Power without authority
Allan Massie
'A contract worth £2.3 million for the overhaul of aero-engines for West Germany, yes West Germany. Come on, three cheers for Britain . . . an oil platform worth £35 million for Norway. Come on, I want another cheer. . .
No, not Joyce Grenfell, but the Prime Minister rallying the Scottish faithful in Perth. She got her cheers of course. What's more, to judge from the faces shining with loyalty that were lifted to the sunshine of her presence, if she had gone on to ask for another cheer for the unemployment figures, she would have got that too.
A Tory conference, even singing 'Land of Hope and Glory', is too well-mannered to be a revival meeting — and until Mrs Thatcher rose to speak this one had all the animation of an undertaker's antechamber — but it is quite clearly a communion of saints, nice saints not given to exhibitionism but very conscious of virtue.
Demonstrators — `Nats and Reds' — accosted them as they went into the City Hall and accused them of being traitors to Scotland, and they laughed it off. 'You've no authority in Scotland . . . Thatcher sneaked in and she'll sneak out . . you've no authority'. That accusation is harder to laugh off. Over a long period of time since the appointment of a Secretary of State for Scotland, there has been a Scottish administration. Scotland is governed differently from England and Wales. The Scottish team of ministers has a wide range of powers and responsibilities independent of Whitehall though deriving, of course, from Westminster. And the present Government holds only 22 out of the 71 Scottish seats. The problem which that poses is not one of power, but of authority, two very different things, power being material and authority moral. There is a very grave danger that a government which possesses power but not authority will come to find its legitimacy challenged.
That is the central problem for Scottish Tories, and they are not solving it. Scotland is not an English colony, but a position in Which the government is in the hands of a minority party dependent on a majority across the Border has colonial overtones. The Scottish Conservatives are now the only political party in Scotland to have ditched Devolution; their commitment to the existing constitutional arrangements depends for its authority on their ability to attract electoral support on a scale to which they have been unaccustomed since the Fifties. Otherwise a British Conservative Government ruling a Scotland where it has only minority support, can only fuel demands for Devolution; and next time the Unionists may not be able to rely on fear of the SNP to act as a deterrent.
Governments hit their nadir (they hope) after two years. Even so, the latest public opinion poll in the Glasgow Herald made gloomy breakfasts for Conference Tories. Adjusted to exclude the large number of don't knows, the response to voting intentions at an immediate general election gave the following result (with May 1978 figures in brackets): Conservative 15 per cent (31), Labour 51 per cent (42), Liberal 11 per cent (9), SNP 19 per cent (17), Others 4 per cent (—). Reminded of the existence of the Jenkinsites, 16 per cent of the sample said they would vote for them, and only 12 per cent for the Tories. Labour dropped only to 45 per cent.
Now these figures may be airy-fairy (and one wonders what on earth Labour have done to deserve rising support — just being there like Nurse, I suppose), but the suggestion that the Tories have lost half their meagre Scottish support since the election can hardly be discounted. At their previous lowest level in October 1974, they dropped. to 24 per cent of the vote and 16 seats. They could do even worse next time. Examination of prospects in particular seats is vain, especially since the election will probably be fought on new constituency boundaries. But suppose they do drop six or seven seats (and they hold six with majorities of under 2,000) and suppose at the same time that England and Wales ensure a Conservative government, then Scotland will be ruled by a party holding less than a quarter of Scottish seats at Westminster. Where will authority be then? It is a recipe for dissatisfaction that can only lead to renewed agitation for substantial reform of the Constitution.
Not surprisingly, more immediate uneasiness was gnawing at the complacency normally typical of Scottish Tories. 'We've got no more than three years and we'll be out on our necks and we'll have the Foots and Benns in', said one speaker. It is doubtful if Mrs Thatcher's words of good cheer can allay that sort of anxiety for long. More worryingly, the mood of the Conference was resentful, a characteristic of oppositions rather than governments: The whines directed at the bureaucracy, the middleman, local government, the teachers and media resembled George Wallace's little men rather than a natural party of government.
They spoke too of an awareness of the Government's failure to do what it had promised; we were all still on the wrong side of Jordan. Little was said of West-Central Scotland's problems — the Tories have for the moment written off that huge chunk of Labour Scotland. It was the plight of their natural supporters that concerned them, for the mood is Petain at Verdun rather than Foch two years later. And no wonder: farmers have found their income plummet — perhaps by as much as half— in two years of Mrs Thatcher. Fishermen struggle against cheap imports, high interest rates and a common fisheries policy, which, though not yet settled, has already betrayed them. Small businessmen have been given some financial assistance if they are novices, little otherwise. Their problems, British ones, hardly need rehearsal.
The Government has achievements to its credit even in Scotland. Malcolm Rifkind has made it possible for tenants to buy council houses, but the response will hardly swing the election. Alex Fletcher has extended parental freedom with regard to education and set up the assisted places scheme for independent schools. But neith er will this bring many votes. He has shown a willingness — like a good Pharaoh ignorant of Joseph — to intervene in industry — the rescue of the Weir Group for instance.
There have been parliamentary successes. Difficult legislation has been expeditiously passed. Everyone at Perth from Mrs Thatcher downwards was loud in praise of George Younger, whose shiny schoolboy morning face conceals a good deal of toughness. Still, one wondered, what other party would have given him so easy a ride in the circumstances?
After the last election I wrote in the Spectator that the Scots Tories could only advance in two ways: on the strength of the general economic success of the Government — a success we still await — or by acting as Scottish Gaullists. So far they haven't aspired to that. The little Derv-rebellion of Messrs McQuarrie and Walker was no more than Poujadist. But if economic recovery is long postponed, more Poujadist exercises will be launched, as MPs heed the cry: lauve qui peut% They may not get much help from the top. Mrs Thatcher flew off after her speech to the next afternoon's Cup Final at Wembley. She needn't have travelled so far to see a game of fitba'. The Scottish Cup Final was being played at Hampden Park at the same time. Perhaps no one told her? Perhaps she feared she wouldn't be welcome?
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