Two by-elections
Cars first in Coventry
Richard West
A foreigner wishing to understand the present English madness could do no better than visit Coventry, whose North-West constituency goes to the polls in a by-election next week. For a start all three major parties are pledged to support Coventry's main industry, motor cars, in spite of the fact that Great Britain's continued infatuation with motor cars at the expense of public transport and at a time of still soaring petrol costs, is the single main reason why we plunge steadily further into debt. At a time when other western countries are pouring investment into the railways, Britain is cutting down services and bumping up fares, partly because Crosland thinks this will hurt commuters. At a time when the United States is producing more bicycles than cars, Coventry once the world's greatest producer of bicycles is producing none.
The Labour candidate Geoffrey Robinson, as a former Jaguar managing director is favourable to the car industry but I was taken aback to find that the right-wing Conservative candidate Jonathan Guinness is also in favour of pouring public money to bale out incompetent private companies such as Chr9sler and British Leyland. Was this simply because he was standing for Coventry ? Would he pour public money into the Concorde aircraft which is built elsewhere? `I happen to be in favour of Concorde,' Mr Guinness replied. 'It's very beautiful.' So were the Pyramids but I doubt if they won much favour from ancient Egyptian monetarisis.
Unemployment is running at 7.3 per cent in Coventry. Sales of cosmetics and pop guitars are running at twenty-five per cent of normal; Coventry's main hospital takes in eighty-three attempted suicides by overdose of drugs every month. All sorts of statistics are flung at you to suggest the instant collapse of the social fabric yet seldom have I observed a place so calm about three of what are described as the urgent topics facing England, all of them facing Coventry in particular.
All three main candidates, even Guinness, bemoan unemployment, yet when the trade unions recently called a mass meeting in the Coventry shopping precinct for which the police were advised to expect 15,000 people, less than 200 turned up, many of those out-of-town Trotskyists. According to Geoffrey Robinson, People are not only accepting redundancy but volunteering for redundancy. Chrysler and Leyland give generous redundancy payment. But the odd thing is that they often start recruiting again, even in the same categories.' And I am told on the best authority that Leyland are finding it difficult to recruit.
Consider another West Midlands feature, the high influx of coloured immigrants during the 'sixties. It was at Smethwick in 1964 that a Conservative won a normally Labour seat by playing on fear and dislike of the Asians. This is the region of Enoch Powell, who talked of 'grinning piccaninnies' and warned of a Tiber flowing with blood. I can remember hearing five or ten years ago that, bad as things were already, there would be certain civil strife if unemployment came, and white people were thrown out of jobs while coloured people were employed. In present-day Coventry, with its high unemployment, I have not heard of a single instance of racial dispute over a sacking. A West Indian who works in the Community Service and lives in the North-West constituency told me there might be 'under the carpet' discrimination against coloured applicants for a job but none, that he had heard of, when it came to redundancies. Contrary to what had been prophesied, race relations in Coventry and the West Midlands in general are markedly better now that they were ten years ago, largely because the younger generation of immigrants were born in thiscountryand have become West Midlanders. A Coventry Labour Party councillor said that the main problem now was that 'Indian and Pakistani kids in the schools are leaving ours behind'. So much for Mr Powell's Tiber.
And third, the Irish question. In August 1939, an IRA man left a bomb in a bicycle in a busy Coventry street. It exploded, killing five people instantly and wounding sixty. In November 1974 an IRA man, who was attempting to plant a bomb by Coventry post office, blew himself to bits, and a few days later his comrades planted bombs in two Birmingham pubs, killing twenty people. The IRA man Frank Stagg who recently starved himself to death in Wakefield prison, and whose burial has created such bitter dispute in Ireland, actually lived in the Coventry North-West constituency. The general awareness of terrorist danger is probably higher in Coventry than anywhere in the United Kingdom except Northern Ireland itself; I was searched every time I entered my hotel and was roused from bed at 3.30 a.m, by an alarm bell of shattering volume, to spend the next half-hour with the other guests shivering and stamping our feet in the square, while the fire brigade searched the building.
If there was any part of England that might be in a frenzy over the IRA, demand ing the recall of troops and an end to the Irish problem, it would be CoventrY North-West, where about one in eight of the people are Catholic Irish. Yet the Irish question is scarcely mentioned either in conversation or at political meetings. True, an Irishman heckled Jeremy Thorpe who replied 'Now look here mate, I've got as much Irish in me as you'—at which there was general laughter. It seemed to me that there is less anti-Irish feeling in Coventry than other parts of England, simply because they are so much part of the community.
In the West Midlands one sees very clearly the fatuity of the IRA belief that they can bomb the United Kingdom into withdrawing from Ireland. In Coventry, which has endured terrorist bomb outrages in 1939 and 1973, the 'people are no more cowed than they were by the Luftwaffe bombing attacks in 1940 and 1941. The two pubs in Birmingham that were bombed in 1974 are not only back in business but are patronised by many of those who survived the blasts on that dreadful evening.
One gets the impression, observing this by-election, that the problems exercising Parliament, TV and the newspapers do not much exercise the people of Coventry. I do not mean by this that Coventry people are exercised about local matters, about the 'community politics' so popular with the Liberal Party. Their candidate at this election, Alan Leighton, an agonY columnist, makes much of personal human problems and emphasises while canvassing that he is much concerned about 'the hole in the road'. This Liberal tactic has in the past proved very successful in cities like Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester where inhabitants of the old slums have been plumped down in council estates or 'new town' slums without community sense or services.
This community politics does not work in Coventry where there are virtually ne slums, a good strong community sense and a long tradition of good, sympathetic local government. There is not much point in campaigning about the holes in the road when in fact there are no holes in the road, as Mr Leighton would notice if he looked down. Indeed Coventry is a strikingly handsome and happy city that has largely escaped the devastation of property speculators and 'urban developers', so that what remained of the old city centre has been preserved; and Coventry must have more sixteenth century buildings left than almost any other city in the country. Coventry is not without taint of 'T. Dan Smithism' but its Labour Party remains, almost alone in England, loyal to the ideals and honesty of the Attlee era. For this reason it normally sends Labour MPs to Parliament whatever the follies committed by Labour governments. For this reason, as much as because of his personal charM and intelligence, Geoffrey Robinson should_ hold Coventry North-West in spite ot
Harold Wilson. In fact a visit to Coventry serves to remind one that not all the people of England are as daft as those people in London who call themselves opinion formers. The people of Coventry have not grown hysterical about Ireland or coloured immigrants. Perceiving full well that the manufacture of motor cars will suffer during a fuel crisis and may indeed never recover, they are resigned to unemployment and might indeed go back to manufacturing bicycles and rolling stock. It is a sensible city, deserving a sensible government.
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