How Not to Vote

Mr. Gaitskell's Albatross

By .1. E. S.

SIMON, QC ociausm is about equality. Conservatism is about opportunity, and therefore about liberty, and therefore about order. Liberalism is about the Liberal Party. Those who attach clear priority to one or other of these concepts have probably made up their minds how to vote. My observations are addressed to those others who, reasonably enough, are prepared to vary their priorities according to circumstance. Their vote will therefore depend on what respective weight they attach to the various issues before the electorate.

Domestically, far the most important is in- flation. Its menace is by now clearly under- stood. Economic growth demands increased im- ports; increased imports must be matched by exports, or we put ourselves in a balance of pay- ments crisis and eventual bankruptcy; if our home costs rise we price ourselves out of our export markets; economic growth therefore de- pends on keeping our home costs down and infla- tion mastered. But inflation is no less mischievous socially and politically. Organised workers have been able to maintain and indeed greatly improve their real standards. But during the period of rising prices part of this improvement was inevit- ably at the expense of the living standards of other unorganised sections of the community, mainly those living on fixed incomes, many of whom were already considerably worse off than the economic aggressors. Such a state of affairs cannot be justified by any social philosophy which appeals to the British people. But it is also pro- foundly undemocratic. A major shift in social and economic relativity takes place, not through electoral choice (as happens, for example, when the electorate demands a greater sharing of wealth through improved social services, financed if necessary by heavier taxation), but by a strongly organised group aggrandising itself at the expense of the rest of society.

Neither by their record, nor by their programme, nor by the company they keep are the Socialists to be trusted on this fundamental issue. Their record needs no recapitulation : sufficient to say that inflationary conditions deteriorated rather than improved as their policies took full effect; while a whole apparatus of controls was then available which could hardly now be coun- tenanced. As for their present 'programme, the cost is prodigious. On current account alone :t would run into hundreds of millions to finance the various immediate improvements they promise. And on capital account compensation for such things as industries nationalised and houses municipalised would run into thousands of mil- lions. The injection into the economy of sums of this sort, supervening on the massive public and private investment we all count on, would be a major and uncontainable inflationary force. As for the company they keep, Mr. Frank Cousins was not merely speaking for himself when he said, 'There will be closer co-operation between us because it will be the Government that will be giving the closer co-operation, not the trade unions.' The demand-pull of this vast injection of money would facilitate the cost-push of wage demands, which there would be neither the will nor the power to restrain.

Closely connected with the issue of inflation is that of taxation. This is fundamental to a liber- tarian society. A society, we are told, is demo- cratic in so far as the mass of the people can influence the decisions which affect them. But since the bulk of the decisions which affect ordinary people are economic rather than political and small rather than large decisions— whether to buy an aspirin rather than a button, or a night-class fee rather than a cinema ticket—the easiest way to allow people to influence the deci- sions which affect them is to permit them to take those decisions themselves. And the most effec- tive way of enlarging the sphere in which they can take such decisions is to let them retain more of their own money to spend rather than arrogat- Jocelyn Edward Salis Simon, QC, has represented Middlesbrough West as a Con- servative since 1951. He was PPS to the Attorney-General from 1951-54; Under- Secretary of State at the Home Office from 1957-58; and since the Cabinet reconstruc- tion that followed Mr. Thorneycroft's resignation he has been Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

ing to the State the right to decide how it should be spent. Again, neither on the Socialist record nor on their programme is there any chance of the substantial reductions in taxation which we have seen in the last eight years; indeed, it is difficult to accept that the programme can be implemented without increases in taxation.

The third crucial issue is nationalisation. The nationalisation of iron and steel would inevitably dislocate an industry whose products enter into 52 per cent. of our exports; while the price reduc- tions and the investment decisions of the past year show that it is already subject to per- fectly adequate public control and supervision. Nationalisation of road haulage will involve interference with the choice by industrialists and traders of the cheapest and most efficient method of transporting their goods; and unless one has a child-like faith in the superior wisdom of White- hall, this can only result in costlier and less effi- cient transport. But far more serious is the vague- ness of the Socialist threat of further nationalisa- tion. We have far too many worth-while calls on our bank balance to write out a blank cheque of this sort—quite apart from the fact that the open-ended nature of the mandate is more in keeping with a totalitarian plebiscite then a demo- cratic election.

This is the decaying albatross with which Mr. Gaitskell found himself garlanded on his eleva- tion to party leadership; and it is intolerable that in election after election, in one form or another,

it should be paraded for our approval. The Socialists are in a similar position to that of the Tories on Protection last century. The electorate, whatever they thought of the Whigs, repeatedly and rightly refused to give full power to a party which clung to an economic doctrine which had been clearly rejected. In the end Disraeli sum- moned courage to tell his party that Protection was not only dead, but damned. The country heaved a sigh of relief, and Disraeli's fruitful and seminal administration of 1874 was made pos- sible. If Mr. Gaitskell is to do anything with the Labour Party he must be stimulated to tell them that nationalisation is due, at any rate, for a con- siderable spell in Purgatory.

