Midsummer Madness
POLITICAL COMMENTARY
By ALAN WATKINS
IT is possible to frame a rough-and-ready but 'serviceable political law to the effect that summer is the great time for plots and rumours of plots. The summer of 1963—how far away it now seems—was the season of the great Profumo plot; last year we had the plot against Sir Alec Douglas-Home; today we already have the Red plot against the seamen's union and, who knows? we may yet be diverted by more conspiracies by the time the season is out and the party. con- ferences are upon us. (Notice, by the way, the word 'diverted': I refuse to be intimidated by the Prime Minister's recent practice of requiring his most ludicrous observations to be taken by everybody with the utmost solemnity. In the House on Tuesday he sternly told an Opposition Member that this was no laughing matter and to wipe that silly grin off his face. Really there is no need whatever for such an accomplished parliamentarian as Mr Wilson to employ gambits that would do no credit to a retarded school- mistress.) At all events, the signs of summer at West- minster are around us. There have been the com- plaints about leaks to the press—on Eldo, on the Red plot, on the party meeting, on almost any subject one cares to mention. There has been talk from Mr Ian Mikardo of a secret strike dossier which included the names of Mrs: Mr Mikardo himself is said to be mentioned in it. There has been an attempt by Mr James Callaghan to cook Hansard. There has in fact been a whole series of ministerial blunders, leaving the impression that the sole surviving supporters of the Government are Mr Ivor Richard and the ever-faithful Mr Shinwell.
'How are things at No. 107', I inquired of a Mend. 'Very exciting,' was the reply. Tor the first time in two years we're really under attack.' Members of the Government tend to put matters in more serious-minded fashion. It is, they declare, a very fortunate thing that the Govern- ment is going through an admittedly bad patch just after an election in which it was returned with a massive majority. The beneficence of pro- vidence, so it seems, knows no bounds.
And ministers can, if they wish, find further consolation. For if the Government is in a bad way, the Opposition is in even worse. There is a febrile, bitty, opportunist quality to the Opposi- tion's performance at the moment; just as there is to the Government's; perhaps the two infect each other. It must surely be a chastening thought for Mr Edward Heath, as it is for the rest of us, that the Conservative who is heard with the most respect and attention in the House is Mr Duncan Sandys. Time was when Mr Sandys was always being photographed either getting into aeroplanes or getting out of them. Today there is less of a public relations air to him. When he rises slowly from his place on the front bench below the gangway (on those occasions, that is, when he has managed to anticipate Sir Gerald Nabarro's attempt to claim the seat) he has an undoubted gravitas which Mr Heath cannot vet match.
Tuesday's events provided as good an example as any of this inability of the Opposition seriously to worry the Government. The after- noon began with Mr Heath's private notice question to the Prime Minister about the indis- cretions of Mr Denis Healey on the subject of General de Gaulle. Mr Wilson retaliated by quoting some uncharitable words on the General which Mr Heath and Sir Alec had spoken follow- ing the Common Market fiasco; Mr Heath failed to answer back quickly; and when he did finally reply, after Sir Alec had tried to come to his rescue, it was evident that he had lost both his temper and the exchange.
There may be some profit in trying to under- stand why on this occasion, as on others, Mr Heath was so decisively worsted. The basic trouble, I suspect, is that Mr Heath has not yet grasped the difference between making a point and being victorious in an exchange. For those who, like the Prime Minister, are attached to sporting similes, it is the difference between scoring a boundary at cricket and winning a rally at tennis. Mr Heath ought to have realised that the Prime Minister would bring up the Conserva- tive ministers' criticisms of de Gaulle; if this is too much to ask in percipience, he ought at least to have been able to think of a quick reply.
But there is a rather more fundamental criticism to be made of Mr Heath's efforts after question-time: he took a mistaken line. He not only did the sum wrong; he did the wrong sum. Not that, as Mr Wilson loftily suggested, he should have left the whole subject alone because Mr Healey had made his indiscretions the subject of a personal statement on Monday. On the con- trary: my own view is that whatever the Speaker ruled, and whatever Erskine May lays down (the curious will find the reference on pages 373-4), Mr Healey made a wholly improper use of the mechanism of a personal statement, which is non-debatable. The personal statement should, I believe, relate to what a politician has said or done, not in his capacity as a minister, but in his capacity as a Member of the House. It is not often that I have the opportunity to praise Mr Jo Grimond's tactical sense. but he did at least get on to this point : he skilfully contrived to suggest that personal statements were not really intended to be used to work the Govern- meat's wicked will in forestalling further dis- cussion of embarrassing matters.
And so to the debate that followed the exchange between Mr Wilson and Mr Heath. About a third of the way through the Prime Minister's speech I thought: he's done it again. Often enough in the past we have been told that the Prime Minister has a personal crisis on his hands, that at last he has gone too far, that this time he will not be able to explain things away so easily. And yet when the time comes the Prime Minister manages somehow to emerge with credit unim- paired and even enhanced. But Tuesday's debate did not turn out to be one of those happy occa- sions. The feeling that it was again going to be so was caused by the attention, the politeness, with which Mr Wilson was received; by the impatience shown by the House to interrupters and would-be interrupters. But this atmosphere proved decep- tive. The House was indeed listening, but the House remained unconvinced. When Mr Wilson sat down the chorus of 'Hear, hears' was feeble indeed.
At this stage Mr Heath had the opportunity to redeem his failure of earlier in the afternoon. Though he did not perform badly, he did not take his chance. Part of the trouble is that, as with his parliamentary questions, Mr Heath seems to believe that effective political discourse consists in making a series of 'points,' preferably num- bered ones. Even students at theological colleges are taught not to organise their sermons in the 'first, second, third' pattern: the congregation start waiting for the 'and finally.' Political audi- ences are little different from congregations.
The pity of it was that two out of Mr Heath's 'points' were serious and substantial ones. How was it, he asked (I am paraphrasing), that two men, whether Communist-influenced or not, could so dominate a body of forty-eight as to make it their creature? And he pointed out that it was not only the public and the public interest that had to be protected, but the individual also. Mr Michael Foot and Mr Heifer could be observed nodding in agreement—a curious spectacle. In- deed it was Mr Foot and Mr Heifer and Mr Mikardo, not to mention Mr Nigel Birch, who on Tuesday showed that for all the current critic- isms the House of Commons can still be one of the most rational and least gullible of bodies.
In the lobby it was a slightly different story. There the Government spokesmen were busily putting it about that Mr Bert Ramelson's useful- ness as an industrial trouble-maker was gone and that the security services had triumphed again. And this is perhaps the most disturbing element in this whole exercise in midsummer madness. So far the critics of Mr Wilson have asked whether it was right for him, under the protection of parliament- ary privilege, to name names as he did. This is no doubt an important question, but there is, I sug- gest, a more important one still. How precisely did Mr Wilson come by the information, tatty and flimsy and inconsequential though it was, which he disclosed on Tuesday?
By his own admission, the Communists, and those who were influenced by Communists, were doing nothing that was contrary to law. Who, then, did the spying? Was it the special branch? And if so, with what justification? It is one thing to say that the Government has every right to obtain all the information it can about the conduct of an industrial dispute; quite another to say that, in gathering this information, it can treat the parties to the dispute as if they were traitors and spies. Even that ultimate in crimes against the consensus, trying to destroy the in- comes policy, hardly justifies police-station tactics of this description.
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