Roaring Wrong
An eyewitness writes: Reports of the FCS conference at Loughborough University last week have been very con- fusing. The Mirror had 'Hooray Henries' going on the rampage. Early reports in More kindly disposed papers suggested that thousands of pounds' worth of damage had been done. Later reports suggested that nothing much had really happened, and that the whole thing had been an excuse for John Selwyn Gummer to cut off Party funds to a group whose views have become an increasing embarrassment to the national leadership. The Roaring Right, after all, takes pride in talking and behaving exactly as the Left supposes that Conservatives do. So what really hap- Pened? The lasting damage done by the drunken students was, as the Guardian said, minimal. A door handle, was ripped away; some Wets, and even a Libertarian, were woken by late-returning revellers, but Most of the people I talked to had them- selves been too drunk to notice the end of the party. The mess left behind was phe- nomenal. There were human turds in the showers, between five and seven hundred beer cans to be cleared up, and so on. None of the Scots who had thrown the party could remember who had done what the previous night. The three students sent home were chosen more or less at random, because the temper of the conference demanded scapegoats. All this could be known to anyone on the spot. It was only the industry of the Wet faction, who rang around the national press first thing in the morning after the party was over with stories of the sack of Loughborough, that was responsible for the first and most lasting impressions made by the affair. But if the result of Mr Gummer's intervention is to purge the FCS of ideological preten- sions, it will be all to the good. Youth movements are unattractive, and worse it they amount to anything more than social clubs. Already, in its complaints about a 'vicious smear campaign', the FCS sounds like a copy of the Militant Tendency. It is an ugly noise.
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