Liberals with nowhere to go
Frank Johnson
'The Liberal strategy,' said The Times, on the eve of the Llandudno assembly, 'should be to hold on as best they can in the meantime, and to be ready to take their chance if either of these opportunities presents itself'.
Sound thinking, no doubt but, as advice to a party engaged in the year-to-year task of maintaining interest in itself, useless. A case of leader writer's elbow: a condition some of us know well. What was a Liberal leader—and a newly-elected one, at that— supposed to do, according to The Times's prescription? Come before the faithful with, a rousing: 'And so my friends, let the word go forth from this great conference of ours to the nation,and indeed the world, that this party stands ready to hold on as best they can in the meantime. Now kindly march towards the sound of gunfire'. It does not seem quite on.
The Times, had it but known it, had touched on what some might call 'the central dilemma of a third party in a predominantly two-party system,' but which 1 would call the fix the Liberals are in so long as the two biggest snouts corner most of the trough. The problem is nothing less than: how can the Liberal Party make itself interesting in between 'Liberal revivals'? This is because, whichever way you slice it, a Liberal has, since about 1922, been an essentially tedious thing to be—like being, say, a Norwegian. This is not to argue that there are not interesting Liberals. But they are as gold. Name an interesting Norwegian apart from Ibsen, Greig, Flagstad, and Quisling. It is the same with the Liberals, though—judging by their treatment of the wretched Mr Thorpe—they have several potential Quislings.
Yet, despite its awesome capacity for unleashing apathy, the party—particularly with its massively-televised annual assembly—insists on being maintained in a manner to which it has had no right to be accustomed these last fifty years. Its constitution is traditionally the most elaborate and pompous of the three main parties. A Council, an Executive Committee, an Organising Committee, a Liberal Social Council and many an advisory body are exhibited in what one is prepared to believe is the standard academic work on the post-war British Liberals by one Jorgen Scott Rasmussen of the University of Arizona, Tucson (who, in a happy matching of author and subject, sounds as if he might be a Norwegian). Furthermore, I was once assured by an old conference lag among reporters that a certain Arthur Comyns-Carr (1 think)—in a speech from the chair at a Liberal assembly in the late 'fifties, when the party's parliamentary strength
amounted to about five men -and a dog— said he could not comment on China's shelling of the off-shore islands because he did not want to exacerbate the situation.
Liberals, then, take themselves just as seriously as do their opponents: a situation made no less absurd by the fact that, having decided to be Liberals rather than their opponents, it is hard to see how they could do otherwise. At this point, it is as well to clear up a crucial misapprehension about Liberals. It is often said that they are terribly nice people, but have no policies. It has always seemed to me that the broad opposite is the case; they are at best no nicer than the other parties, and they have any number of policies--the mutually contradictory nature of which does not seem to bother them. Rebuttal of the niceness theory is simply achieved by mentioning Mr Pardoe, Mr Cyril Smith, and Young Liberals too numerous to list. Further evidence is afforded by the fact that Mr Thorpe's gradual fall was accompanied by par-for-the-course skulduggery and hypocrisy indulged in by all normal politicians when one top job or another is about to become vacant.
The Liberals contain a large number of Toryish chinless wonders, and—among their young—a range of Labour-type hairy monsters. The amount of demagogy on Liberal platforms is well up to levels attained elsewhere. Moreover, the party's higher ranks meet a crucial condition for any political body: a lot of them cannot stand each other. So it is as if the party had been fashioned out of bits of the two big parties. That is why it never seems entirely right— resembling someone's apt description of a camel as a horse designed by a committee. As for policies, they offer a selection entirely uncluttered by ideology or consistency. You favour Manchester United? The Liberals couldn't agree more, dear boy: 'bout time someone said it, provided one could also support Manchester City. With lots of policies, and its share of nasties, the Liberals are all dressed up as an orthodox political party. But, in these inter-revival periods, where are they to go?
There is nowhere. But successive Liberal leaders must continue to comport themselves in the embarrassing manner expected these days of radical politicians—seeing visions, grasping out to new horizons, and committing all those other sins against the language, and against the listeners' intelligence, for which President Kennedy's speechsmiths have a lot to answer. The irony is that the voters who bring about Liberal revivals tend to be devotedly reactionary and anti-horizon-seeing. Liberals
are apt to get elected only when enough middle-class Tories, who could never vote Labour, turn against a Conservative government for wanting to join the Corn' man Market; for letting the Blacks in; for not bringing back the cat; for declining to open Joanna Southcott's box; or for favouring a lot of other policies identical with those of the Liberal leadership. I once voted Liberal because the local Tory was unsound on monetarism. The fact that the Liberal who got my vote would be, if he got the chance, an inflationist of Weimar proportions, did not seem to me to be a problem: the overriding war aim was to punish an heretical Tory.
This tendency for primitive Righties to vote Liberal occasionally when the Tories are in office is much mocked by sophist17, cates along the lines: ho, ho, don't those suburban beasts know what Liberal pone)/ is on' Rhodesia, or co-ownership in industry? Such mockery betrays a misunderstanding of the several uses to which a vote should be put. One of the uses—not discussed in the more pious writings on the constitution—is to screw up politicians of whom one does not approve. Before his speech at Llandudno on Saturday, there was some doubt as to whether the somewhat prim Mr Steel would feel able to offer a sufficient variety of policies to ensure that the party secures its Poujadist support at the next revival. After all, he is a man of rampant moderation, so wholesomely progressive you could eat your dinner off hith. But, on policies, he turned out be as ecumenical as his two predecessors. 011 other grounds, he was no doubt preferable to either.
Unlike Mr Thorpe, he does not tiresome' ly proceed on the assumption that he is one heck of a colourful character. Unlike the stratospherically pretentious and self' regarding Mr Grimond, he does not carry' on as if he were the model for Rodin 'S 'Thinker'. Mr Steel's speech contained the regulation number of Kennedyesque visions, including a notably meaningless quotation from Senator Robert's grave at Arlington. But there was also the usual Liberal interweaving of the grievances of left and right. Why were there not enough private rural bus services? Because 131g Brother is stifling such initiative'. That sounded familiar—being just the same as one of those letters to the Daily Telegraph from retired military gentlemen much scoffed at by enlightened Liberals. Mr Steel was also against predatory Thatcherite capitalism.
The speech was a felicitous running together of the grumpier items in the Letters to the Editor columns of both the Te/egraPh and the New Statesman. Finally, the tw° great parties had ruined Britain, but .Mr Steel wanted to join a coalition with whichever one would take him. Admittedly. he did not solve the 'interestingness' problent But the word from Llandudno is that Mr Steel is a worthy leader of the modern Liberal Party.
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