Centrepiece
The moral superiority
Colin Welch
Dart of the 'ineradicable' damage done to Mrs Thatcher by the Parkinson af- fair is that 'it removes a large limb of her political argument, the claim to Conser- vatism's moral superiority'. Thus Hugo Young in the Sunday Times. I regret cross- ing swords with a man whose shining decen- cy was attested by his presence at the memorial service for Co1m Brogan, a hero of Mrs Thatcher's with whom he can have had little save essentials in common. But really, amidst all the sententious guff engendered by Mr Parkinson's downfall, these sentiments seem a bit egregious. They may rank with Anthony Bevins's assertion in the Times that 'Mrs Thatcher's views on divorce are particularly strong'. Mr Bevins does not indeed state in what way 'par- ticularly strong': pro, anti or 'particularly' in between. From the context I assume anti. And, if so, one can only say that she has, well, not allowed them to influence her un- duly. They did not prevent her from marry- ing a divorced man. They have not damag- ed the prospects of Nigel Lawson, Leon Brittan, Douglas Hurd, Norman Fowler, Linda Chalker or Nicholas Ridley, just pro- moted. Either they or their partners have thought it right to 'get divorced and do the decent thing', which I gather from a government minister is the way we live or Should live now. To say the least, Mrs That- cher's rules seem more charitable than those once prevailing at Papal audiences and in the Royal Enclosure.
Much guff was to the effect that Mr Parkinson had somehow revealed himself a moral 'lame duck' and thus a hideous em- barrassment to an administration devoted to cherishing the family and restoring Vic- torian values. Now certainly 1 don't agree for a moment with one of Mr Parkinson's constituents that private lives have nothing to do with public lives. Private disorder can (though it doesn't always) damage public performance. A public man who shows himself hopelessly weak, vacillating or dis- ingenuous in private life may be expected sooner or later to display these character- istics in public. Perhaps wrongly expected: but people are entitled to make the connec- tion if they wish. Public and private are in- extricably intertwined; and indeed, in Mr Parkinson's dilemma, now tragically resolved, we may see a private parody of the Government's public dilemma: as I put it last week, one commitment too many.
Even so, I think it absurd to suggest that Parkinson must somehow have knocked Mrs Thatcher sideways, made her look a perfect fool and humbug and robbed her of all moral authority. To talk so would make some sense only if she were leading not a political party but some sort of moral crusade or religious revival.
All she has actually done is to indicate once again that, contrary to the findings of the Observer-Harris poll, she 'is a nice per- son, politics apart'. Indeed, she professes to have been reared on, shaped and directed by Victorian values. That was her personal good fortune: perhaps Mr Parkinson was not so lucky. Doubtless too she wishes and intends to reinstate those values as the guiding principles of our age. Yes, but she is a politician. As such, how is she to set about it? Preaching and personal example will achieve something; indeed, without them she could achieve nothing; but something is not enough. Should she then gather to herself a great army of unspotted saints and apostles, evangelists and pro- phets of unexampled purity and fervour, to spread the gospel and rouse a fallen nation to deeds worthy of its glorious past? Perhaps she would if she could, though the results might be more ludicrous than ef- ficacious. Yet God in His wisdom has given her instead the Conservative Party, and has recently reminded her that it is a party of sinners. Need she then despair? Of course not.
Let us look again at those famous Vic- torian values. She listed them spontaneous- ly, in no sort of order, in an interview. They were hard work, self-improvement, self- reliance, independence, thrift, saving for investment, living within your income, not getting into debt, cleanliness and godliness, self-respect, patriotism, helpfulness to neighbours, duty to others and to the com- munity, responsibility for one's own actions and one's own family, respect for one's own property and other people's, the right or duty to pass on what you have to your children. In all of these precepts can surely be discerned a strong moral content, ap- parent even to socialists, albeit of a sort nowadays obnoxious to them.
To expect all members of a Conservative or any other administration to conduct their lives strictly according to these homely maxims would be absurd. We cannot even expect it of ordinary people, not even of ordinary Victorians, who, without the precautionary devices now commended by bishops, engendered quite a bit on the side; not even of Mrs Thatcher's hero Churchill, not exactly thrifty, so often in debt. What we can and do expect of a Conservative government is to do everything in its power to encourage and spread these values. No lapse of Mr Parkinson or anyone else, no sneers from Sir Ian Gilmour about 'housewife economics', should absolve or deflect Mrs Thatcher from her duty nor render it, so far as I can see, impossible or more difficult.
Appallingly difficult it already is. In prin- ciple it is easy enough to think of reforms of laws, taxation and benefits calculated to favour the values and to penalise their perverse opposites. But try to give them precise and binding form, and see what a quagmire of conflicting appetites, vested in- terests, established expectations and cherished abuses you stumble into! Try to curb the inordinate greed of the modern state, as Mrs Thatcher has vainly tried to do, and you will find that it is only the col- lective expression of millions of inordinate individual greeds. Cut 0.1 per cent where you will, and you make a million noisy enemies. Official forecasters, incidentally, have been accused of 'scare tactics' in predicting vast increases in public spending, if unchecked. If they are raising false fears (which I doubt), the present level of 44 per cent justifies real fears, increases or no.
Our unreformed welfare state recalls in a way pre-revolutionary France. Taine described how then 'the machine, through its complexity, irregularity and dimensions, eludes the King's grasp'. Louis XVI strug- gles for some time to remove or improve some of the wheels, to reduce friction, but they are too rusty and weighty: 'his hands fall by his side, weary and powerless.'
Mrs Thatcher is no Louis XVI. Contrary to malign rumour, she has not become com- placent. T. E. Utley finds in her still that 'restless nagging mind, discontented with everything it has achieved', determined to do more and better. But lo, like Elizabeth I, she is but one poor woman. She needs help, and saints may not be best equipped to give it. One unusually competent, almost That- cherite saint, Teresa of Avila, called to her aid not women who had visions but those who could scrub floors. Mrs Thatcher needs about her clever, capable, far- sighted, energetic, courageous men and women, including even some poisonous ideologues; and if some of these turn out to be adulterers, fornicators, debtors, dirty and ungodly to boot, well, too bad, so long as they can scrub floors.
Even according to Hugo Young, Mrs Thatcher is not fool enough to claim the moral superiority of Conservatives as in- dividuals. If she were, his remarks would have had point, and the Parkinson debacle would have rebuked her vain pretensions. As it is, convinced of the moral superiority of her sort of Conservatism (and rightly in my view), she must soldier on to defend and extend it at the head of a motley army, in which even the bravest and most resource- ful may be deeply flawed and many others are, as in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, 'the scum of the earth'. Morality may be served by sinners — no, must be. Who else is there?
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