Getting the priorities right
Patrick Cosgrave
Last week, writing about potential division in the Labour Party, I suggested that what potential existed was far less likely to lead to disruption than some supposed. And I argued that our evident willingness to discuss political matters principally in terms of such division of opinion as exists between the right and the left wings of the Labour Party represents the reality of the British political situation today: one in which there is no convincing or plausible — or even, for that matter, convinced — Conservative alternative to the government of the day. I am naturally flattered that Mr Derek \ Marks, a very senior political correspondent, subsequently made the same case in the columns of the Sunday Express. So full of error did his conclusions seem to me to be, however, that I feel the subject demands further airing. But let me first, however, raise again this question of division in the Labour Party, the subject of which made front page news iii the Observer last Sunday. It is undoubtedly the case, as it always is in any healthy political party, that there is rivalry in Labour's ranks. Mr Marks's paper last Sunday ran a silly front-page story to the effect that Mr Wilson was about to retire to that cloistered academic retreat to which his enemies have wished to dispatch him for some years. But he was never a man to avoid a fight, especially not now, when he has the best opportunity ever in his career of making his mark as a Prime Minister, as opposed to just a party leader. Mr Callaghan and Mr Healey and Mr Crosland and Mr Benn and others would not be human if they did not plan for the aftermath of his eventual departure; and it is entirely healthy that they should do so. But there is not now, and there never has been, any serious division of opinion on policy between any one of those men and any of the others. It is this underlying Labour unity, rather than any. possibility of division within the ranks of the governing party, to which the Conservative Party ought to be drawing attention. Instead of such footling exercises as that of Mr Walker, and his suggestion (with which Mr Gilmour went along) that Mr Wilson should dismiss Mr Benn, a healthy Opposition party would by now have divined correctly that a united Labour Party is making Britain over into a socialist country, and using every opportunity given them by the burgeoning economic crisis to speed up the process. Instead, in a jittery Parliament, the main Opposition party seems about as relevant to what is going on as any of the smaller oppositions — Liberal, or Nationalist, or whatever.
And this is where we come to Mr Marks. Like his employer, Sir Max Aitken, Mr Marks has steadfastly defended Mr Heath from his critics since last February. The central argument of his article last Sunday was that, to become relevant again the Tories should forget their squabbles over the leadership, unite behind Mr Heath, and start about their proper business of attacking the Labour Party. The leadership argument — so Mr Marks believes — is draining away the energy of the party, and preventing it from doing its proper job. Few arguments could be as far from the truth.
For, as long as Mr Heath is leader — and more and more of his colleagues are coming to this view — there is no possibility of the Conservative Party developing into a coherent opposition for, as long as Mr Heath is leader, it will have no very clear idea where it stands. The reason for this — and it bears repetition again and again — is that Mr Heath's idea of
conservatism is quite as collectivist as Mr Wilson's idea of socialism, and Mr Heath and Mr Barber were at least as profligate as Mr Wilson and Mr Benn and Mr Healey. It need only be stressed — as Mr Benn never tires of stressing — that there has been no need for the Labour Government to pass fresh legislation on nationalisation as long as they have ready to hand the great socialist instrument of the Tory Industry Act. The terrible muddle into which the Tories had got by the close of their period of office, when there was no very clear idea where government, or country was going, remains in the mind of Mr Heath at least, and probably of Mr Walker. Until Mr Heath at least has gone there will be no possibility whatever of the Opposition recovering its energy. Now, as Mr Enoch Powell is fond of pointing out, all of Mr Heath's erstwhile ministers are to a degree responsible for the plight of their party, for none resigned during his pursuit of a policy as unsuccessful as it was unconservative. Some, however, are more guilty than others, and some offer a clearer willingness to think the matter over again, and to try to come to fresh conclusions, than others. It is the main hope of the Tory Party that Sir Keith Joseph and Mrs Margaret Thatcher, not to mention less senior figures such as Sir Geoffrey Howe are trying to think policy through again, and learn from the ghastly blunders of the government of which they were members. There is a quite clear distinction to be made between the speeches Sir Keith and Mrs Thatcher, on the one hand, have been making, and those of Mr Walker and Mr Gilmour. The latter, especially in his long articles in the Times has been refining and re-stating the collectivist doctrines on which Mr Heath foundered, while the former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, with his endless flow of weekend speeches and ten-point plans, has been striving might and main to do no more than keep himself in the public eye, now that he has become certain that Mr Heath will fall this spring and that, in spite of appearance to the contrary, he has a chance of the succession. Not for him the agonies of a re-appraisal: rather is he devoted to the prospect of the main chance.
