Political commentary

Hattersley's progress

Ferdinand Mount

The Labour Hall in Ilford shares premises with the Circle of Light Spiritualist Church (Sunday 6.30 Mrs G. Davies, Sunday 8.15 HEALING). It is a bare hut. The walls are a dirty cream. The time being not Sunday evening but Friday noon, the celebrant is not Mrs G. Davies but the Rt Hon Roy Hattersley, Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection. He is flanked by a gorgeous array of acolytes and attendant clergy, nearly outnumbering the meagre congregation of reporters. There is a minister of state, an under-secretary of state, two parliamentary private secretaries and a lord commissioner of the Treasury. They are all gathered together to worship the Single Figure, the coming of which has been so long awaited by the faithful. The people of Ilford North, sorely afflicted by the plague of a by-election, are to see a great light.

At long last Mr Hattersley is able to tell us that the rate of inflation for the twelve months up to the end of January was 9.9 per cent. 'It's not a matter of almost Single Figures, or nearly Single Figures. It is in Single Figures, the first time we have been in Single Figures since summer '73, five months ahead of our own estimates.' One seems to recall other estimates of a somewhat earlier return to single figures. Does the name Healey suggest anything to you? But no matter. It is a cause for rejoicing that prices should now be rising at a rate which will halve the value of our money every seven years instead of every four.

After being unveiled, the Single Figure has to be shown to the people. It is to be carried in procession through Gants Hill and Barkingside so that all may benefit from its healing powers. The first station is the Co-op at Barkingside. These days Lon don's Co-op stores are not the depressing, ill-stocked barracks they used to be. They were revamped around 1960 and now shine as brightly as any Tesco or Sainsbury. Mr Hattersley processes down the spotless aisles in his three-piece pinstripe suit accompanied by the charming Labour can didate, Mrs Tessa Jowell, in her Afghanstyle fur coat. Old ladies cornered by a stack of Bovril cubes or a wall of Kleenex are awed by the Minister's gracious inquiries about the price of sliced bread and pig's liver. Do prices seem to be a bit steadier?

Mr Hattersley asks. Yes, well now that they come to think of it, prices do seem to be a bit steadier. Mr Hattersley clasps a packet of All-Bran with healing hands. He blesses a cling-wrapped cabbage.

Suddenly at the check-out counter, he hits trouble. An austere elderly man: 'Under old Ted Heath, I never had tax to ray. As soon as Labour got in, I got taxed. I've been a socialist all my working life. Then Healey taxed my £22-a-month pen sion back to £12. You've had my vote, mate.' Mr Hattersley answers politely, shakes hands and escapes into the frosty sunshine. A well-bred voice from the loudspeaker van announces that 'Mr Roy Hattersley, Secretary of State for Consumer Affairs, is now on a walkabout.' The royal progress commences.

Unfortunately, it seems the people of Ilford North don't know how lucky they are.

Mrs Jenny Smith of Chigwell waves her London Electricity Bill for £122.95 in Mr Hattersley's face: 'I'm up at 5.30 because I have to go out cleaning because I can't live on my husband's wage. It's the tax. I've got to put away £10 a week just for the electricity. I was fetched up under Labour but unless you do something I'll never vote Labour again. My son's a polisher. He's only 5p a week better off working than not working. I wrote to Mr Healey about him and I wrote to Callaghan about — what was that I wrote to Callaghan about last week, Gladys? Fares, that's right. And these immigrants who come over here and live on social security.'

Mr Hattersley wheels from this onslaught but only gets a few yards further before being assailed by a red-headed Scottish lady. 'You don't have to give me the figures like I'm an idiot. We've lived through it with ft million unemployed. You're always taking the credit for it.' Mr Hattersley protests at the extraordinary suggestion that he should have come down to Ilford to take the credit for anything; the credit belongs entirely to the British people.

On the face of it this brief sample of opinion is puzzling. By and large people do not dispute that prices really have steadied down and presumably must allow the Government some credit for this. And yet Mr Hattersley has had a rough ride —in striking contrast to the enthusiastic reception Mrs Thatcher gets on the same pavements four days later. A couple of hours canvassing with the Conservative candidate, Mr Vivian Bendall, suggests an answer.

What emerges on the doorsteps of these slightly run-down between-the-wars semis is that Mrs Thatcher has appropriated the two cries that matter: 'Axe tax' and 'stop immigration'. Four out of five of the people Mr Bendall asks to name their chief worries

name taxation or immigration or both. No other subject — not even rising prices —

receives more than the occasional mention.

Although high taxation has been diagnosed before as the reason why some Ashfield min ers voted Tory it is startling to hear it repeated over and over again, particularly by the

Spectator 25 February 108 housewives and elderly people who are the most likely to be at home when we call. You would have expected them to be concerned about rising prices which affect them everY day rather than about taxes which have already been deducted from their husbands, pay packets or from which age may exemPt them. But the downward slippage of the tag brackets has done its deadly work. The outcry against further immigration is equally unmistakeable. The only black man. we meet, a suave middle-aged South African who has lived here for twenty years, does not hesitate before naming immigration as his main worry. And Mrs Thatcher's return to the theme alreadY seems to be pulling a measurable number of votes back from the National Front. Buffeted by Labour ministers, Tory ex ministers and us journalists she may be, but down here nobody doubts that she has hit the right note.

The Front has laid on a march, now banned, through the constituency this weekend. Jewish taxi-drivers — one in eight voters is Jewish here — planned a mass drive-in in reply. Yet despite these echoes of the 1930s the general feeling is that the Front had passed its peak. We encounter only one supporter — a saturnine man in 8, very white shirt who growls 'National Front and slams the door.

The National Front candidate may still finish ahead of the Liberal, whose chances seem to be hopelessly scuppered by the Lib-Lab pact. But this is academic. Both are likely to lose their deposits. The Tories have more cause to worry about the intervention ' as an independent Tory of Mr Toni Iremonger, for twenty years their MP and a popular one. After being defeated by 778 votes in October 1974, he was not reselected, mostly because he is sixty-one. Now he hopes to split the Tory vote, let Mrs _Jowell in for a few months and then be triumphantly returned as the official Conservative candidate at the general election.

Some hope. Although courtesies are being publicly maintained at Tory HQ, the only printable private reaction I heard was 'Kneecap him'. My own guess is that M a high-tension by-election he will not get far. Assume that the Iremonger vote does not

exceed a couple of thousand. The Tories still ought to win comfortably. If they don't, Mr Callaghan will surely rush to the Polls' After all, even though the constituency has seedy edges, it is still outer suburban territory of typically Conservative character.

Labour scraped home last time onlY

because redistribution exchanged a Tory ward for the GLC housing estate at Hainault. Yet even in Hainault about onethird of the council houses have been sold to their tenants, gardens are being kemPt, woodwork painted and lifelong Labour voters astounded to find themselves paying income tax for the first time. Here if anY" where the embourgeoisement of relocated. East-Enders must be germinating. This if

\ anywhere ought to be Thatcher country. And that is what it feels like.