Political commentary
Winston and Margaret
Ferdinand Mount
One of young Winston's earlier oratorical triumphs was in the school competition for French recitation. The set piece was Baudelaire's L'Horloge. The field was small and not particularly select; Churchill W., a freckled pipsqueak from a lower form, seemed least of all to be feared, indeed could be regarded as a bit cheeky to have entered. Besides, Baudelaire, being distinctly short on moral fibre, was scarcely a Churchillian poet, certainly no Macaulay.. In any case, I rather fancied my own chances. My nasal sing-song sounded, to me at least, indistinguishable from the accents of the touring Mohere troupe which' had recently hammed Le Maladel Imaginaire. Then as now, however, I was undone by a certain weakness on the ‘r's and the dipthong `oi'. And my performance fell apart on those grim and memorable lines: 'Trois mule six cents fois par heure, la Seconde Chuchote: Souviens-toil Rapide, avec sa voix D'insecte, Maintenant dit: Je suis Autrefois To everyone's surprise, Churchill turned out to have a top-notch accent and scooted through the piece with great zest. The judge was some imported academicien, an anglophile of the most snobbish sort. The result was a pushover for Little Winston.
Certain lessons are to be rubbed in by this humiliation. It is a mistake to estimate the talents of Churchills merely by their position in class. And while to be the son or grandson of a great man may pose considerable problems of emotional survival, it is no handicap to getting on in the world. In this instance, if Winston had had a rather ‘Churchillian' French accent, that would have had its own reminiscent charm; the fact that he spoke French so well was an equally charming surprise for the judge. Similarly, in politics his glorious ancestry licences him equally for preferment or rebellion.
This kind of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose advantage does not tend to make its possessor popular with his contemporaries. Little Winston was nothing like as unpopular as Sir Winston had been in his youth. But perhaps from having had something of the same disjointed childhood as his grandfather, he seemed a somewhat stiff and opaque figure, like a sturdy little middle-aged man dumped amid inky, jostling schoolboys as in Anstey's Vice Versa. He had also picked up an odd mid-Atlantic voice, less marked nowadays; he talked as though using a microphone, not loudly but publicly. This impersonality was undeniably offputting. No doubt the cause was mostly shyness, but it somehow sounded patronising.
In retrospect these qualities seem well suited for a political life. Winston's inurement to personal embarrassment trained him to say the embarrassing things that most politicians have to say. His standing somewhat outside the social processing of English public-school education made him less class-bound. He may say some silly things. But as a politician he cannot. be written off.
Until now he has been noted mostly for the dignity and tenacity with which he has defended his grandfather's memory. As a war correspondent, he has inherited physical courage and narrative ability. But not until his sacking from the front bench has he suggested that he has also inherited political skills of a different sort. The Shadow Cabinet's inevitable decision not to vote against the renewal of sanctions against Rhodesia had outraged constituency Conservative parties more than anything Mrs Thatcher has yet done. At the same time, the renewal was certain because every Labour MP would vote for it. There was therefore an unrivalled free opportunity for Tory MPs to show how true-blue they were without doing much harm. And it was not only the notorious tough eggs of the Right who took the opportunity; gentle souls like Mr Paul Channon, Sir Anthony Meyer and Mr Tony Newton also voted against renewal, to say nothing of Mr Reginald maudling, the softest-boiled egg of them all.
But only Winston made any real mileage out of rebellion. First, a week before the vote he wrote a letter to Mrs Thatcher, in long-hand, thoughtfully xeroxed for the press, and so looking like a document of historic importance, warning her that he intended to vote against sanctions and claiming that the British government was 'leading the pack in holding down the peo ples of Rhodesia so that the surrogates of the Soviets may more speedily slit their throats — unquestionably the most ignominious act of any British government this century.'
On 6 November, Mrs Thatcher replied to this bodyline stuff, saying she knew how he felt, but would he mind abstaining all the same. Unlike Mr John Biggs-Davison who modestly resigned as a Northern Ireland spokesman before voting, even after the vote Winston refused to accept dismissal at the hands of the Chief Whip and then wrote another rather longer letter dated 12.30 a.m., 9 November, thanking his leader for Spectator 18 November 1978 her letter of 'yesterday' and offering Ills resignation. I cannot remember whether the Small-hours Dateline Gambit figures in Stephen Potter's Woomanship a.111. Darling, I cannot sleep. . . '). In politics a: any rate there are few better ways suggesting your unsleeping devotion to dim than by dating your letter half-an-hour after midnight — even though unkind observers might point out that he could have answered a little earlier, at least before the vote. Mrs Thatcher for her part is no slouch ill these matters. She had fired off her letter enlarging on the reasons for his dismissal before his second barrel reached her. It Was not so much an exchange of letters as 3 crossfire. She too managed to extract 8 certain dramatic value from the affair hY allowing it to become known that, as Churchill passed the Front Bench on way to commit the unforgivable sin, sn,' murmured, 'Winston, do you have to a° ttehrisly?n' Atouches, such as the mention of ta`ci And her letter too contains some 111,85: great personal sadness his decision vil00!,, bring not only to her but also 'for Mina'; and for your mother.' There now, if rha. doesn't make you feel bad. Immediately after the Sacking of Littide Winston, it was said that both parties had overreached themselves. Mrs Thatcher ha further infuriated th,e Right by insisting] upon a degree of unanimity unheard of arl° unnecessary in an opposition WI Sledgehammers had been used on nuts. r"; Julian Amery was on the point of resigrlif).! the party whip. Further horrors, 11111, nameless still, were to follow. Mr Churcu`o for his part had annoyed many of those NO% had voted alongside him by exploiting ° tragic conflict and a sincere difference e opinion for his own personal advantage4e was back in a pipsqueak situation. An° 0 had to move smartly to declare his loyaitYt the leadership. yet arhfip. A from her authorityheil weakened, Mrs Thatcher seems positiver0) gingered by the taste of blood. Party lead are usually said to be too tenderhearteko be 'good butchers' (the real reason is t: d any sensible leader knows that being saer'net turns the mildest man into a malcoritc"i; vide Maudling,R, supra); it has not heed said of her. The Rhodesia rebellion figids out in the Lords after the Tory backw, men had been thoroughly hogged and hi red lied. Very few peers, even registered diehards, can resist massive doses Responsible Statesmanship. nurndbeici And Little Winston? From being l two spokesman on defence, emPowerethe absence of Sir Ian Gilmour to 8:_ti supplementary questions on the conditTs, of married quarters in Catterick barracio'g he is now an accredited rebel, hav 0 clocked up one well-publicised sackirlop personal message of support from Bis. to Muzorewa and a voluminous hanchwritttet correspondence with his leader. Be keep his xeroxes for the archive.
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