Political Commentary
Poor Old Jo
By DAVID WATT
AFren the whip,, corn. If the Liberals have been suffering under the knout applied to them in these columns last week by Mr. Henry Fairlie (and to judge by the anguished cries of Messrs. Lubbock and Holt on another page they have) then the figures released last Thursday of Liberal Party membership will have provided some salve—an increase of 40 per cent to just over 350,000 in one year is by any standards an impressive achievement. But I must add that the Liberals in the country appear in any case to be in astonishingly good heart. As Mr. Durant, of Gallup Poll fame, has pointed out, they seem quite genuinely unable to under- stand why their opinion poll ratings are not higher than they are. For a party with nothing to lose this state of incomprehension is far the best psychological posture, and it is of some in- terest to glance at the'scene through their rose- tinted spectacles.
The Liberal Party is fielding at this, general election about 400 candidates, the largest number since 1950 when there were 475. On that dread occasion 319 of them lost their deposits. The difference between then and now is absolutely fundamental to the position as the Liberals see it. In 1950 almost every constituency party was split both on policy and temperament between the old guard and the new—the old-fashioned traditional Liberals who had stuck it out grimly tinder the Labour government but mainly saw themselves as an alternative to the Conservatives,. and the new intake who wanted to take the party towards the left and present it as a radical alternative to Labour. The victory of the radicals under Grimond was at the time complete, and many of the old-style Liberal party-workers simply departed to the Tory camp. They left behind a rump, but it was a more or less united rump. The steady increase in party membership from its low point in 1953 of 75,000-odd to the present high point has been built on that base and is therefore also reasonably united. For though the protesting, 'Orpington man' whom Mr. Fairlie so much abhors may be (who can
really tell?) the backbone of the Liberal vote, protesters do not usually go to the length of becoming party workers. Judging by last year's Liberal conference, I should say that the average Liberal worker today is younger and more "'hive (though not necessarily more radical) than many of the people he gets out to vote.
It follows (and Conservative and Labour 'gents freely admit this) that the Liberal Party's infrastructure is stronger than at any time since the war. Constituency associations are function- 'ng• Finances are still shaky, but are improving. itleome is up to about £80,000 a year and the election fund to about £300,000 (incidentally last autumn's sqUalid row about who should be party Treasurer appears to have been successfully patched up). Again, the election agent position is far better than it has been for years.
But in addition to a competent machine, Liberals at constituency level appear to believe that the general climate favours them. The tide is set firmly against the government, they argue, but the fear of regulations and centralism will keep many clear of the clutches of Labour. Jo Grimond is obviously nicer than Mr. Wilson and more intelligent than the Prime Minister. In the 1959 election and in subsequent by-elections the Liberals came second in thirty-five seats. To the fanatical Liberal, eight—i.e., Bodmin, Caithness, Colne Valley, North Cornwall, Denbigh, Finch- ley, Inverness and Torrington—look like push- overs; another ten are freely described as 'easily winnable.' Perhaps, it is conceded, West Hudders- field will fall; but in the present mood it does not take much persuasion to get a country Liberal talking in terms of a Parliamentary Liberal Party of fifteen to twenty after the election.
Why then do these glowing prospects refuse to show up in the opinion polls? That is the question which worries acutely the more cautious Liberals who have to operate in the neighbour- hood of Westminster. The problem is this. At the high point of Liberal popularity their support Was running nationally, according to Gallup, at about 25 per cent. Since then it has declined erratically but persistently until it is now in an area somewhere between 8.5 and 12 per cent. A coMparison with the situation in the spring of 1959 shows remarkable similarity. Then Liberal support was in the region 8.5. to 10.5 per cent. MoreOver in the 1959 election the Liberals polled about 17 , per cent of the votes cast in con- stituencies where the party put up candidates. In the eleven relevant by-elections of the past twelve months (excluding South Belfast as untypical of the general situation) they have averaged 18 per cent of the poll. On this basis it is utterly im- possible to claim that Liberal electoral strength is much different from what it was when they won a mere six seats in Parliament in 1959. Making all allowance for special local efforts, occasional outstanding candidates, and the existence of traditional Liberal support in cer- tain areas which may come back in an anti- Tory year, it is still difficult to see how the Liberals can realistically hope, to gain•more than four or five seats and they are very likely to lose two (Bolton, West and Huddersfield, West). Such a result would be not only be disappoint- ing, it would be disastrous. Another five years with fewer than ten Liberal MPs will try the loyalty of the most enthusiastic almost beyond endurance. No doubt if the Party could choose which seats it wanted to win something could be made of the situation, for there are undoubtedly ten. men in the Liberal Party who are capable of making a distinct impression on the Mother of Parliaments. Such are not, alas, the men likely to be elected.
Moreover in present political circumstances the whole Liberal stance is all wrong. The Liberal strategists (a small but dedicated band) had banked—until eighteen months ago—on the Con- servatives succeeding in the Common Market negotiations and coming once more to power— though- perhaps with a reduced majority. The Labour Party would certainly have been divided in this case and the eager-eyed Mr. Grimond would have leapt from the wings as the only effective radical hammer of the government. What with the breakdown in Brussels, the reunification of the Labour Party under Wilson, and the faltering of the government, the initiative has been lost for the Liberals not only during the pre-election period, but for the foreseeable future. For if these is a Labour government the Liberals will be forced, given Grimond's radical position, to support it on a large number of occasions or at most to abstain.
It begins to look as if the take-off point for a modern party under the British electoral system is not less than 25 to 30 per cent of national support—and there is absolutely no prospect of a Liberal revival of this magnitude within the fore- seeable future. So far as the general election is concerned it is the sheer number of their candi- dacies that matters. Of their 400 challenges, nearly 320 are in Conservative-held seats. Mr. Grimond, asked on television the other night to explain this, said, perfectly fairly, that it was nothing to do with him which constituencies chose to put up candidates. But the fact that it is this kind of constituency which does so choose indicates that whatever Mr. Grimond may claim about being the alternative radical party, a lot of his supporters are looking for an alternative Conservative one. This fact also cast consider- able doubt on Mr. David Butler's assertion (which was, of course, much welcomed by left- wing Liberals) that the Liberals are likely to take votes about equally from the other two parties. Pundits in both the Tory and Labour Parties are inclined to think that the Liberals will con- tinue to gain two Conservatives to every one Labour voter. Suppose, however, for the sake of argument we split the difference and posit that they take three Tory votes to two Labour, the damage to the Tory Party is still very consider- able. For on this basis, presuming they get their 18 per cent of the votes cast in constituencies where they stand, the Liberals will take 12 per cent off the Conservatives to .8 per cent from Labour—a net loss to the Conservatives of 4 per cent. Since there are thirty-three seats held by Tories with majorities of less than 5 per cent, the nature of the problem is obvious. If one takes the two-to-one split as the starting point of calculations, then in theory the Conservatives could practically lose the election on Liberal interventions alone.
This is a prosNci which Mr. Fairlie and Lord Moynihan, a former chairman of the party, de- plore, but it is scarcely fair to order the Liberals out of existence on that account; nor, indeed, in its present state of strange, doomed exuber- ance, is it possible to do so.
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