POLITICAL COMMENTARY
Learning to love the Tories
AU BERON WAUGH
Last week's Tory party conference provides an opportunity to reflect on something which is by no means apparent at other times of the year, when one has only the grey and peevish regiment of Tory parliamentarians to contemplate: namely the basic decency of the Tory rank and file. In a year when this same rank and file has established its identity by virulent opposition to its leaders' comparatively moderate policy on immigra- tion, and by enthusiastic support for hang- ing, my remark may be thought to need a certain amount of explanation. Certainly, there were one or two speeches during the hanging debate—even one in the European debate—which might have been better left in the editorial column of the Sunday Express. And despite a certain understand- able Schadenfreude one cannot really excuse the Disgraceful Scenes which greet Mr Hogg whenever he stands up to deliver his sermon on race relations nowadays. Nevertheless at least one political correspondent was left with a profound feeling for conference's simple human benevolence which could not have been better reproduced than in the person of this year's chairman, Mr Peter Crossman, He is the brewer whose cheerful, benign incompetence did so much to make this one the happiest Tory conference in recent memory.
Poor Mr Crossman has been much criticised on the grounds that his handling of debates enabled those splits and differ- ences of emphasis which have always been part of the Tory coalition to be exposed and exaggerated, which, in what might prove to be an election year, is thought to be a Bad Thing. The same voices often join my own in calling for more open debate at these functions, but presumably opinion formers are now so anxious that the Conservatives should be returned at the next general elec- tion that all other considerations must be subordinated to this end. They ignore an essential difference between Tory rebels and Labour rebels, which is that Tory rebels invariably espouse popular causes (like more hanging and less immigration), while Labour rebels do not; hence the publicity which their efforts attract invariably makes the Tory party more popular, not less so. A more valid criticism would be along different lines: that very few people like the Con- servative party much, preferring it only because of its greater efficiency; if it is seen to be inefficient in its management of so small a thing as the annual party conference (the argument runs) then its entire appeal is liable to be lost.
No doubt there is much to be said for this argument, and in the face of the massive truths it contains my own small plea that we should all make an effort to like the Tories must sink to an irrelevant squeak. What was disconcerting about the debates on immigration and hanging was not that so many delegates present should have urged even tougher laws on immigration, or that a majority should decide in favour of hanging —no doubt- the Labour party, if it ever left these matters to a genuinely democratic vote, would come up with a comparable result. It was the enthusiasm and relish with which delegates embraced these causes, especially hanging. Can it -really matter so much,, to them that murderers should be hanged? I doubt it very much, and the only explanation must lie in the frustration they feel within our system of democratic government.
The sad truth of their present condition is that hanging, immigration and, to a much smaller extent, the Common Market are the only issues out of a wide range of prefer- ences on which they happen to enjoy popular support. The voice of the people allows Mr Short to imprison their children in socialist concentration camps where their education is prejudiced and their morals are depraved by forced association with the meanest and stupidest of their kind; it allows Mr Cross- man (Dirty Dick, not spotless Peter) to abort their maidservants and Mr Jenkins to pro- mote envy of their oxen and asses and other domestic possessions. But it does not allow anyone to abolish hanging, and it is for this reason that they seize upon hanging with so much more enthusiasm than the issue itself would seem to deserve.
Even the hanging vote would probably have gone differently if the shadow Attorney-General, Sir Peter Rawlinson, had not chosen to reveal that he is himself a hanger. This revelation opens an interesting field of speculation. The Attorney-General, as I pointed out at the end of last year, is the only person able to bring prosecutions under the curious new Genocide Act. It is a heavy responsibility for a single man, and one in which it would plainly be most im- proper for him to be influenced by political considerations. However, as an alumnus of my old school, who has benefited from the exact moral upbringing of the Benedictine order, Sir Peter, I have no doubt, is equal to the task. It would establish an exciting precedent in British politics—and, with apathy the current blight, I think a healthy one—to hang selected members of the out-going administration; although such an initiative might prove embarrassing for Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who has borne the responsibility for opposing any government policy which might have implicated its mem- bers in the crime of genocide. For the third conference in succession since the war between Nigeria and Biafra started, the Conservative party was insufficiently interested in the matter to discuss it, although two million Commonwealth citizens have now died in promotion of the Labour government's policy.
