Personality in Politics
By LORD ELTON DESPITE Gallup polls, cube, laws and omniscient, if harassed, columnists, General Elections remain a mystery. Half an hour before the citizens vote no single human being, however confident his prophecies, is in fact certain which way the pendulum will swing, and no citizen knows where his fellows are putting their crosses ; yet it invariably proves that all over the country, from the Western Isles to Bodrnin, all have in fact With astounding unanimity moved, fast or slow, in the same direction. The mysterious impulse resembles that which sets a vast flock of starlings wheeling above its roost in the same direction at the same instant of time. To -what obscure motives does the electorate respond ? Not, we may be sure, to a laborious study of foreign policy and economics. A Conserva- tive candidate in the last election complained bitterly that he found it impossible to explain the dollar gap to his constituents. He should not have been surprised, for in order to believe in democracy it is not necessary to suppose that the man in the street is a B.Sc.(Econ.) ; but only that on a broad and simple issue he is likely, in his millions, to judge more shrewdly than any panel of professors which could be assembled. And at every election that simple issue is the same: Which set (or, if we are feeling cynical, which gang) of politicians shall we choose to rule us for the next five- years ? No doubt as he meditates his answer to this searching question the citizen is influenced to some extent by recent policies and events. Attlee, he says, has given me a larger pay-packet ; Churchill will stop our being kicked around by blacks. Even so, consciously or unconsciously, the policy is linked to a personality, and more often than not it is the personality, I suspect, which is decisive. How often, though we rationalise our votes as verdicts on nationalisation or imperial preference, we do, in fact, vote Socialist or Conservative because Colonel Brown is a snob or Bill Smith is not respectful! How often the votes, and indeed the life-long loyalties, of our grandfathers must have been deter- tinned by their subconscious reactions to the startlingly con- trasted personalities of Gladstone and Disraeli! And how often must voters at the latest election have been swayed by sub- conscious reaction to the scarcely less startling contrast between the personalities of Mr. Churchill and Mr. Attlee! Paradoxically enough, it seems .likely that in this way the Conservatives lost many votes. Paradoxically, for it is obvious enough that Mr. Churchill is regarded by voters of all parties With admiration„gratitude and affection, or, at the very least, With alert and not unsympathetic interest. Paradoxically, for his election tours resembled royal progresses. But admiration, and even affection, do not always spell votes. Mr. Churchill's Parlia- Mentary orations on the Indian legislation of the Baldwin Government, it will be remembered, were heard with rapt atten- tion by packed Houses, yet his applauding audience would invariably troop, almost as one man, into the opposite-decision lobby. Mr. Churchill, after all, is a genius, and genius, a pheno- menon unknown in recent British politics, is unpredictable. And the notorious war-mongering charge was but the' rendering exPlicit of a deep, half-conscious misgiving, widespread even among Conservatives. Few can have supposed that Mr. Churchill liked, or wanted, war, but many wondered whether he Iv, ere not better fitted to bring the frail vessel through the seeth- ing rapids than to navigate the ominously calm waters a' mile above the falls. Not only his multifarious gifts but, throughout his long career, the allies and counsellors closest to him had seemed in some ways more suited to war than peace. Figures such as Lord Beaverb'rook and the late Lord Birkenhead, men "■.:4 courage, brilliance and tough, resilient quality, were neverthe- !ess not the type of politician to whom the man in the street instinctively gives his confidence in times of peace. And in sharp contrast there were no interrogation marks about Mr. Attlee. or electoral purposes Mr. Attlee ivlis more than a good chair- man, and more than a colourless personality whose very coloura, lessness made him safe. To many voters he had seemed to pursue his surprisingly placid way among the more flamboyant issues and personalities of the day with an unpretentious sim- plicity, and indeed a natural goodness, which made him eminently, reliable. Rightly or wrongly, mere respectability has always been rated high among \political virtues by the British electorate.1 And what is true of the national stage is no less true at the lower levels of party warfare. Too often, no doubt, the local candidate is no.more than a muffled megaphone for party slogans: a bald trade-union official or a bald company director bundled into the constituency a few weeks before polling-day, and, save' to the faithful few in his committee-rooms, little more than i name on the hoardings or an unprepossessing photograph on the' , window-cards. But anyone who has nursed a constituency know4 that the candidate who turns votes turns them between elections) And he turns them not so much by political argument as by j constant appearances at British Legion dances, church bazaars) chapel fetes, football finals or farmers' beanfeasts—in a word, by making his personality familiar, and on the whole acceptable,i to his constituents.
There will always, of course, be constituencies so impreg4 nable that the predominant party could win them with a gramo-, phone record as national leader and a waxwork image as local candidate. But where the battle can be won or lost it is usually . the men, not the measures, who turn the scales. A glance at the brief biographies of newly-e/lected Members of Parliament recently published by The Times will show that, of the twenty Conservatives who achieved gains at the expense of Labour: thirteen are expressly recorded as having contested the same con- stituency in 1950. These gentlemen may not have kissed a single, baby between them ; nevertheless it is highly probable that during the interval of twenty months they somehow succeeded in, conveying an impression of their personalities, and a predomin- antly favourable one, to the electorate. And that, in the last1 resort, is how elections are won.
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