Political Commentary

Strange death of the Liberals

John Grigg A hundred years ago the Liberal Party was a profoundly anomalous coalition of Whig magnates and urban radicals of the Joseph Chamberlain school. But at least it was a party of power. In recent years its composition has been even more bizarre than in its Victorian heyday, ranging from young Trotskyists to the British equivalent of Poujadists. At the same time its only function has been that of protest.

Now it seems to have committed harakiri. Nothing that evil-minded foreigners could have done to discredit it could possibly match the damage inflicted by its own MPs (or most of them), with the assistance of various absurd and faceless Liberal peers. Mr Jeremy Thorpe has suffered the fate of Parnell, though the point of sexual morality at issue is crucially different from that which brought Parnell down. The difference tells us much about the change in public and private values between then and now.

We imagine ourselves to be so much more enlightened than the Victorians. But are we? Their code—which was broadly accepted until the Second World War—was that a politician's sexual behaviour was no concern of the state unless he was either breaking the law or breaking his own, or somebody's else's, home. The stability of family life was felt to be a matter in which the state could legitimately take an interest and which, indeed, it had a duty to defend. But extramarital affairs, casual or even chronic, were strictly beyond the scope of public investigation and censure.

Nobody minded about Parnell's affair with Kitty O'Shea until it led to the Divorce Court. Gladstone knew about it and so did many others, but so long as Captain O'Shea remained complaisant there was no scandal. Hypocrisy? Yes of course, but surely hypocrisy for a good cause. Nowadays we have the far more ghastly hypocrisy of permissive politicians and pornographic newspapers hounding men to resignation for acts of infidelity which their own wives and families are prepared to overlook.

Needless to say, this does not refer to Mr Thorpe. He is not even alleged to have committed an act of infidelity, and certainly has been convicted of none. The allegation against him, which he strenuously denies, concerns a period before he was married, and the relationship alleged is not now an offence. Granted that friends of Mr Thorpe have been unwise, to put it mildly, in their efforts to protect him, the question which every liberal and civilised person should be asking is: why was any protection necessary? Why did the media consider it their duty to publicise Mr Norman Scott's allegation, and what business was it of ours?

The topsy-turvy standards now in force were most clearly revealed in 1973, when Lord Jellicoe—an excellent Minister—felt obliged to resign because a relatively trivial matter came to light. And his resignation was accepted. There was no question of anybody's marriage being broken. Yet at the same time another Minister was involved in a rather unsavoury divorce case, and nobody suggested that he should resign.

Divorce is indeed a grave social evil, above all when children are involved. The multiplication of broken homes and bewildered, disillusioned children is hurtful to the community and therefore contrary to the public interest. It is no mark of progress that public personalities (apart from the Royal Family) are no longer expected to set an example by resigning if they contribute to the breach of a marriage.

Of course the old rule led in the past, and would lead again, to a number of hard cases. But hard cases make bad law, and the sacrifice of a few careers is a small price to pay for re-asserting a standard which common sense, as well as Christianity, commends. A public morality which affects to regard the occasional sexual lapses of politicians as heinous, while their divorces are treated as venial, is a morality suitable only to a nation in decline.

But to return to the Thorpe affair. When the media decided, for their own discreditable reasons, to splash the allegation which Mr Norman Scott made, quite gratuitously, in court—and when the allegation was repeated, ad nauseant, day after day, every time Mr Thorpe's name was mentioned in a newspaper story or on a newsbulletin—his Parliamentary colleagues should have closed around him in a solid defensive phalanx. And they should have' done so not only out of comradeship, not only for the sake of their party, but to challenge and rebut the whole crazy, false idea that such an allegation could have the slightest relevance to a public man's value to the state.

Instead, some of them closed around him as Caesar's assassins, and most of the others stood idly by. Only two or three of them emerge from the business with any vestige of honour.

The only possible justification for a small party, not seriously in the competition for power, is that it should have more coherent beliefs, and should behave more decently and consistently, than a large party in which many different interests and opinions have to co-exist as best they may. The Liberal Party in recent years has been scarcely less muddled and faction-ridden than the big parties, without their excuse. Certainly there have been times when most of its members were pioneering polio' which the big parties later adopted—enta

into Europe, for instance. But even on alai issue the party was not truly united. While,

he was in Parliament, Mr Peter Besse!'

(heard of him?) was among the most ardeni of all anti-EEC spokesmen, and Mr EmlYll Hooson also has been an anti-Marketeer' The chief function of the Liberal FOY has been to act as a magnet for fainthe4n5 and malcontents in the Tory Party, whe!1,, ever a Tory Government has been trouble. But these 'Liberal' voters have ha' little interest in Liberal policy. Their vole has simply been a protest vote against their own party. When a Labour government has been in difficulties, disgruntled Labour voters have tended either to abstain or to vote Tory.1The, Liberal Party has not attracted them as has attracted volatile Tory voters. Ill! result has been a division of the country 5 anti-socialist majority at critical momen15' The Liberal Party has more than its fairshe of publicity. The nation and the world get racked with tormenting probems. events are unfolding all over the place. Ye the main item of news in Britain has bee: the Liberal Party and its leadership. 1`10li'1 ing could better illustrate the prune parochialism into which we have fallen. e The only important issue raised bY 111 Thorpe affair is the issue of public moral0 which nobody seems to be discussillgn. Politically, the Liberal Party is no more On a troublesome side-issue. Much is precious in the Liberal tradition; and it is understandable that a number °, old Liberals should cling to their Pari'd through a natural British conservatism, nrihe that some young people should join it in t'd hope of escaping from the cynicism Out sheer boredom of the big party game. I3,,e how many in either category will have 00 stomach to remain Liberals after what /14 now happened? The Liberal Party will to, them all the cynicism and boredom °Jut could expect to find anywhere else, b.ai without the sense of reality and pot

achievement.

Mr Thorpe led his party well. He d ve

perhaps, a better leader than it deseng Like most political leaders he had few (7'n'tlie nal ideas, but he knew how to project dis ideas that came to him from others. "me, party, and British public life goer" rlis benefited from his liveliness, his wit an'.!ties remarkable sense of theatre—Oa° ow which, we must hope, will not even n desert him.

When Mr Harold Macmillan carrie rre his famous purge in July 1962, Mr '111(c)tile made in the House of Commons one °'file best political jokes of the centurYthat Prime Minister, he said, had shown , 'greater love hath no man than this. Oa'

lay down his friends for his life'. have

Most of Mr Thorpe's colleagues rve acted in a similar spirit. And it will s' fir them right if they have destroyed the selves and their party in the process.