The only discussion of Commonwealth matters throughout the conference was at a meeting organised by Greater London Young Conservatives to urge the party leadership into a little opposition over Biafra. No spokesman of the official plat- form attended the meeting, which was addressed by Messrs Hugh Fraser, Winston Churchill and Jonathan Aitken. Organisers of a write-in for the balloted motion reck- oned that they had 200 votes, which would normally ensure a debate, but as the counting of the ballot is secret, they can never know. Perhaps it wasn't fiddled, but if it was, the only explanation must be that the organisers were frightened of a characteristic among the Conservative dele- gates on which I have already remarked— their basic human decency.
The voice of the people on this issue, sampled in three opinion polls held since the Nigerian war began, averages out at
60 per cent against government policy, 20 per cent for it, and a surprisingly low 20 per cent of 'don't knows'. But it is only one of an enormous number of issues on which public opinion is either indifferent or opposed to government initiative, and the fact that Conservative grassroots enthusiasms have instead been allowed to concentrate on the unhygienic issues of immigration and hanging, must surely be blamed on the party leadership. The Con- servatives could have promised to abolish this rubbishy decimal coinage. Hooray, hooray. They could have promised to restore letters to the dialling system, to demolish Holford's 'piazza' in front of St. Paul's, to rebuild Woburn Square in all its pristine splendour, to sell the Post Office Tower to America and Mr Benn to the Natural History Museum, to bury Redcliffe- Maud and to give us a Constitution.
There was a spirit of gaiety, almost of recklessness, among the delegates, which only needed a little encouragement, and they would have forgotten all about their morbid obsession with hanging. Probable the most popular speech of the entire con- ference came from an attractive shop- keeper, called Mrs Hilary Rost, from Derbyshire. She demanded terrorist tactics to defeat Labour, crying: 'The IRA can have nothing on an army of Conservative women'. She also drew attention to the party's St John the Baptist, crying out like a voice in the wilderness, and was hugely applauded, not just by Powellites, when she suggested that everyone would feel much safer if he were back on the platform. The mood of the conference was totally and utterly opposed to the traditional deference and unanimity, and although Mr Heath managed extremely well to touch the chord of loyalty, and to keep it playing through- out his magnificent organ recital at the end, nearly all the other platform speakers were equally opposed to the mood of th. conference.
An exception must, of course, be mad for Mr Hogg's first speech, on Ulster. B why does Lord Balniel always want make us cry? Won't somebody teach hi that even social security can be fun? Can Mr Robert Carr think of a single joke. Sir Edward Boyle was on a safe wick this time, but Mr Jain Macleod could sure have attempted to make the value add tax sound a little more inspiring. Just thin what it would do to the price of whisk if it replaced the excise duty.
Mr Hogg's speech on Ulster was in class of its own. Everything was there drums, vibrato, cymbals. At the beginni I thought he might have pitched it too hi., that it would end in helpless giggles ft- the press table and embarrassed site from the hall. But no—it was lovely. Lisle' ing to it, I vowed that on this occasion least I must not be beastly to the Brea' winner. Here is the conclusion: 'Faith, hope, charity. "If a man lo not his neighbour whom he knows, ho can he love God whom he has not seen How dwelleth the love of God in man. Let him whom the cap fits put it on. Fall hope, charity—these three. And as ‘■ look into the mirror and into our hea let us say to one another, "The great. of these is charity".' (Prolonged apiilau Lovely, lovely Breadwinner. Never rn what sort of headgear is required. or .4 it is necessary to stand in front of a nil on these occasions. Let he whom the f its ..put. it, on, -at %any .cate . for-a•• tog it wears.
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