality in politics, but its absence does not justify a lengthy complaint. What is important is what lies behind the liveliness. To revert again to the last general election, I recall travelling with Macleod from • a, television studio to Central Office. I observed that, of all the major politicians taking part in the campaign only he, Enoch Powell, and Quintin Hogg actually spoke in connected sentences. He was silent for a moment and then said, "Yes, and it's such a pity. However able or gifted one is, it is only by putting one's thoughts into words that one can understand them. It is only by speaking that a minister can understand his actions. The graphs are no good by themselves." Nor is this emphasis on words, and the construction of speeches, what too many of the younger breed of politicians suggest it is — an excuse to eschew hard, detailed and complicated work in favour of the higher fanciful ness of rhetoric. Everybody knows — and Mr Fisher recalls in his book — the opening sentence of Macleod's attack on Nye Bevan in 1952, which caused Churchill to pause before leaving the Chamber, listen to the entire onslaught, and make him Minister of Health six weeks later. Macleod followed Bevan, having scrapped his prepared speech, and began, "I want to deal closely and with relish with the vulgar, crude, and intemperate speech to which the House of Commons has just listened." It was his effrontery and his relish which seized the attention, but the body of the speech displayed a staggering mastery of the complexities of the National Health Service and Macleod's reputation was built not merely on its style, but on the demolishing effectiveness with which he rebutted Bevan's subsequent interruptions. His triumph was consolidated by Bevan's failure to return to the Chamber.
Nobody could plausibly deny that Mr Walker is a formidable, forceful, gifted man; nor that Mr Heath has the same qualities in abundance. Nobody who has ever heard the Prime Minister expound a complicated brief, or cross-questioned him on its details, could challenge his mastery of any set of facts to which he applies himself, Nobody, even, could deny that Mr Heath is possessed of vision: the range of his European view, and the tenacity with which he has clung to it, amply demonstrate the size of his personality. It is at the point where the vision and the facts must meet in words that he — and so many senior politicians today — is weak.
Take Mr Jim Prior's speech at Cambridge over the weekend. Mr Prior said that, in the forthcoming series of Government-TUC talks, absolutely no subject, absolutely no proposal, was barred. The TUC, he went on, could suggest anything they liked, and the Government would consider it. Now, Mr Prior did not, could not, have meant what he said. He could not, for example, have meant that the Government would consider with an open mind the implementation of large-scale nationalisation, which the TUC is known to favour. If he did mean what he said, then to be a Conservative no longer has any meaning, and one might as well scrap Parliament and install a managerial businessman's government of the kind favoured by Mr Cecil King. I do not think it was Mr Prior's intention to advance any distance, even a rhetorical distance, down such a road. Nor do I think he was trying to exploit the media by giving an impression of fair-mindedness which would help manoeuvre the TUC into a corner. I believe, rather, that he was trying to express a general fair-mindedness on the part of the Prime Minister and his colleagues and that his understanding and description of the situation were hampered by his failure or inability to think through the meaning of the Government's position in words. Macleod would never have spoken like that.
My own account of the implications of Mr Prior's speech may seem a little far-fetched. A more concrete example of the effect of the use — or abuse — of words can be seen in the whole history of this Government's relations with the trade union movement. Certainly the Conservatives were determined, when they came to power, to implement the Industrial Relations Act. Certainly, there was a certain understandable youthful zealousness in the way they went about it. Certainly they were bound, in these circumstances, to have difficulties with the unions. But the difficulties were exacerbated greatly by the impression ministers gave of deliberate aggression. They did not seriously 'intend to give such an impression, and were wounded when they saw. the disastrous effect of the impression they had nonetheless given. They simply had not thought out their position in words; and when they were forced to retreat the damage to their standing was multiplied by the distance they appeared to have to cover, a distance itself created by the abuse of words.
A political speech should reflect, not merely judgement on a situation, but a political philosophy. A man should be able to show himself doing things, not merely because they are managerially correct, or managerially unavoidable, but because they reflect a view of how the world ought to work. The business of politics is not merely a business, not merely a matter of baking a national cake and distributing the crumbs among the populace. It is also about living in a community, and seeking to realise some of that community's :dreams. Of course, politics is often a highly practical affair; but even Conservative prag matism can be informed with aspiration.
Never was there a more practical conclusion to a speech, nor one more clearly informed with an urgent and clamant political philoso phy, than Macleod's words ending one of his most successful conference speeches: "So cialists may scheme their schemes, and Liberals may dream their dreams. But we have work to do." It is all there — hard-head edness, punch, style, but above all, character, the kind of character that is all important to government, but which can be conveyed only in words.
Previous page
