One Nation (but with certain exceptions?)
There was an opinion poll the other day which indicated that the Government had suffered a distinct drop in public approval as a result of its policy of supplying arms to South Africa. No doubt this could be partly explained by the ham-fisted way in which the matter was handled: but more significant was the extent to which the Government's approach affronted the country's feelings about what is seen as an odious social system. Mr Heath and his ministers rightly felt, on coming to office, that a more hard-headed style of dealing with the problems of government was expected of them; the danger the South African affair revealed was that they would appear to be both hard-faced and hard- hearted as well. Such a style of government can be defended in theory, but the truth is that in practice it would displease more people than it pleased and would divide the country instead of encouraging that sense of national unity which the Tories, in opposition, set high among their aspira- tions. _ It is an apt theme for the holiday medi- tations of our new governors. There is, after all, something to be said for having the coldly efficient view prevail in White- hall: put the nation's material interest un- compromisingly first, it can be argued, set emotions or even ideals firmly aside. and we shall end up more prosperous and con- tented as a result. But every citizen knows that he does not choose to live his own life by such a standard; he lives by compro- mises between 'efficiency' and what seems to him to be required by the claims of generosity, or fairness, or compassion. People who so decide their lives are best represented by a government which. although alert to every possibility of profit or risk of loss, is also guided by other standards; which, although avoiding emnty 'moral' gestures,. is prepared to show by actions that it is humane, and even ideal- istic, as well as efficient.
So this week, instead of pondering gloomily Mr Carr's slender chance of hold- ing down wage inflation by exhortation when so many others before him have faile.d, or speculating upon the precise rate at which the situation in Northern Ireland is deteriorating, a useful subject for political reflection might be this other, It present under-emphasised. aspect of the governing function. Consider, as examples, the victims of the new Westway motorway in London, those unlucky families who happened to be in the way of 'progress' and who discovered painfully that no agent of government did anything whatsoever about their plight until they had mobilised themselves for resistance like the perse- cuted minority they were. Will any minister now admit that it was, quite simply, out- rageous that they should have been treated with such callousness?
It may possibly have been 'efficient' in one sense to press ahead regardless with the new highway. while central and local government finessed endlessly over who should pay the compensation these people obviously merited. But it was also notably inhumane. Successive ministers had hoped they would escape having to add the cost of compensation to the national road bill; local authorities justifiably felt that for them to pay these extra costs for a national enterprise would be an injustice to their ratepayers. So the miseries of intolerable living conditions had, to be endured. quite unnecessarily, before the conscience of authority was stirred into emergency action. And still the decision which every such case demands has been evaded. Is the nation to continue trying to get its 'pro- gress' on the cheap at the expense of the unlucky minorities, or is it to decide that the cost shall be equally borne? The Con- servative ideal of- One Nation implies something beuer than the press-gang method of recruiting sacrificial victims.
And since the country is likely to have a Conservative government for years to come, it is important that it should be encouraged_ to practice what might be called Conservatism with a human face. This might apply, to go further afield, to the thousands of British Asians living in conditions approaching destitution in various parts of Africa If the people of this country are to be united. as the Tory ideal envisages, it will not be because their skins are all the same colour but because of a sense of equal justice, and compassion unchecked by prejudice. and equal honour- ing of undertakings entered into. No one can pretend that the treatment of the British Asians in Kenya and elsewhere since the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968 has met any of these requirements. Mr Maudling was outspoken at the time the British passports belonging to these • persecuted people were being officially de- valued by that Act. 'When they were given these rights,' he said, 'it was our intention that they should be able to come to this country when they wanted to do so. We knew it at the time. They knew it and in many cases they have acted and taken decisions on this knowledge.' But the Government continues the heartless and ungenerous policy of keeping most of them out and leaving them to sink into destitu- tion..True, they are victims of racial dis- crimination by African governments. But they are also the victims of a mean policy of exclusion by British governments. And Mr Maudling is now the minister respon- sible for executing this policy. He is a humane and fair-minded man. Can he not exert himself to secure relief for these help- less victims?
The danger for a government which wins power because its predecessor was un- usually inefficient in important areas is that it will come to think that efficiency, in the drearily. narrow sense all too often given to the word is all. It is not. Governments do not have to be loved but they do have to be resnected if they are to survive for lone: and to achieve this, strong elements of imagination and humanity are needed to be conspicuously present. The scope is very wide, in all conscience. Why shouldn't a Tory government—to take another example at random—end a shameful in- justice to writers by ensuring that. by some convenient method, when public libraries lend books they have to nay the (usually impoverished) authors for the right? (There is nothing peculiarly Tory, after all. in the present system of confiscatory nationalisation of authors' work.) Again: Why not an altogether new and insistent attack unon victimisation by aircraft noise? Why not treat environmental pollu- tion as the serious menace it is? Why not. if commercial radio is to come, sec that the Dar is ordered accordingly to aim hiaher for a change, instead of ever lower? Why not, in short, make it plain that the Conservative government is determined to conserve (and improve) the civilisation of. the country. and its values and obligations —not merely its bank balance, important though that is?
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