Quite like Old Times
POLITICAL COMMENTARY
By 'AIN. MACLEOD, MP THINE it was Sir Winston Churchill who once I observed that the wise man died in August because he got a longer obituary. By the same argument one should not write a political article in August. One has the eerie feeling that only the bard core of SPECTATOR readers such as H. Wilson and the Chief Public Relations Officer of BEA will read what one writes. Wise people like Alan Watkins are on holiday. One way out (taken, I observe, by Desmond Donnelly) is to write a science-fiction piece about the possibilities of a National government. Another is to specu- late about a leadership crisis in either the Government or the Opposition. I fall back on plain biased reporting and cast a jaundiced and reflective eye back to July and forward to the misty autumn series of conferences.
How long ago March 31 seems and is! When the House reassembled shrewd journalists noticed almost at once that the Tories were not as de- pressed and the Socialists not as elated as they should have been by the general election verdict. Election '66 was the most brilliantly triumphant non-event of the Prime Minister's glittering career. No one really believed it although the evidence was there in the massed ranks of university professors who formed the most strik- ing phalanx of the 1966 victors. The sceptics were right.. Four months later the Prime Minister was discredited, the prospectus of the National Plan shown to be bogus and the policies of the Government had led its supporters to the brink of angry revolt.
It is part of the pattern that the 1966 Labour party intake had proved to be comprehensively useless. Most of them we will see for only one Parliament, for the traditional trade union maxim of 'last in first out' will cover their exit. Few citizens can have written so much and under- stood so little about the House of Commons. There are, of course, exceptions. There is even one university lecturer, called Cant, who makes excellent right-of-centre Tory economic speeches, but as he represents one of the Stoke seats he may be around for somewhat longer.
By contrast with the 1966 Labour intake their 1964 entrants were of excellent quality. Some of them are already in the Government and more of them ought to be. The ablest of them are on the right, the most effective on the left. It is the latter who will prove Mr Wilson's most im- placable foes. People like Stanley Orme and Eric get you for that, mate') Heller understand how to use Parliament. They may even rescue the Labour left from Nigel Birch's gibe of being a set of playboys at a Bunny club where nothing happens and nothing is supposed to happen.
Perhaps once more the tigers will be toothless but the measures of Wednesday, July 20, brought turmoil to the left who see in them the betrayal of the Socialist movement. The charge is true and Mr Wilson scarcely bothers to deny it. He cal- culates that he can get along without the Labour left just as Mr Macmillan once calculated that be could, if need be, get along without the Tory right. Neither proposition is tenable for a moment unless the Prime Minister of the day Alan Watkins is on holiday commands the centre. Mr Wilson certainly did on March 31: he may be wrong in thinking that he does still. And if he does not the left could destroy him. If, of course, it wants to.
It is as trite as it is true to observe that nothing can be quite the same again. in politics after Wednesday, July 20. All those fine windy speeches about the Tories seeking to create unemployment, to plunge Britain into stagnation, to cut back productivity, to interfere with industrial bargain- ing, gone with the wind. I remember in one of my more fanciful speeches long ago dating the decline and fall of the Attlee government from July 6, 1948. On the previous day the great social measures which together made up our Welfare State came into full operation and suddenly the Labour party had no further coherent reason for existence. It had no policy left and its traditional speeches were out of date. So they are again.
But the dilemma this time is much more poignant. For now Socialists find a Socialist government dedicating itself to the creation of an unemployment level which will be heavy by our accepted post-war standards. It is as if the Tory party had embraced pacifism, or the Liberals a protectionist policy. It is so outrageous that even yet its full consequences for British political life have not been grasped. Some people see them clearly enough. Mr Cousins for one. He has proved to be as effective a back-bencher as he was lost as a minister. He spoke powerfully and well in the debates on the reshaped Prices and Incomes Bill. He knows that he can cause as much embarrassment to the Government by resigning his Nuneaton seat as he can by retaining it. He will certainly be the key figure at the
autumn conferences and his opposition to the Government's policies will be relentless. Will he win? Perhaps. As Desmond Donnelly pointed out last week, one major union declaring itself for traditional Socialist policies could swing the balance. USDAW's decision this week to oppose may well be decisive. At least we can be sure of plenty of splits and a fascinating exercise in head-counting and head-hunting before both the TUC and Labour party conferences. Quite like old times.
By comparison at least the Tory Blackpool conference may seem dull. But that is always a dangerous prophecy to make. On Rhodesia, de- fence or economic policy 'there are now no im- portant policy differences in the Conservative parliamentary party. The Tory party shoufd be in a better mood with itself than is usual for a party at its first conference after a heavy electoral defeat. Its policies have been vindicated. The Opposition in the House of Commons under Mr Heath has been, to coin a phrase, gritty and purposive.
I think that is the opinion at Westminster, but I'm sure that it isn't the country's view. The rea- son is not peculiar to the present opposition. The country thinks every opposition in turn, Chur- chill's, Attlee's, Gaitskell's, Wilson's, Douglas- Home's, Heath's, is ineffective. And in a sense it is right: oppositions don't and can't win. And electorates in turn never, or dayway hardly ever, vote for an opposition. Sometimes they vote against governments. Certainly they did so in 1951 and again in 1964. On both occasions they were so wary of the opposition that they could hardly bring themselves to part with a govern- ment that they had long outgrown. Mr Wilson knows this as well as Mr Heath and no doubt he sees in it his best chance d one more spell of office. In turn, it presents the Tories with a most difficult problem of timing. They must prepare for office at any time and yet keep the details of their policies to themselves. In spite of the drama of the present political situation the odds are still that Mr Wilson will run to 1970. And if that is so, 1966 is not too early to be hard at work but is much too soon for publication. Policies have only a marginal effect, but the obvious lack of them can make an opposition less credible than it needs to be.
I do not believe you can present opposition theories effectively in the House of Commons. The machine is too closely geared to the needs of the government. For example, it is an error when a Chancellor of the Exchequer produces a budget for his shadow to construct and argue for what could be presented as an effective alternative. The reason, of course, is that it is the Chancellor's budget which is enshrined in the Finance Bill. When, for example, the debates, long but far too short, on the Selective Employment Tax took place it was the Chancellor's proposals that were under the microscope. In Parliament it should not 'only be the duty but the pleasure of the Opposi- tion to oppose whenever they reasonably can. The constructive work of a political party in opposition is best done in study groups away from Westminster and if possible in secret. This is particularly true in the first years of a new Parliament.
At the first Blackpool conference after our 1945 election disaster there was a sweeping de- mand from the floor for a policy—as if a policy were a pill to cure the ache of opposition. With luck we will not repeat the same mistake. The policies of March 1966 are still valid. The back- roornw ork on them is far advanced. The further unveiling ceremony can wait awhile. For the moment what is needed is opposition. Just that.
Previous page
