POLITICAL COMMENTARY

PETER PATERSON

There is, of course, a large element of bluff in the relationship between a leader and his followers. The captain of a soccer team, the teacher in his classroom, the politician, all depend for survival upon an acknowledge- ment of their authority: their dignity is a more fragile thing, and they are more sus- ceptible to the raspberry treatment than other mortals.

But there are, again, moments when leaders are impervious to rude noises from the back of the class. When they are doing well, when they have captured the interest of their followers, at times of anxiety rather than crisis, or times of contentment the rasp- berry blowers either think better of it, or find themselves the butt of ridicule as the leadership bluff begins to work. 'Don't rock -the boat' is still one of the most potent slogans in politics.

Mr Enoch Powell, his biographers all tell us, was a model pupil at his schools, an ascetic and hardworking student at univer- sity, an admirably obedient soldier. All those years of good behaviour obviously masked a rebellious spirit, one that has found expres- sion at last in his political life, for this week he delivered a reverberating raspberry in the direction of his party leader. Thanks to the marvel of public relations the whole school heard in advance that Powell Minor was going to be rude to the Head.

Associated Television were naturally pleased with their coup: here was Mr Powell telling the viewing millions that the Prime Minister is' afraid of him. 'He generally seems to exhibit the symptoms of fear. It seems to be the only thing which really rationalises his behaviour where I am con- cerned. . . .' Presumably Mr Powell .was not using fear in the sense of reverence and awe: Mr Heath has never, so far as I know, de- monstrated such feelings in regard to Mr Powell. He must have meant what the dic- tionary describes as 'The emotion of pain or uneasiness caused by the sense of impend- ing danger, or by the apprehension of evil.' There was certainly a time when in political rather than personal terms Mr Powell excited in Mr Heath a sense of danger, even peril, when it seemed that the Wolverhampton seer's views on the immigration of coloured citizens of the Commonwealth were alienat- ing many of the people Mr Heath was trying to impress with the moderation, the efficiency and the modernity of Tory policies.

Of course there are political head-counters who believe on somewhat flimsy evidence that Mr Powell's appeal to those sections of the white population who feel threatened by the arrival of immigrants turned She tide in the favour of the Conservative party at the recent general erection. There may have been apprehension in Mr Heath's mind that that could happen, but it did not pre- vent his sacking Mr Powell from his shadow cabinet, nor from declaring that he would be excluded from his Government. In the

event, judging by the evidence rn con- stituencies in various parts of the country where concentrations of immigrants exist— Birmingham All Saints, Smethwick, Eton and Slough, Southall, etcetera—Labour did rather better than elsewhere. Mr Powell, it may still be argued, was part of the else- where, and white voters turned out in force to vote Tory because Mr Powell is a Tory and was saying the things they wanted to hear, even in constituencies where a black face is hardly ever seen. One weakness of that case, however, is that we do not yet have a system of proportional representation, so the fact that in Shoreham and Arundel, for example, the Conservative candidate failed to mention Mr Heath in his manifesto, which was instead decorated by a photo- graph of Mr Powell with Capt Henry Kerby over the caption, 'Two Men to Admire for Courage and Forthright Views', may have pulled in more votes but made no difference at all to Mr Heath's victory.

So that time of danger, the pre-election and election period when Mr Powell may have caused Mr Heath some anxiety, is passed and gone. Even the moment, graphically described by Mr Powell's disciple Mr Andrew Alexander, during the election campaign when the Tory leader went out of his way to 'attack the people's darling' and thus 'came closest to losing the contest' is now forgotten. Mr Heath is Prime Minister, why on earth should he be frightened of a man whose unspoken challenge for the leadership of his party was overtaken and overwhelmed and buried by Mr Heath's own electoral victory?

Well, there are people, apart from Mr Powell himself, who believe that the chal- lenge still exists. Some of them are on the Labour benches in the House of Commons, amateur Toryologists who still cannot be- lieve that the Heath ugly duckling has turned into a Prime Minister, or that the glamorous *Mr Powell should have suffered an eclipse of the proportions that he has suffered since 18 June. A former Labour minister remarked at a party the other night, 'If only you thought about it, you could write a scenario in which Enoch becomes an important man in all our lives. . . .' It is, on present form, too far-fetched an idea.

This is not to deny Mr Powell's destiny complex, nor to disguise the fact that Mr Heath's administration has run into a very heavy economic storm. Indeed, that moment has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the local council workers and their per- centagewise enormous wage increase. As the doubts about the Government's eco-political judgment increase, so the available mini-

sterial talent is being more closely scrutin- ised. Mr John Davies, newly installed as Secretary for Trade and Industry, begins to look like Mr Frank Cousins under the skin, yet another example of the unwisdom of assuming that eminent people in other fields can be pitchforked into Parliament and be expected to behave like old hands. Mr Peter Walker's arrogance annoys the pollution lobby and the housing lobby and the trans- port lobby, and probably the ancient monu- ments lobby as well, since these are also included in his departmental conglomerate. And, perhaps, the most serious Parliamen- tary failure, Mr Barber's halting, stammer- ing performance during the economic debate last week demonstrated the severity of the loss of Mr Macleod to the Conservatives.

Certainly Mr Macleod would never have been taken for such a ride as Mr Barber over a wild allegation, subsequently dis-

proved, that attempts had been made to

doctor his speech in Hansard even while it was being delivered. To be fair to Mr

Barber, it was only his innate goodwill that made him even listen, which he did with considerable patience, to this astonishing and

untrue charge being made from the Labour

backbenches. But it came just as he was about to deliver his peroration to a speech which was pretty crummy anyway, and it completely- destroyed any chance of making anything of it. To add to, but not by any means complete the list (for Sir Alec's short- comings must also be weighed) of ministers who are failing the House of Commons. if not the nation, there is Mr Geoffrey Rippon, whose pompous arrogance over the Com- mon Market totally ignores the sensitivity and tact with which this subject must be treated if it is not to lead to civil war.

But these are early days for Mr Heath and his motley crew. They have not been in

office for six months yet, and are certainly

too busy with problems which might in Opposition have seemed soluble but now look nightmarishly difficult, to spend much time glancing over their shoulders at the brooding figure of Mr Powell. Much the

same goes for the Tory backbenchers—or

the vast majority of them. They are busy trying to increase their volume to drown the megaphonic howls from the Labour side, to keep up a good voting record—one must concede that Mr Francis Pym, the Govern- ment's chief whip, is doing rather well—and to come to terms with the unpleasant fact that One Nation (like Labour's New Britain) was not built in a day, and might never be built at all.

So what is Mr Powell up to? The Govern- ment is not doing well, but it is hardly in so bad a state as to depose the Prime Minister and turn to him for leadership. Preparation for such an eventuality would in any case require the establishment of a much bigger faction than the twenty-three he led into the voting lobbies to oppose the Government on Rhodesian sanctions. Perhaps he is flirting With the heady idea of capturing the Conser- vative party in the country, but to do that he would surely need to revive the National Union'a la Lord Randolph Churchill—an odd strategy for a man who did not even bother to attend his party's annual con- ference, where the machine men meet.