What Shall We Do Next Time?
By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS EVERYBODY is asking everybody else what they propose to do at the next election. Those who are fortunate enough to find themselves uncom- mitted, reasonably answer that they will for the ill ornent reserve judgment, for all sorts of new issues may well have come up before election day. ullt a preliminary and irresponsible survey can do no harm. , The choice before us looks as if it will be a frightening one. Catastrophic falls in the Con- servative votes without any increase in Socialist votes show that the public has little confidence in either main party. Nor can the public be blamed. The record of the Conservatives shows this as a government without principle, Conser- vative or any other. There is no saying what Policies a Conservative Government will adopt or abandon,' and all that is certain is that, what- ever the Whips decree, the vast majority of Con- servative Members will obediently go into the lobby in_support of it. If three-line Whip should command Conservative Members to go into the lobby to'vote for their own execution, it has been said that at least. 270. of them would obediently do so, and, indeed, there are moments when one Wonders why the Wtiips do not try it and see. Almost more 'important, by their disastrous readiness to tell a different tale every time that they get to their feet, first over Suez and then over the Thorneycroft resignation, Conservative Ministers have fatally undermined public • belief to 'ministerial integrity. Nobody any longer be- lieves a word that Ministers say. In every crisis the'bewildered public concludes that it can never discover what really happened but that the only thing of which it can be certain is that the official explanation is untrue.
On the other hand, the Socialists opposed to them are totally divided, totally without coherent Policy and have recently over the Bank rate con- troversy allowed their spokesmen to indulge in a campaign of personal smear which the public finds nauseatingly reminiscent of Senator McCarthy., Few people in these days are ever heard to sug- gest that there is any reason for voting for either of the parties except in.order to keep the other out. If the only choice before us is between a Conservative Government in which Mr. Selwyn Lloyd is Foreign Secretary and a Socialist Gov- ernment in which Mr. Harold • Wilson is Chan- Cellor of the Exchequer, between a foreign policy based on the principles of the Duke of Newcastle and a domestic policy based on the principles of Senator McCarthy, the choice is indeed a terrify- ing one, for it is hard. to see how the country could survive five years of either catastrophe.
I can imagine myself—though I am making no promise—faced with this dilemma voting for a Liberal candidate, though, as the reasons for which I would do so would be somewhat un- flattering to the Liberals, it is perhaps as well to set them out. The most common reason why we are told not to vote Liberal is that to do so would let the Socialists in. That argument seems to me to have lost its force for two reasons. First, few people any longer seriously doubt that the Socialists are coming in anyway whether we vote Liberal or not, and, if so, it cannot greatly matter whether they come in with a few more or a few less seats. Second, there is now such a lack of principle in both the main parties that it no longer seems a matter of the first importance which of them is in. Lord Hailsham's accusation against the Liberals that they are 'a party without ascertainable principles' may well be true, but it is even more obviously true of the Conservatives. The Conservatives, galvanised by Mr. Thorney- croft from the back bench, will probably be better at finance than the Socialists. On the other hand, with the men of Suez still in office one cannot but be terrified that they should still have control of our foreign policy. It is a fairly even choice of evils. It is dismal that it should be so, but so it is. There are in both of the parties in- dividuals of courage, intelligence and integrity, but they are ineffective. In both parties the power of the machine has not only got too strong, but has exercised its strength to crush out intelligence and integrity. The parties were formed in order to carry out certain principles. The machines were formed to be the servants of those principles. Now the machines have acquired such control that it is impossible for either party to act on prin- ciple and almost impossible for any individual who wishes to act on principle to remain a mem- ber of either party. We have allowed to develop a system of government which almost ensures the survival of the unfittest, which makes it almost impossible for anyone to obtain or to retain power except by displaying qualities which prove him unfitted for it. Both back benches are strewn with Members who are barred out of office for no reason except that they hat'/e shown some in- dependence and integrity and proved themselves qualified to hold it.
The most important task for the electors at the moment seems tome, then, to be to smash the' prestige of the two machines. That is more im- portant than whether Tweedledee or Tweedledum governs us, nor can we hope to do it so long as we allow both Tweedledee and Tweedledum each to play up the other to us as the bogyman.
That is the reason for voting for a third candi- . date—as it is, presumably a Liberal. I am not at all willing to enrol myself as a member of the Liberal Party. I find singularly little evidence that the Liberals, behind a facade of phrases, have any more coherent policy than either of the two other parties. They are as hopelessly divided. The Liberal candidate at Carmarthen supported Suez when the rest of his party were denouncing it. There is no reason at all to think that the Liberals would have the capacity to govern the country were they elected .to do so. But all that is comparatively irrelevant. It may be that the Liberals would be just as bad as the others if they were returned with a majority—or it may not. But anyway there is no chance, even in the minds of the most starry-eyed Liberal, of their being so returned. So that does .not greatly matter. It is said that many of the cotton spinners voted. for Mr. Kennedy because the Government has given inadequate protection to cotton, and Mr. Parkinson certainly complained of the lack of logic which led them to vote for a free trade can- didate because the protectionist. Government was insufficiently protectionist.But the cotton spinners were doubtless not such fools that they did not know what they were doing. They knew that it mattered little what Mr. Kennedy said. They hoped that.a vote for him might sting the major parties into awareness.
The consequence of a greatly increased Liberal vote would not be to give us a Liberal Govern- ment but to shatter the prestige of the two machines—to compel the masters of the parties to behave with less insolence in the future and to create a situation where people with independent opinions to express were no longer persecuted by whispering campaigns emanating from the masters of the machines. Another consequence would be that the largely self-nominated cliques who form the constituency associations would have to take more trouble in their selection of candidates, to allow their Members more free- dom and to select candidates who had more of an appeal to the uncommitted voter. These seem to me the developments that are necessary if parliamentary government is to survive, and are at the moment more important than the victory or defeat of either party.
The only way to secure these ends appears to be by voting for third candidates. Merely to ab- stain does little good. The press notes in passing that there was a smaller poll and that is the end of it. Merely to vote for third candidates at by- y- elections and to return to the party ticket at the general election does little good. What is essential is to make a nonsense of the two-party system at a general election.
As I say, I write all as provisional and on the assumption that the choice before us at the elec- tion will be substantially the choice as it is now. It may have changed. There is no doubt that already Mr. Thorneycroft, by merely not being in the Government, has been able to influence policies much more than he could when he was Chancellor and that there would have been a much greater surrender of principle by the Government had he heeded appeals to 'loyalty' and held his post. It may be that the tide will run so strongly that even before the election we shall have a quite different choice. If at the elec- tion we were offered, say, a Conservative Gov- ernment under Mr. Thorneycroft's leadership, that would be a very different proposition. But it looks more probable that by then Tadpole and Taper will still be in the saddle and, if so, it is important to get them out.
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