Political commentary

Angry Liberal attitudes

Colin Welch

Bournemouth `W e always hope that the voice of reason will prevail,' declared Coun- cillor Meadowcroft, prospective Liberal candidate for Leeds West. Outside the elephantine elements mocked him: wind gusts like bombs, horizontal rain, the Bournemouth hotels shaking and banging as in an earthquake, wheelchairs flying like skiffs before Fastnet gales, nurses' cloaks and skirts over their heads, brollies inside out. One expects the Liberal Assembly to bring a little excitement to somnolent Bournemouth. As it is, their arrival is as if after the Flying Dutchman overture, at the height of the storm, a peaceful punt had ap- peared, its merry occupants in boaters and picture hats listening to The Arcadians on a hand-cranked gramophone.

The National Liberal Club, which David Steel has belatedly joined (Jo Grimond never did), admits all `with Liberal lean- ings'. What are these leanings? NO problem here, where all proceed at an angle of 25 degrees to the promenade, if not on all fours, their orange identity cards flapping like washing in a hurricane. In other respects the leaning problem remains.

A police chief who calls his officers `worker priests' is clearly leaning Liberally, and Mr Alderson has duly joined the Liberals. Another typical leaning is displayed by the Liberal animal welfare group, which condemns the eating of dogs by Filipinos and other non-Liberals. `Liberalism blossoms in Central America': this headline in Liberal News was certainly written by a Liberal leaner. As that great Liberal C. P. Scott once remarked, 'Truth is a rare and precious commodity. We must be sparing in its use.'

A blackened bust of Gladstone flanks the Club's portals. Beneath it are inscribed his own thoughts on the matter: 'The principle of Toryism is mistrust of the people, qualified by fear. The principle of Liberalism is trust in the people, qualified by prudence.' Sad words, expressing a trust unreciprocated now for some 60 years!

The principle of Liberalism has of course changed mightily, out of all recognition. It was once about freedom. It is now about welfare. 'Civilised societies,' the Liberal programme opines, 'are judged by the quality of their public services.'

Bits of the old Liberalism flourish still in Mr Grimond, more and more every year; very little of it in Mr Steel; in the Young Liberals none at all.

Sue Younger, chairman of the YLs, com- plains in the unofficial YL paper Liberator of the party having no 'relevance' to the young, no 'image' attractive to them. To be sure, it has youth-trapping policies against cruise missiles and `racism', but these are often 'played down or denied' from on high. (Messrs Steel and Mayhew are both in hot water about cruise missiles, and Liberator carries the headline, `MAYHEW OUT'.) Miss Younger blames this insensitivity on middle-aged politicians who pontificate on the problems of youth when their own is so distant that they have forgotten 'what it felt like to be young and powerless' (my italics, indicating what I think really infuriates people like Miss Y — not any thirst for freedom but thirst for power). For further clues as to what agitates YLs, note the badges offered by Liberator, among them anti-nuclear, anti-police, anti-army and pro-abortion.

Yet balance this against the presence at Bournemouth of an increasing number of able-seeming, ambitious, sober, Widmer- poolish chaps, dab hands at running meetings etc, also eager for power and per- suaded that Alliance Liberalism is a road to it. Between fanatics and Widmerpools, the destiny of the Liberal Party will be disputed.

The word 'freedom' is indeed on every Liberal lip. But, like the Social Democrats, Liberals seem to confuse it with decen- tralisation. Everything must in their view be chopped up into smaller and, smaller fragments, more and more local, nearer and nearer to the community or `communities' in which, according to the Liberal Pro- gramme, Liberal `roots lie deep'.

If this process were actually carried to its logical conclusion, one or two stages fur- ther, then it would surely result in freedom for the individual: what else would be left to devolve to, except the individual's own limbs and members? But it never is!

`The management of education,' declares the programme, 'as of everything-else, must be developed [sic] to the lowest level com- patible with ultimate aims and acceptable efficiency. Schools and colleges must be closely integrated with their local com- munities.'

Interesting reservations: the admission that decentralisation may lower efficiency; the hint that there are `ultimate aims' to be imposed, overriding local whims. But note here no protection for the individual parent, who may be condemned to watch impotently as his children are ruined by a local community of crackpots.

But wait: the Liberals still offer one way out to those who can afford it. The poor are left helpless, but all citizens `have the right to pay additionally for independent educa- tion for themselves or others'.

One in the eye for poor Shirley, who otherwise at the last conference bubbled

over, absolutely thrilled to 'discover' how many radical ideas she and the Liberals shared — 'co-partnership, profit-sharing, decentralisation, a special interest in Europe'.

She might have added the mixed economy, which seems to have for the Liberals the same sacred significance as for the Social Democrats. Reverently the Liberals declare that 'the best path for recovery lies through the acceptance of a mixed economy, not as a reluctant com- promise, nor as a temporary expedient, but as the best way of reconciling human needs and capabilities with the efficiency of an open market and the public responsibilities of a self-governing society'.

No wild nonsense about freedom here. Liberals survey what exists, and find it good. It offers 'the best path to recover/ — as presumably it offered 'the best path' to whatever fell diseases we now suffer from. A very good path indeed.

Social Democrats must also find reassur- ing in their new friends an increasing desire for equality, as also a shared mania for in- comes policy as the sole safeguard, Vail from price controls, against the renewed in- flation which lurks in many of their other policies. In the Alliance pamphlet, Back to Work, are expounded one or two subtle and ingenious ways of making incomes policy work. Yet these devices cannot dispel the image of accelerator and footbrake both simultaneously pressed hard down to the smoking floor; nor can they dispel the suspicion that inflation would not be thereby avoided or cured but rather sup- pressed in part, creating horrid distortions throughout the economy.

Not all who leave Labour, or are pushed out, are welcome to the Liberals. Mindful of Mr Gladstone's prudence, mindful too of what rough beasts may have slouched towards Bournemouth this week to be reborn, Mr Steel last year urged Liberals to be 'discriminating about whom you let climb aboard'.

His warning was doubly impressive corn- ing from a man in whom the very idea of discrimination, at any time for any purpose against anyone, causes near-apoplexy. It was also a bit belated, considering the assortment of people who have already climbed aboard over the years.

Like a ruthless seducer or cuckoo, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has already broken up the Social Democrats' old home. Shacked up now with the Liberals, will Social Democrats find their new happiness likewise shattered? Will the CND take over the Liberals this year? Has it already done so, Mr Steel dissenting?

The Social Democrats must feel like the victim of some terrifying M.R. James story, persecuted, say, by the repeated super- natural appearances of some dreadful hir- sute mocking face, resembling Prof. E. P. Thompson. He flees it here, flees it there. Will he elude it? Never, not even in Bournemouth. Sooner a thousand Bob Mellishes climbing 4board than this dire vision!