Mr Walker's activities indicate the way in which, in spite of the pleas of Mr Marks and Sir
Max Aitken, the argument about the Tory leadership has changed. First, even colleagues, despite the shock of two election defeats in the same year, have become gradually convinced that there is no future for the Conservative Party under a Mr Heath who has forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Second, the conviction has grown that there are no circumstances in which either Mr Whitelaw or Mr de Cann will be a candidate for the succession. It is not clear precisely when or why Mr Whitelaw came to the decision not to put himself forward, in any circumstance and it is still possible that Mr du Cann would be available for drafting. But the name of the game has now become stopping Mrs Thatcher, and the faction which has in the past been most closely identified with Mr Heath is now concentrating on that task to the exclusion of all others. Its principal banner carriers — since Mr Gilmour does not yet appear to have sufficient weight and reputation — are Mr Walker and Mr Prior, witness the ceaseless speechifying of both men and how energetic are the attempts to get a bandwagon rolling for one or the other.
Mr Prior is a decent man, and he did not, as a minister, make half as many mistakes as Mr Walker, nor was he ever as foolish in his public utterances. (He never described the inflationary hell which the Heath government was creating as a problem of success, for example.) It is hard, nonetheless, to see him or, indeed, any of the more shadowy figures from his wing of the party, as a serious alternative to Mrs Thatcher. She has, apparently, forsworn both broadcasting engagements and the making of major speeches, at least for the moment — though she must certainly make a major speech, and sooner rather than later. Even so, in her silence, she is clearly a more formidable, and a more thinking candidate than any other at present out in front of the field. Moreover, she clearly offers, as Mr Walker and Mr Prior and others of their ilk clearly do not offer, the prospect of something different from the mixture as forced down the throat of the party by Mr Heath. It is the conviction that she stands for something recognisable as Conservatism which has gained so much support for her in recent weeks, not merely on the right of the party but in the solid centre, and among the ranks of the more senior and experienced backbenchers. For, as I argued last week, unless it is different, the Tory Party is nothing. Mrs Thatcher is different, and all the arguments against her are made up of the most outworn and negative prejudices viz, she is a woman, she cannot do this, that or the other, she will not get men's votes, she will not get women's votes, etc, ad infinitum. But it cannot be too often said that, until the party decides where it wants to go, and what it stands for, it is unlikely to get any votes at all. And, so far as Mr Marks's point about vigorous parliamentary opposition goes — and he wants a lot more of that — it is already perfectly clear that only Mrs Thatcher can handle Mr Healey in debate.
The Heath years have run their course. The whole face of British politics has altered radically since the bright dawn of 1970 and all the energetic forces of British politics are to be found, for the moment, in the Labour Party. The Tories can hope for nothing unless they are able to make as clean a break from the heritage of Mr Heath as Mr Heath himself made from the heritage of Mr Macmillan. The central question of Conservative politics, the question that must be asked before we can even begin to consider the nature of opposition of Labour, the specific policies that should be adopted as counters to Mr Wilson and Mr Benn, is who is best fitted to make that break and to present arguments which will reach the demoralised hearts of Conservatives with force and articulacy. Once the question is thus posed it can be seen that only Sir Keith Joseph or Mrs Thatcher is worthy of really serious consideration. Sir Keith has stepped down as a candidate in favour of Mrs Thatcher. So she it is who must be the next leader of the party.
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