Come and go
Alan Watkins
An End to Promises Douglas Hurd (Collins E4.95) Mr Hurd is by training a diplomat. He was in the Foreign Office from 1952 until 1966.
He then joined the Conservative Research Department and began writing political thrillers, some with Mr Andrew Osmond, others on his own. In 1968 he was taken up by Mr Edward Heath —it may have been the other way about — and became his private secretary. When Mr Heath won the election, Mr Hurd was rewarded with the political secretaryship at No 10 in succession to Lady Falkender, as she subsequently became; though Mr Hurd, while praising her book, which he rightly describes as underestimated, is at pains to make clear that Things were ordered differently in his day.
His book is different too. It is different from Mr Joe Haines's production. It is charitable to a fault. Mr Hurd hands out approving or adulatory adjectives as if they were gongs awarded to civil servants. Almost everyone is engaging, acute, brilliant,charming or able. Especially is this so of Mr Heath. He is a 'remarkable patriot'. He is also 'determined and resourceful'. He Is often 'in admirable form'. He further Possesses a lively sense of humour — something few of us had suspected.
Not only is everyone engaging, acute and so forth. Everyone also seems to get on remarkably well with everyone else. We are left with the impression that the Conservative Government of 1970-4 and their hangers-on, such as Mr Hurd — no disrespect is intended — were a veritable nest of singing-birds; no mean hands either, at what P.G. Wodehouse called troughing and Sluicing. Though Mr Hurd himself is, to lapse into Hurdese, a temperate, industrious and conscientious man, he and his Chums, notably Mr Heath and Mr Francis PYm, seem to have spent a good deal of time having dinner at Prunier's (then still extant), tea at Chequers and drinks all over the place. No harm in this: the Labour Party are more hypocritical about it, that is all, as readers of the Crossman Diaries (though Crossman himself was no hypocrite) can verify. 'Champagne', Mr Hurd tells us, 'is the right drink for politics. It stimulates at the time, and does not deaden afterwards. In the 19th century it was prized for its medicinal qualities. It is a pity that most 20th-century politicians have abandoned champagne in favour of other drinks which are heavier and just as expensive.' Indeed it comes as a surprise to find Mr Hurd admitting that any mistakes at all Were made during that period. But admit it he does. 'Two', he writes, 'stand out. The single-minded pursuit of growth involved acquiescence in the growth of the money supply during 1972 and part of 1973 beyond the limits of likely production . . . The other main failing was in communication . . . In this failure Mr Heath's Government was not very different from others in recent times.' Well, yes. But Mr Hurd either glosses over or fails adequately to explain the various changes in policy which Mr Heath made after 1970. When in doubt, Mr Hurd tends to rely on the rise in oil-prices of 1973. It may be, of course, that matters would have turned out even worse, for Mr Heath and the rest of us, if those changes had not been made. But this is not the point.
The point is that we ought surely to be told a little more about the reasons for these shifts.
Oddly enough, Mr Hurd is fullest about those changes, which were of the least importance, or failed to come about. One concerned Mr Heath's pre-1970 delusion that he could partly reverse the retreat (itself a reversal of Labour policy) from East of Suez. He spent a lot of time, well described by Mr Hurd, conferring with Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore and with assorted sheiks in the Gulf. It all came to nothing; everyone, including Mr Heath, quickly forgot the whole thing. The other concerned Mr Heath's projected sale of arms in South Africa. Here it was the same story. Mr Heath made some belligerant announcements, which had the effect only of annoying the titular leaders of what is still jokingly • called the Commonwealth. Soon afterwards all was silence. Mr Hurd is content to observe that in politics issues come and issues go; which is, I suppose, true enough.
But we are told surprisingly little about Mr Heath's conversion, if such it was, to a statutory incomes policy. Nor are we clearly told why, a mere two years after the inauguration of the 'quiet revolution', the Industry Act was passed with the express intention of assisting failed enterprises. Lord (then Sir William) Armstrong, possibly the most influential and almost certainly the most disastrous civil servant of the past decade, puts in only three brief appearances. Mr Hurd's reply, which he makes explicitly, is that he is writing not history but a personal memoir of his days at No. 10. Thus we learn that he was in favour of an election in early rather than late February 1978. We learn also that the 'steering committee', with representatives of both the Cabinet and the Conservative Organisation, plays a crucial part in election timing. We have extracts from Mr Hurd's diary (garden room girl extensively sick in helicopter') and specimens of his written advice to Mr Heath. Most of the preaching is sound enough, sounder than Mr Heath's practice.
Mr Hurd quickly made his peace with Mrs Thatcher, and is now MP for Mid-Oxon and opposition spokesman on European matters. She plays little part in this account. She cannot really complain, for the book is not about her. But Mr Heath, one hears, is none too pleased. If this is indeed so, it is difficult to see why. Though Mr Hurd is a very different character, he reminds me of Mr William Deedes, formerly a Conservative Cabinet Minister, now editor of the Daily Telegraph, who, whenever he talks about a former colleague, concludes with: 'Yes, yes, delightful fellow, old go-and-so. Charming. Absolutely charming. Known him for years.'
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