The skeleton at the feast
Peter Ackroyd
Kensington Town Hall does not, on the face of it, seem an ideal place to 'break the mould' of British politics but it has its Virtues — neither too smart nor too tatty, neither humble nor imposing, a great deal of tasteful, modern brickwork. The kind of Place a convention of hoteliers might pick. But here are the SDP. A young man gets uP and declares that 'we are committed to all forms of sexual orientation'. Everyone smiles and nods: yes of course, that's right, that must be high on our list of corn- Mitments. Roy Jenkins remains impassive. A few minutes before, William Rodgers, looking like the butler in a Charles Addams cartoon, had said something out of turn
I did not catch what it was. 'I apologise if I have hurt anyone's feelings ...' More smil- ing and nodding — well, that's all right then. Mr Jenkins places his hand over his Mouth and stifles a yawn. In fact, he becomes more interesting hourly: he is pay- ing no attention to anything that is said,
hdsits reading the newspapers. He is like mysterious stranger at a party who is about to deliver bad news.
`Sweetness and light' was an expression first used, I think, by Matthew Arnold as the distinguishing characteristics of those Who were neither barbarians nor philistines what we might now call the middle ground. The phrase never caught on, however, partly because it seemed peculiar- IY inappropriate in the energetic and squalid conditions of mid-Victorian England. Now sweetness and light are back. They are what the SDP stands for. It is in favour of everything nice — 'an open, classless and more equal society', 'competitive public enterprise', 'defence of human rights' and opposed to anything nasty. The delegates are in the smiling and nodding business.
But Mr Jenkins isn't smiling. When the rest of the platform lean forward to ap- preciate a particularly telling point from the floor, he leans back or walks off the stage altogether. It is, of course, an old game: the good cop' and the tad cop'; the only dif- ference, on this occasion, is that the good cops don't seen, to know that a bad cop ex- tsts. The delegates have that look of niceness combined with bland optimism Which one has seen before: the doctor's receptionist smiles and nods while unmen- tionable things are going on next door; the
undertaker smiles and nods as the corpse is carried into the waiting limousine.
Where is the reality behind all the talk in Kensington Town Hall — where are the corpses and the pain? Somehow, as far as the delegates are concerned, they have ceas- ed miraculously to exist. If someone had gone to the rostrum and suggested that the SDP was in favour of nuclear war as long as it was responsive to ordinary people's real needs and to openness in government, it would have passed without a murmur. Political parties were once a way of harness- ing fear, resentment and self-interest but such emotions have no place here. The only passion generated is by points of order they love their points of order, they rush to the microphone and think of new ones on the way. And if this indeed a middle-class party, it is because it shares the one fun- damental weakness of the middle class the belief that the world will work perfectly if it can be organised properly, that other people will behave themselves if you explain patiently to them what is in their best in- terests, that you can, as one delegate put it, `legislate against selfishness', Social reality can be changed by a number of new year resolutions. One longed for a lady in a large hat to call for the hanging of immigrants, or a bearded youth to demand the nationalisa- tion of launderettes — something inex- plicable and horrid to break up the sweetness and light. There were arguments, of course. How many units make up an area? Should one use the term 'sex' instead of 'gender'? Should the delegates 'reject' discrimination or be 'regardless of it instead? The delegates get excited about such matters: they rustle their newspapers and murmur to each other. They are neither old nor young, rich nor poor; in the intervals they stand in small groups and talk in that curiously flat English which comes from everywhere and nowhere. 'This is an historic moment,' one of the delegates tells them, but it is a dis- creet moment — as if history were a servant who has brought them a letter on a salver.
What is Mr Jenkins doing now? He looks inscrutable, large, ruddy in face, quite preposterously physical beside the pale, eager creatures who share the platform with him. When he gets up to speak, at the close of the convention, his body quivers with suppressed energy. He does not smile or nod. When he talks he clenches his fist, and prods the lectern with his finger when he speaks of 'battlefields' and 'struggle'. It comes as something of a shock: he is definitely not part of the sweetness and light, and does not bother to dissemble the fact.
There is a theory, propounded by Arthur Koestler, that human beings have evolved in schizophrenic fashion — with an 'old brain', reptilian, primitive, slowly being ousted by the 'new brain', rational, logical. Mr Jenkins is definitely the old brain mak- ing a comeback, set to defy the laws of evolution. If he can ride to power on the back of accountants and estate agents rather than coal miners or factory workers, so be it. He seems preoccupied because he is waiting for power.
Outside, two young men are selling SDP souvenirs. There are some particularly nice ties, at four pounds each. 'You can wear it tonight,' a wife tells her husband, 'at din- ner.' It will be a talking point then, no doubt, and give the man a chance to explain why he has decided to join the SDP and `break the mould'. He will wear it as a mat- ter of principle. And it does look very tasteful.
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