SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
The present inclination to write Sir Edward Boyle's obituary as a politician may well prove to have been premature. It will be very odd if he doesn't return to Westminster one day, as a peer. I've heard it hinted that Mr Wilson already has the rather puckish notion of offering him a life peerage. If that doesn't happen, then Mr Heath, should he become Prime Minister, would certainly bear him in mind. Either way Sir Edward's voice would be heard again in Parliament, which would be to the benefit of everyone. It is strange how prospective peerages seem to have a way of hovering over the Boyle family : when Asquith listed some 250 people whom he intended to make peers to beat the Lords during the 1911 constitutional crisis, Sir Edward's father was among them.
Sir Edward's impending departure has caused ill-conditioned signs of relief in some Tory quarters. It is sad that there is so much hankering after monolithic uniformity in politics. The two party system only makes sense if the parties are recognised as coali- tions of groups with broadly similar ultimate objectives, but with numerous differences about means. Politicians who make a great fuss about 'unity' think that this elusive quality enhances their appeal to the elec- torate, yet, paradoxically, the opinion polls suggest that a healthy row within a party is more likely to increase than diminish its popularity. The English, I sometimes think, picture a political party as a sort of club ; they don't expect to like every member, but they have to approve of its general tone before they wish to join. Sir Edward has contributed a valuable liberal element to the Tory tone which some of his colleagues have undervalued.
Filling the gap
Picking a successor to Sir Edward Boyle as Tory spokesman on education presented Mr Heath with a nice problem. The Govern- ment's Bill to make comprehensive schools compulsory looks like being one of the chief contentious items in the coming session, and feeling is high on both sides. Mrs Margaret Thatcher was not the most obvious choice and it's worth recording that the man Sir Edward personally favoured as his successor was Mr William Whitelaw, the Tory chief whip since immediately after the 1964 election. As chief whip, he has had a big if mostly unseen part in the many clashes on education which have occurred within the party; it's a subject which interests him greatly; and moreover I gather that he feels his long (and gruelling) stint as chief whip has lasted just about long enough. Mr Heath's awkward decision, therefore, was between losing an excellent chief whip at a critical. pre-election period and yielding to Sir Edward's recommendation backed by Mr Whitelaw's preference for a change of duty. In the end he decided not to move Mr Whitelaw who will now, presumably, have to soldier on until the election. And Mrs Thatcher has a formidable task.
Point counterpoint
Somebody must like the new ten-shilling coins, but I have yet to meet him. There seems to be a sort of grudging coolness about this first major sign of the coming decimal
upheaval. Some people, again, must like the whole idea of changing to decimal money, but 1 never seem to meet them either. How- ever. we shall no doubt get used to it in time. I am not so sure, though, about the change to metric measures which is also on the agenda, for 1975. Switching to kilo- grammes. kilometres and so on will require a much greater adjustment. No one pays any attention today to the Centigrade scale which has been thrust upon us: we all mul- ishly stick to familiar Fahrenheit. I expect something of the sort may happen when metric measures come in.
Something called the Metrication Board has just issued the results of its first survey of 'public awareness of the impending change'. According to this, 'very few' know it is supposed to happen in five years' time. And only half of us have yet hoisted in the information that the kilogramme is to be our basic unit of weight, while 'virtually none realised that this unit is strictly a measure- ment of mass'. (Does this mean, I wonder. that they expect greengrocers to sell potatoes by 'mass' instead of 'weight'? Nothing is im- possible.) We must seem a disappointing lot to these metric men. They almost hint as much in the guarded note that 'most people have a view about the degree of difficulty they expect in adapting their home lives to the metric environment'. I'll bet most people do. Similar surveys are to be made every six months in future. Ah well, it's one way of spending our devalued, decimalised, money.
Travellers' joy
I was driving a new car the other day and what struck me most about it was that every time I dipped the headlights the clutch pedal jabbed into my ankle. But the car had a low and rakish line, which is evidently much more important. The Motor Show might itself have been designed as a massive demonstration of the powerful part in modern man's fantasy life that is played by the car. All those wondrously shaped and coloured vehicles aren't really about the dull facts of transport at all. They arc precious symbols of escape. or power. or something of thE sort. Perversely, though, I have felt in recent days, as Motor Show prose has spilled over the newspapers in romantic pro- fusion, that some manufacturer is missing an opportunity to break right away from the day-dream market. Perhaps the only really neglected line of development for the car now is in the direction of plain utility. I imagine a car which doesn't have paintwork to chip or chromium to rust, or need a garage's frequent attentions, or waste money on what the salesmen call 'styling features' ; and which would slog on reliably and undemand- ingly for many years. It wouldn't much matter whether its maximum speed was seventy or 140 miles an hour, or whether it took x or y seconds to reach fifty in third gear. Would such an untiring workhorse of a vehicle be too prosaic to sell? 1 suppose it might be. I've just read of a gadget which can be added to any car so as to raise or lower the windows by electricity at the touch of a button. No rational person would say it was worth nearly thirty pounds to save himself the trouble of turning a window handle. But that, of course, isn't the real point.
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