There is a fourth domestic issue on which the Socialists have taken up a position which pre- cludes the reasonable uncommitted voter from supporting them: the grammar schools. A case might be made for abolishing the public schools, on the ground that they provide a privileged education for the wealthy and thereby buttress social barriers. But what can really be said for abolishing that part of the free educational system which enables the brightest children from the humblest homes to ascend the social, econo- mic and managerial ladder?

Abroad, less divides the parties than they would sometimes pretend. Ultimate objectives are very similar; and there is so little room for manceuvre that even immediate moves are unlikely to be widely different. But such room as there is has been created by the Prime Minister; and no amount' of talk about Suez or Cyprus will invest Mr. Gaitskell with the same experience or authority—not to mention judgment. The Socialist specific, the non-nuclear club, is, of course, a pretence not a policy, since there is not a cat's 'chance of France or China (to name only two) applying for membership. But an electoral device of this sort can be a lasting embarrassment. More- over, Mr. Gaitskell and Mr. Bevan are bound to be weakened in negotiation by the deep diver- gences of view in their party—which cannot be charmed away by calling them 'healthy,' still less by stacking card votes on the eve of an election.

Ex Africa calor. Here again the quarrel is prob- ably less about objectives than about methods of getting there, and, in particular, about the extent • tu which we can afford to embroil ourselves with the white settlers. It comes to this in the end: are we prepared to coerce them? If not, there is little to be gained by picking quarrels with them, and a great deal to be lost. It would not take much to drive Southern Rhodesia into the arms of South Africa, and that would hardly be considered a contribution towards African advancement. It is too facile to say that in Africa it is safer to go faster. The emergence of Pakistan and India provides terrible warning. From Lahore to Julundur is 120 miles: never once in the whole journey was the stench of death out of your nos- trils. Nobody will ever know how many were killed—it was certainly well over a million. Terrible and regrettable as Hola was, it was noth- ing to this—the greatest blot on our imperial administration, one which cannot be effaced and is therefore conveniently forgotten.

So much for the Socialists. Whether to give a vote to the Liberals should depend on one's assessment of where lies the great divide in con- temporary politics. In the vast majority of tin

principal issues the Liberal agrees with the Con- servative against the Socialist. Yet three Liberal candidates out of five are putting up in con- stituencies where the sitting Member is a Tory, and the tendency is particularly marked in mar- ginal seats; so that a vote for the Liberal is.likuly t-s do considerably more damage t6 Tory repre- sentation than Socialist. In truth, no person who believes in the importance of the issues I have indicated and that the Tories arc by and large right on them ought to vote Liberal unless he is convinced that such a vote will not permit the return of a Socialist.

The one issue on .which the ILiberals have a policy clearly differentiated from the other parties, is nuclear disarmament. Those who believe that the Liberal policy here alone is right, and that this issue outweighs all others, must indeed vote Liberal. But the real implications of such a policy should be faced. It makes. sense if you go on to advocate general unilateral disarmament;' but that is not the Liberals' Policy: Unless it is held (contrary, surely, to common sense) that the threat of nuclear retaliation is /to deterrent at all, the nuclear deterrent' mtist be replaced by one founded on cOnVentional weapons. This wOUld not only be fantastically exp.msive—certainly making nonsense of Liberal hopes of any reduc- tion in taxation—it would probably involve the reintroduction of conscription.

The Liberals' real aspiration in tbis'election is to get a sufficient handful of se'atsjii the-House of Commons to hold the balance of power be- tween the other two parties. The last time they did so was disastrous: they put the Socialists in power, unemployment rose by one and three- quarter million, and we ran into a major econo- mic crisis. But quite apart from this warning there are objections. Nothing is more demoralising politically than for a party to support in power another whose policies it has recently been attack- ing: if this were not self-evident, there is the wit- ness of the Fox-North coalition and of the Liberal-Labour pacts of 1924 and 1929. More- over, it would mean that a handful of Members, supported by a minimality of the electorate, would wield the ultimate political power. For example, in so far as the Liberals have a separate policy on nuclear disarmament, it would be one which the great bulk of the electorate had repro- bated; yet the Liberals would be in a position to bargain for it as the price of their support for elements in the programme of one of the other parties, which, again, a clear majority of the electorate would have rejected. This is unlikely to be good, and is certainly profoundly undemo- cratic, government.

There are, then, quite apart from policy, two basic reasons for refusing to vote Liberal. First, because on the whole it will frelp to advance a Socialist programme which is fundamentally re- pugnant to those of liberal temper and convic- tion; and, secondly, because in so far as the vote is effective in securing the return of a sufficient handful to hold the balance of power it will lead to bad and ineffective government. For myself, I believe we should accept, sadly if you will, that the ay of the Liberal Party is gone beyond recall. A chicken can strut for some time after losing its head, but that is no proof of lasting viability. The Liberal Party is dead—long live liberalism!