Political Commentary
BY HENRY FAIRLIE T the moment of writing the debate on capital punish- ment has not been held, but whatever the result of the free vote, it seems clear that much will depend on the attitude of the fairly large number of Conservative members who entered the House of Commons for the first time in 1955. Why should so many of them apparently favour abolition when it is the tradition of their party to oppose it? The answer is surely just one of age-groups. Bagehot once remarked that all the important changes in politics occur with changes of generation: thus, the fundamental change in the nineteenth century came not in 1832, when the Reform Bill was passed, but in the late 1860s, when the post-1832 generation at last occupied the positions of power and influence. The attitude of the younger Conservative members to capital punishment is just one more striking example of the influx into the House of Commons of a post-1939 generation of politicians. In many ways, the post-1939 Conservative and the post-1939 Socialist speak a common language which is different in accent and even in vocabulary from that used by their pre-1939 elders. The significance of this change has yet to be fully acknowledged. There is one more comment on capital punishment I would like to make which may help to illuminate the character of Mr. Aneurin Bevan. When any of his colleagues get steamed up about abolition, Mr. Bevan becomes impatient. Of course. he will concede, capital punishment should be abolished, but the issue has nothing to do with politics, and he implies that it is almost a waste of time—a distraction from the real political struggle—to campaign for abolition. Most people, 1 think, could supply the obvious answers to Mr. Bevan and those who think like him. Capital punishment is a political issue because it is concerned with the State's behaviour to the individual citizen; and it is concerned with it at the supremely important point where the State may deprive the individual of his life. It is a political issue because the attitudes which it provokes reflect all the prejudices, passions and instincts which underlie almost every other political difference. But it Is also a political issue in a more immediate sense. If the abolition of capital punishment is carried against the estab- lished prejudices and established interests which oppose it, the encouragement which would be given to those who have grown to doubt the efficacy of political action would be immense. I have said before that Mr. Bevan's political attitude springs more from the search for power per se than from the search for justice. His fundamental unconcern about capital Punishment is a revealing confirmation,of this.
Last week. in a rather odd letter to the Editor of the Spectator, Mr. Peregrine Worsthorne took me to task for alleging that in his recent article in Encounter he had 'advo- cated the suspension of free elections in countries where the result was likely to favour the Communists'. 'Believe me'. he went on as though Jie were writing to the Daily Telegraph, `Sir, this is a gross and damaging over-simplification of my views'. Was it? Free elections, Mr. Worsthorne said in elabo- rating his views in his letter, become dangerous when they fail in their purpose, producing tyranny instead of freedom, as. for example, they threaten to do in Indo-China. Then, surely, it is vital to be prepared to discard the broken instru- ment [of free elections]. rather than forgo the great purpose [freedom] for which it was designed. . . . Rather than discard the instrument, he [Mr. Fairlie] would give up the objective'. 1 may be obtuse, but there seems to me only one Possible conclusion to be drawn from these words : that Mr. Worsthorne thinks that the West should be prepared to discard free elections when they are likely to produce the victory of a tyranny such as Communism. Mr. Worsthorne applied an elaborate skating metaphor to my writing, but he can execute a far better figure 8 than I can, setting out to deny a statement and then arriving back at the point of his departure. not even out of breath. It is all very well for him to say that the point of his article was to 'sort out ideas'. It would help if he said which ideas, and stuck to them.
in re-reading Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution this week I have come across a thought for the Labour Party as it sets out on its search for egalitarianism : 'Those who attempt to level, never equalise'. If Mr. Gaitskell will accept such a present. 1 will send him these words engraved or embroidered as a sampler. according to whether he would like them to sit on his desk or hang above his bed. .
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