Notebook
Blackpool Mr Balfour said that he would sooner take advice from his valet (or was it his Poodle?) than from a Conservative Party Conference, This week Lord ThorneyCroft said, 'The advice and counsel of a Conservative Conference is a very important factor in the formation of policy in a Conservative Government,' I think I prefer the late Prime Minister's view. Admittedly Lord Thorneycroft was trying to be nice to the representatives, and they appreciate him, as they appreciate most — though not all — Tories of the old school. Lord Thorneycroft is certainly one such, an interesting survival in more ways than one. (Now the Duke of Windsor is gone, he is almost the last exemplar of oldfashioned U-Cockney: 'Don't throw awhy What we have won ... ', let us tyke an example , ...') But when he said — a claim made with monotonous frequency — how much nicer this conference was than last week's horrors at Brighton, I wondered. Rhodesia aside (and it says something when the most interesting question of the week was whether Mr Julian Amery would speak) the conference was its usual decorous, stage-managed self. We laugh at the awfulness of Labour left-wing extremism. But which is the more 'Stalinist'? The Labour Conference, With a succession of rancorous punks rushing up to shout abuse at their leaders, or the Tories' carefully ranged votes (which are not votes) on motions (which anYone)? A\ are worded so as to mean all things t‘ The real point about the Tory Conference IS that it is not so much displeasing as futile. The debate on the NHS was a f,00d example of the futility. There is, as say, a marked difference between the Tory and Labour gatherings. Two sentences stick in my mind from the Past Years. Labour: 'We are going to give milions of quids to all your kids'. Conservative: 'I speak against the motion not because I disagree in any way with the previous speaker ... '. Nowadays the Tories have added the Socialist whimper to their own creepiness. Dr Gerard Vaugh an. — Westminster's own Dr Henbane — 0.1eaginously made the point that by making administrative reforms of the NHS, millions of extra quids could be spent on Patients, (not, you will notice, returned to the taxpayer). At no stage during the debate did anyone question the essential otion of state-controlled medicine. All _lir Vaughan did was to tell us that `we are a caring party, a party of compassion, a deeply concerned party'. Is there no-one left to speak for hard-faced, unconcerned, uncompassionate Conservatism?
What is awful about the Conservatives is also what is nice about them, Two other Tories of the gentlemanly kind, though of a slightly younger generation, reminded me of how things are conducted in the Party. Mr William Whitelaw complained: `I really thought that we wouldn't have to debate hanging again this year.' But then added: '1 feel fairly sure that the amendment won't be called'. (It wasn't.) Mr Mark Carlisle told oft he time six yearsago when he was put on as a sacrificial offering on the same subject of capital punishment, just o draw the Conference's venom before yfe following debate on Rhodesia — then as ow a more contentious subject. Both parti s, of course, have their stock devices for calming the rabble. Last week Mr Callaghan achieved one of his few bursts of cheers with a superbly illogical and irrelevant demand for Mrs Thatcher to show the same determination in banning the South African rugby tour as in closing o peoples' homes. Similarly, any Cons vative speaker can win a few second pplausl by saying something nice abo h police:for the army, or bo h.
Mr Michael Heseltine does not ha to mention either to bring the Conference to its feet, though how he does it I do not really understand. His speech this year was more ' subdued than the last two. Could it be that he has detected a certain , froideur among his front bench colleagues which more than balances the enthusiasm which he arouses on the floor of the Winter Garden? Whenever I see Goldlocks, my temptation is to shout out, sergeant-majorly: 'Get your 'air cut you 'orrible little man'. Desultory conversation with members of the Government suggests that this is not a unique reaction. But there is a certain grudging admiration for his vulgar oratorical gifts.
This week has been a victory celebration, a jamboree, a Maggie love-in'. Yet in the far but perceptible distance is a shadow: can the Conservatives win the next election? Will not their sensible policies be rejected by the voters when the cuts start to hurt (if they do)? That is the fear that lies behind the new Tory waffle, not confined to Dr Vaughan. Even a tough old bird like Lord Thorneycroft — who really does deserve to be remembered with honour for his resignation from the Treasury in 1958 — can talk about 'the exercise of compassion which we wish to show'. There is a simple answer, to the next election that is, rather than to the problem of compassion. Two short pieces of legislation: one to reduce the number of (predominantly Labour) Scotch and Welsh seats at Westminster to parity with England; another to disenfranchise the (predominantly Labour-voting) citizens of the Irish Republic resident in Great Britain. With those pieces of, shall we say, electoral adjustment J do not see how Mrs Thatcher could be driven from office within a generation. When I put this to a nice, clever, young MP he replied: 'That would be rather brutal, wouldn't it'.
It would be absurd to say that it is good to be back in Blackpool. Journalists and politicians who pretend to love the town are being affected. All the same, I do not go as far as my colleague on the other side of the page. To call Blackpool a proletarian hell-hole, as Auberon Waugh has repeatedly done, is to miss the point. It is ugly and vulgar and the food is nothing to write home about, but I wish that the choice of conference towns had not been narrowed down to two, and I should certainly rather be in Scarborough or even Douglas than here. And yet, and yet. The train ride to Fleetwood is a pleasantly aimless way of killing half an hour, not that there is much to see when you get there. The beaches are beaches, the sea is the sea, and even my strictures about food and drink should be qualified with a kind word for Yates's Wine Bar and Roberts's Oyster House, whither I now set off for oysters and lobsters which are • Just as good as you get in London and considerably cheaper. While Blackpool may pot be worth the voyage, it is, one must admit, by no means unbearable.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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