Political Commentary
Détente at Brighton
John Grigg
It would have been difficult for the Conservatives at Brighton not to appear less silly and nasty than Labour at Blackpool, but the remarkable thing about last week's Tory conference was that it compared so well with previous Tory conferences. For long stretches one could listen without irritation, and the moments of disgust were few and far between.
The debates most indicative of the mood of the conference were those on immigration, law and order, industrial relations and future party policy, and all were marked on the whole by reasonableness rather than by emotional rant. If Enoch Powell had hoped to sweep the delegates off their feet with his Carefully timed speech at Croydon, he must have been a very disappointed man. Support or him is still stronger than the voting on aurnigration suggested, but much less than it used to be probably no more than one delegate in five.
Moreover an Asian immigrant, Dr Raja Chandran, received a standing ovation. Admittedly he had the good sense to say What he knew his audience would love to hear, urging his fellow-immigrants to earn the confidence of the British people, and ending with the words 'Long live Conservatism and long live the Queen !' (Perhaps he had taken his cue from Voltaire, who turned the jeers of a hostile London crowd. to hearty cheers when he jumped on a milestone and cried 'Brave Englishmen! Am I not sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you ?') William Whitelaw set his face firmly against the Powell policy of subsidised f,ePatriation, and against the exclusion of Close and proven dependants'. He also resisted the ignoble argument that remaintng British passport-holders of Asian origin In East Africa should have their passports Cancelled.
The law and order debate was equally encouraging. The old belief that violent crime is best countered by judicial violence Is clearly on the way out, though of course the death penalty still has its advocates, Including Angus Maude, who replied to the debate from the platform. But his advocacy was strictly personal, in no way committing the leadership, and he did not seem to have much hope that the death penalty would be restored. The emphasis of most speeches was upon the complexity of the problem of crime rather than upon any allegedly simple remedies—a big change from the quite recent past. On trade unions the most successful tspeech from the floor, by Jane Kirk, was in ne Primitive party conference tradition. Her peroration (`If I have to bash the unions to stop them bashing my country, I'll be the biggest bloody basher of the lot') was thunderously applauded, and James Prior described it as an 'electric moment'. But other speakers were less pugnacious and Mr Prior himself showed no inclination to try any union-bashing. His conciliatory line did not inspire enthusiasm but it was generally accepted, and there was only one shout of 'Rubbish' when he said that banning the closed shop would not work.
The debate on party policy was the high spot of the conference, if only because of Edward Heath's dramatic intervention. With The Right Approach recently published, the subject did not have to be discussed in a void, and since the document's prime significance is that it scotches the notion of a breach in ideological continuity between the Heath and Thatcher regimes, it was not surprising that Mr Heath chose that moment to intervene.
Sir Keith Joseph opened and replied to the debate—an ironical task for him, because he did not write the policy document and probably disapproves of its ambivalence. But there was no hint of criticism in his brilliant opening speech, which Mr Heath was able to applaud. Sir Keith genuinely believes himself to be an ideological purist. In fact he is nothing of the sort, but he certainly is one of the few outstanding speakers in British politics.
Mr Heath has never been an outstanding speaker, and his speech on Wednesday contained no verbal magic, as well as being slightly too long. But the substance of it was impressive, and his sense of theatre impeccable. To speak from the rostrum rather than from the platform was a masterstroke. (Incidentally, it is unusual for back-bench Tory MPs to take part in conference debates, to say nothing of ex-prime ministers. Whereas at Labour conferences far too much of the limited debating time is taken up by MPs and trade union leaders, at Tory conferences there is a fairly effective selfdeny ing ordinance by those who have other opportunities to make their views known.) The key points in Mr Heath's speech were his endorsement of The Right Approach and Margaret Thatcher's leadership, together with a grave statement about the economic crisis and the comprehensive national effort needed to surmount it. He pointedly reminded his audience that in a crisis any government 'might have to take measures that at the time ran counter to their longterm aspirations and policies'. In other words, it was wrong to denounce him as a betrayer of Tory principle because he had been forced by circumstances to control prices and incomes. After his speech there was a good deal of muttering by inveterate anti-Heath ites about the grudging tone of his reference to Mrs Thatcher. Certainly she was more generous in what she said about him on Friday, but that was as it should be. It is surely for the victor, rather than for the vanquished, to show generosity.
We must be clear about Mr Heath's position since he was ejected from the leadership in the early part of last year. He has never been offside in the sense of disloyalty to the party. The Opposition has never failed, because of his absence, to win a vote in the House of Commons, and he has spoken for Tory candidates at by-elections. All that can be said against him is that he dissented from some apparent trends in Tory policy, and that he did not hand any personal bouquets to Mrs Thatcher.
But he was fully entitled to criticise policy until he was satisfied, by The Right Approach, that it had returned to the mainstream. As for his failure to pay compliments to his successor, it is really absurd that he should be attacked for this. Only a hypocritical gusher would have done otherwise, and Mr Heath is not over-demonstrative even to his friends.
The argument that Lord Home was so much more sporting to him after 1965 is based upon a false analogy. Lord Home resigned the leadership; he was not defeated for it by a colleague. If he had stood for election under the new procedure that he introduced, and if Mr Heath had then stood against him and defeated him, would he have joined Mr Heath's shadow cabinet and gone around protesting his loyalty to the new leader?
I remember talking to him in his room at the House of Commons shortly before he brought in the procedure for electing a leader, and asking him if he would immediately resign and stand for election—so that the odium attaching to his selection by the 'customary processes' in 1963 would be dispelled. His reply was most revealing. He had little doubt that he would be elected if he stood, because it was most unlikely that any of his colleagues would stand against him. But he did not wish to stand himself, because doing so might embarrass his eventual successor. What exactly he meant is open to various interpretations, but any leader who is concerned about embarrassing his eventual successor has manifestly lost the will to lead.
Mrs Thatcher's view of Mr Heath's gesture on Wednesday is more enlightened and realistic than that of some of her acolytes. Her speech two days later was in the spirit of the new ecumenism, and should —like the whole conference—give her standing in the country a much-needed boost. The supreme merit of her speech was that she did not deny the necessity for the right kind of social contract, and that she largely eschewed the partisan rhetoric which would have won her easy cheers from the immediate audience without helping her to win, or to exercise, national power.
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