24 JULY 1971, Page 3

THE REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE

The Common Market issue cuts through parties; and the Labour Party has no need to feel ashamed of itself because its Leader and its Deputy Leader have publicly shown the violent extent of their disagreement. The Conservative Party, as is its habit, has been more discreet; but the absence of Tory fireworks does not conceal the fact that the party which is led by the Prime Minister is no more united on his European policy than is the party led by the Leader of the Opposition.

Conservatives would do well to caution themselves, before gloating too much at the sight of the Labour Party apparently tearing itself apart. For one thing, the Labour Party makes a habit of seeming to tear itself apart, only to demonstrate when the prophets of gloom are heralding its dissolution that it is sufficiently united, at the end of the day, to win elections and to govern the country. For another thing, the country itself is divided, and passionately at that, on the Common Market issue. To this extent the Labour Party, in its majority as much as in its minority view, far better expresses the divided but predominately hostile national opinion on the European matter than does a Conservative Government ostensibly united behind Mr Heath against the majority opinion, a Conservative parliamentary party with perhaps as few as forty members prepared to defy the Whip, and a Conservative party in the country which is dangerously close to becoming identified with elitist opinion and estranged from the popular mood. It is neither Mr Heath nor Mr Roy Jenkins who at this juncture best catches that mood, but Mr Harold Wilson.

In the longer view, it is wholly to the good that when the nation is divided on a great issue which will affect its future, then that division should find partisan expression. It is unfortunate that it has taken so long for one of the two major parties to move against adherence to the Rome Treaty, and many will regret that it is the Labour Party and not the Conservative Party which is adopting the posture which best serves the nation's true interest. But it is better later than never, and better the Labour party than neither. Mr Heath has called for "a great debate," and for any debate to be successful two more or less equal sides are required. All those who genuinely believe in democratic political processes and reasoned argument and to whom the visionary certainties of ideologies of whatever kind are repugnant should feel both grateful and relieved that a majority within the Labour party has been able to ensure that the anti-Market case will, for the first time since Gaitskell's death, be advanced by one of the two principal parties in the country. It has been hitherto a democratic scandal that the great opposition to entry which exists in the country has found no due means of expression, whether on radio, television and in the press, or through party politics. Although nothing can be done about the press, which must remain free to be wrong, the forthcoming official opposition of the Labour Party, and the removal of bias on the air which will result from that opposition, will secure much of the representation necessary and appropriate for that majority in the country which does not wish its rulers to sign the Treaty of Rome.