1 DECEMBER 1973, Page 6

Political Commentary

Factions right, left and centre

Patrick Cosgrave

The Chancellor of the Exchequer recently sent for the officers of one of his backbench committees concerned with economics and industry. There was a discussion about the country's general situation, and particularly the judgement of an increasing number of backbenchers—and even, indeed, of the Leader of the Opposition and some of his colleagues — that domestically generated inflation could be countered only by squeezing the money supply. Mr Barber insisted that

measures which he had recently taken, including particularly his very substantial increase in interest rates, constituted a monetary policy sufficient to satisfy his critics and then, in -what was described as a remarkable outburst of temper, demanded that backbench criticism of the Government's policies and attitudes cease. Loyalty, he said, and, indeed, total loyalty, must now be the Conservative watchword until the general election: the point about criticism was no longer to be whether it was well founded or not, but simply that it must cease. Those visiting him demurred. A few days later the chief demurrer, and chairman of the committee, Mr Nicholas Ridley, a former minister and one of the sternest of the Government's critics, was defeated in his attempt to be reelected, sufficient true loyalists attending the committee's election to secure his overthrow.

In the other party last week Mr Reg Prentice, Labour's spokesman on industrial relations, was involved in a violent clash with Mr Hugh Scanlon, leader of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, in which he roundly denounced that union's campaign against the Industrial Relations Act, and the National Industrial Relations Court. This was a bold move on Mr Prentice's part, not merely because a substantial number of Labour members have recently played with an attempt to attack the Act through a sort of parliamentary impeachment of Sir John Donaldson, the chairman of the court, but because Labour opposition to the Act has been institutionalised in the form of a parliamentary committee for the support of the AUEW under Mr Stanley Orme. In spite of the row, Mr Wilson re-appointed Mr Prentice as Industrial Relations spokesman, and that tough little man promptly went out and launched a quietly worded (Mr Prentice is at his most formidable and effective when he says hard words in his quiet, flat voice) but savage attack on the whole of the Labour Party's left wing, combined with an appeal to the right and the moderates to stand up and be counted. Feeling his hand had been bitten, Mr Wilson promptly summoned a special Shadow Cabinet meeting to demand that the rowing must cease, and the whole weight of Labour advocacy be turned on the Government. These two situations are similar indeed, and special, largely because we are already in the run-up period to a general election. Moreover, in both cases, the dissidents have powerful arguments on their side. Admittedly, it is not certain which Labour faction should be described as dissident: In the party as a whole Mr Prentice is indeed in a tiny minority, and, as Mrs Renee Short reminded him over the weekend, the left-wing policies he was denouncing had been overwhelmingly endorsed by successive party conferences. But Mr Prentice is, and has for some time been, highly popular in the parliamentary Labour party. Anyway, the Left have on their side not merely the powerful voice of the mass party, but the now ineradicable determination of many members of the party so to tie down their present leaders that the betrayals and prevarications of their last period of office can never be repeated again. On the side of Mr Prentice and his allies, however, is the widespread belief that, under the left-wing dispensation, the matter will never arise, since Labour would never win a general election with its present policies. It is my own view that Labour is now a thorough-going party of the left and that it is Mr Prentice who should be considered as the rebel: his appeal to potential supporters to show what kind of party Labour really is either whistling in the dark, or trying to stimulate a campaign which will convince the electorate of what is the opposite of the truth.

On the Conservative side the dissidents consider themselves to be similarly well-entrenched, armoured not just in righteousness, but in the prosaic conviction that their analysis of the economic situation is correct. When they are challenged with the proposition that measures of the kind they favour (they do not accept, by the way, that the Chancellor's interest rate policy does make up the tip of the iceberg of a hard-line monetary policy; and they are angered by such obviously spurious arguments as that of Mr Patrick Jenkin, to the effect that, without the Prices and Incomes policy the inflation rate would be twice what it is now) would be bound to lose the next general election for the party, they point to the fact that Mr Wilson lost in 1970 when he was reflating not deflating.

More important, the Conservative right (for as such alone can the critics be described) enjoy the powerful stimulus of being intellectually respectable for the first time. The extraordinary respect which the whole of the House of Commons accords Mr Powell (their leader in fact, if not in name), the rapid development of Mr John Biffen into a 2arliamentary orator of the first rank, the effective waspishness of Mr Jock Bruce-Gardyne, the rapier of play of Mr Ridley — all

these have transformed the right wing of the Conservative Party. No longer is it a thing of Sir Cyril Osborne and Sir Cyril Black, Mr Harold Soref and Mr John Biggs-Davison. "The real thing about them'' said one rightwinger, referring to the leadership of the party, "is that they know in their hearts that we are right, and they're afraid their gamble will not come off. We are no longer trapped in the position of being advocates of ludicrous policies. No one really wants to go back to hanging or flogging, or throw out the blacks. They can't just get rid of us with a sneer or a handful of mud any more."

Thus, the dissidents in both parties do not regard themselves — do not feel themselves to be — in any way doctrinaire extremists. They have the satisfaction, in each case, of widespread approval of their judgements, though this is much more obviously true of the Labour right than of the Tories. The Tory leader, however, has far more weapons at his disposal than has poor Mr Wilson: Mr Jenkins, the most extreme moderate in the Labour Party, was able to insist that his post as Shadow Home Secretary would not prevent him from speaking on any subject that attracted him. Mr Barber's attack on Mr Powell at the Blackpool conference was the signal for the leadership and its loyalist troops to act to expunge the growing influence of the critics, and Mr Ridley's defeat was their first victory. A minor, but bitter-tasting, triumph was the decision of Sir Frederick Corfield, once aviation minister, and another of those who lost his government job not because he was inadequate, but because he believed in sticking to the industrial policies laid down in the 1970 manifesto, not to stand again for Parliament, because he could no longer support the Government's economic policies. The Tory machine of discipline in full cry is a terrifying sight, but Sir Frederick's departure will leave a nasty feeling, and the critics are' foretified by the conviction that the best minds among younger Tories, in the country as well as in Parliament, support them: it is always a comfort to politicians to think — in this case correctly — that the future is on

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question to be faced is whether both sets of critics are, in fact, correct in their political analysis. If they are, then an especially disturbing political situation arises. It is extremely unlikely that Mr Prentice and his allies will win the battle in the Labour Party: in this case, if they are right, and if the Tories do not run into a national economic crisis before the election, then Labour will lose next time around, and the party will fragment. If the Tory critics have done their sums properly then, since every postponement of the action they recommend will make the situation worse when it does come, the country will have.to endure a major economic catastrophe either next year or, possibly, after a general election.

Either, therefore, the Government will lose the next election or, after a victory, will be forced to impose a severe deflation, with disastrous consequences to national morale, not to mention the economy itself. The prospects for both parties is bad, but it is worse for Labour, since their divisions are more fundamental, and their rival groups much more evenly balanced. In any event, it is all meat and drink to the Liberals for, if Labour demonstrate the truth of the generalisation that the British electorate never votes for a divided party; and if the Tory right are correct in their conviction that the voters, being much more sophisticated than Mr Walker supposes, simply do not believe the Government's arguments, then the third party has an excellent chance of making a big impact on the next election, which could well produce a minority government. Holding the balance in such a situation would not, however, be easy for the Liberals, since their factions . . . but that is another story.