SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. TIIOMPSON
It's unfortunate that so much talent for effec- tively resisting authority should be found on the Government side of the House of Com- mons when the Opposition is so obviously in need of it. One fundamental problem of the Labour party has always been that a mass of its members, being accustomed to see them- selves as natural dissenters and protesters, feel uneasy and even guilty if they're not making things hot for the people at the top. The skill and relish with which the Parliamentary Labour party has pursued its internal feuding in the past week has vividly re-emphasised this. Aneurin Bevan, of all people, once charac- terised such an eruption as 'an emotional spasm.' One sees the same psychological con- dition disclosed when grey-haired elder states- men of the party speak darkly of 'the Establishment,' heedless of the plain fact that they have themselves grown into pillars of that spectral institution. Of course, anyone can see that a party of perpetual opposition would be most fun, in theory at least. The Tories for their part suffer from the corresponding defect of a sense of bewilderment and even outrage when turned out of power. The art of imagina- tive opposition still escapes them. I wonder what in fact has really got across to the electorate. from all the oceans of words which have lapped around it, about the 'Tory alternative' to the present shambles? The main message. I would guess, is that we ought to sell arms to South Africa and stagger on carrying the white man's burden East of Suez. This is war after a fashion, I suppose; but it's scarcely mag- nificent.
• Incentives
I don't find it particularly shocking that there should be, as Desmond Donnelly has noted, a number of disillusioned Labour MPs who hang on because they need the money. Since the country opted for reasonably well-paid pro- fessionals in the House of Commons it must accept that, they will display the professional man's normal instinct for economic self- preservation. In the days when NIPS were un- paid or ill-paid, no doubt the desire for prestige and place performed a sirnil'ar function. Neither do I think there is a good case at present for cutting the pay of Members or even ministers. They:suffer, after all, the steady erosion of income which afflicts a good part of the public is a result of the declining value of money. Since 1964, when tan voted themselves their present salaries, the purchasing. power of the *mind has fallen by two shillings, and pre- sumably it will fall by as much again before this year is over. There will also be higher taxes. It would, perhaps, give a fleeting satis- faction to some if the pay-packets of the men responsible for making a hash of the economy were to be reduced; but it would be a vindic- tive business.
I have,! confess, sometimes thought favour- ably of a rather different scheme for providing public men with incentives to good performance. This would be a sophistication of the tied-cottage system, designed to make ministers fully aware of the effects of their acts. Mrs Castle would have to live on an especially benighted limb of the Southern Railway and use only public transport; Mr Crosland would be housed beside the runway of Stansted airport; Mr Gordon Walker would move around a bit, but at present would be living dangerously among the em- battled parents of Enfield; and Mr Wedgwood Benn could no doubt be accommodated at some aeronautical establishment where super- sonic planes were tested day and night. Mr Wilson, I admit, is a problem. Perhaps 10 Downing Street is itself enough of a haunted house at the moment to meet the need.
Deflation
Denis Healey's Panorama appearance on Mon- day was the glummest performance I have ever seen by a leading politician. Mr Healey's out- standing characteristic has always been a sort of cocky toughness, his preferred role that of the man who knows all the answers and can thus afford a lofty smile for his lilliputian critics. All that had vanished. Instead, if he had deliberately chosen to portray a man who has Just been cut down to size, he could hardly have done it better. Under a wounding cross- fire of quotations from his own past speeches and pledges, he offered no defence whatever save the stony one that the era of wishful thinking was over. Mr Wilson, under similar pressure, has never yet suggested a man who had finally surrendered his precious illusions; that famous verbal resourcefulness has always taken over, conjuring up his Walter Mitty other self to indicate that, somehow, something would turn up to bring back glad confident morning again. The new gloomy, deflated Healey was not unappealing, I should add. And he did show a couple of flashes of the old mocking disdain. Both of them, it was fascinating to note, came when he was presented with egregiously discredited remarks by the Prime Minister.
Men's handicap ?
This year's fiftieth anniversary of votes for women has stirred up some curiously archaic notions of what sex equality means. The dis- tinguished ladies who are cross with Wimble- don for offering bigger prizes to men than to women appear to believe that it means a special indulgence towards women. In a professional entertainment of the kind Wimbledon intends to be, the rewards of the entertainers am settled by demand. There is a thriving world- wide market for male tennis talent, and a much smaller one for female tennis talent : thus demand. dictates the prices to be paid. Besides, where women compete equally with men for jobs-and pay; they are presumed to be equal in skill and achievement : e.g., show business, politics, some professions, parts of journalism, and the arts. No woman tennis star would stand the faintest chance in a match against a top-ranking male player. Equal pay for equal work, certainly : but equal pay for unequal work would turn women into the economy's privileged favourites. Is this what Lady Spencer-Churchill, Mrs Thelma Cazalet-Keir and Dame Patricia Hornsby-Smith want? I don't think it was what the suffragettes had in mind : and I note that Miss Christine Truman doesn't want it, either.
Previous page
