The Government's Bad Week
POLITICAL COMMENTARY
By ALAN WATKINS
ARK my words,' said my friend Sherlock Holmes, 'that villain Moriarty is behind all this. You remember the pink chrysanthemum he left at the scene of his crime in the Case of the Minister's Trousers? And those plastic-covered knitting needles bear all the marks of his fiendish ingenuity. I tell you, he is the most dangerous fellow in Europe.' Come, come, is the escape of George Blake really a laughing matter? Well, yes, it is. For one thing, spying is essentially a ludicrous business, and the combined efforts of Mr Chapman Pincher and Colonel George Wigg to prove the contrary only go to show how ludicrous it really is. And, for another thing, if judges are going to be allowed to bend the law, and impose cruel and unusual punishments (I quote the Bill of Rights), one cannot be very surprised if the prisoner's nearest and dearest, whoever they may happen to be, try to do some- thing about it.
But for the unbiased observer of the political scene, the Blake escape was diverting in another way, though Mr Roy Jenkins can be forgiven if he does not see matters in quite this light. It provides a classic illustration of the isolated disaster, akin to an Act of God, which can suddenly befall a government. Everyone knows perfectly well that neither Mr Harold Wilson nor Mr Jenkins is in any meaningful sense wholly responsible for the Blake escape. Indeed there is a sense in which—assuming ministers must be held to blame at all, and this is arguable—the Conservatives must be held to blame also. After all, Blake was convicted in 1961. And who was Home Secretary at that time? Why, pone other than Lord Butler, as he now is, who this week confided in The Times his view that Blake should have been in Parkhurst.
But whatever the Conservatives' degree of res- ponsibility may be, it suits Mr Edward Heath's purposes very well to accuse the Government of every dereliction of duty in the book. Admittedly he and Mr Quintin Hogg went about this happy task with a staggering ineptitude when, earlier in the week, they tried to adjourn the House when it was already adjourned. (The Opposition really must acquire someone who knows about pro- cedure, or is at least willing to learn.) Still, they had a go, just as Mr Wilson—for politicians are all the same in this respect—had a go himself in the 1962-63 period of Macmillan disasters, of which in a way the past week was uncomfortably reminiscent.
At this time, it will be remembered, the Con- servative government called in first Lord Radcliffe and then Lord Denning. Mr Wilson has gone one, or several ones, better. Lawyers, after all, are ten a penny. Instead the Prime Minister has called in Lord Mountbatten. Excepting the Duke of Edinburgh, it is difficult to think of anyone who has a more impressive- sounding name or whose qualifications are more unsuited to the task he has to undertake. But then, Mr Wilson has for a long time been holding Lord Mountbatten in reserve, waiting for some apt occasion to present itself. If Lord Mount- batten cannot be Minister of Defence, he can at least come to the Government's rescue—I do not, naturally, mean to anticipate any findings at which he may arrive—over the case of George Blake.
If I have spent some time discussing the Blake case, it is not inadvertence. The affair is symbolic of the change that has occurred in politics, cer- tainly in the mood of the Labour party, over the past week. Just as, in a different way, Mr Fred Lee's lamentable performance over Gibraltar is symbolic also. Of course we must be careful not to exaggerate. Nevertheless, as the unexpectedly high number of abstentions on Tuesday indicated, things look slightly less comfortable for the Government than they did a week ago. First came the unemployment figures, which were bad enough. Then came the reactions of Mr Ray Gunter and Mrs Shirley Williams, which were worse still. Mr Gunter and Mrs Williams made it painfully apparent that they did not have the faintest idea where it would all end and that, in the meantime, their notions of what to do about the situation were equally hazy.
Perhaps they should not be too easily blamed. One hears harrowing tales of Mr Gunter and Mrs Williams sitting hour after hour at the Ministry of Labour in St James's Square, desperately trying to think up something constructive—or at least something that will satisfy the parliamentary Labour party. Alas, the pigeon-holes, it seems, are all bare. On Tuesday Mr lain Macleod des- cribed Mr Gunter and Mrs Williams as 'perhaps the best-liked members of this Administration.' Mr Macleod speaks for himself, or at most for the Opposition: on the Labour benches at the moment, Mr Gunter and Mrs. Williams are hardly the popular favourites of the hour.
However, let us move on from Mr Gunter and Mrs Williams to Mr Michael Stewart and Mr Richard Crossman, both of whom addressed the party meeting on Monday and the House on Tuesday. The Ministry of Labour, after all, is a subordinate department in that it does the best it can within the limits of economic policy as laid down by the Government. It is not a department to which one would naturally go in search of a vision of the future. But Mr Crossman is a great one for looking into the future—none better— and, if Mr Stewart himself is not quite in the same class as a crystal ball gazer, at least the de- partment he heads is meant to provide some hope for the more disconsolate Labour MPs. Yet do these Members gain much hope from Mr Crossman or Mr Stewart? Certainly both of them seem hopeful enough. On Tuesday Mr Stewart talked loftily about Part IV being transformed 'from a concept in the mind, from an aspiration, into a working reality'; in equally exalted tones, he said that 'out of a period of restraint and difficulty we learn techniques which will be of value in happier times.'
This is all very well—Mr Grossman has said much the same in slightly less pious language— but it is hardly what Labour Members want to listen to here and now. They want to know the answers to such questions as How high is un- employment to be allowed to go? How can in- vestment be increased? Is there any method of reflating, apart from having a straightforward, old-fashioned rise in consumer spending? Above all, after the reflation has taken place, what guarantee is there that there will not be at least one sterling crisis, and conceivably more, before the next election? At the moment it needs very sharp ears to pick up any answers from members of the Government to such questions as these.
Not that back-benchers demand clear and un- equivocal answers : that would be too much to call for. Indeed, what worries them is not that the questions go unanswered but that the questions go unasked. There is very little evidence of any thinking aloud (as some MPs have ex- pressed it) by members of the Government.
It is in this context that we should see last weekend's meeting at Chequers on the Common Market. In time of trouble the Market always assumes added attractions (compare, for example, the Conservative government's position in 1961-63). In the present state of affairs, so many ministers and civil servants believe, a declaration of the Government's intention to enter the Market would provide an incentive to invest which no system of allowances or grants could equal. And this is not all. The Market could also be sold to the left of the party as a convenient method of losing, or subsuming, Britain's sterling liabilities. (Whether the Europeans will in practice be quite so anxious to take these liabilities on is, of course, another question.) At any rate, the Government is now fairly confident that entry to Europe will give rise to very little difficulty from the parliamentary party.
Similarly, ministers have changed their minds. Mr Crossman, for instance, is now willing to con- template entry to Europe if this means that our sterling obligations will be taken care of. Mrs Barbara Castle, it is safe to assume, feels much the same way. Mr Richard Marsh, who used to be hostile, has in the past year changed his atti- tude. Altogether it is probable that the only re- maining anti-Europeans in the Cabinet are Mr Fred Peart and conceivably Mr Douglas Jay. One small point we should notice, incidentally, is that there is a possibility of conflict between Mr Stewart and Mr George Brown over who pre- cisely is responsible for Europe. When he was at the Department of Economic Affairs Mr Brown was one of the ministers responsible. We can take it that today he considers himself all the more responsible, and will not take kindly to any interventions from Mr Stewart.
Not that there is cause for any immediate ex- citement over Europe. The whole question can be considered, as it were, at two levels. At one level we can talk of actual negotiations with Europe, and these are a long way off. At another level Europeanism could be a useful political device for giving some hope to the parliamentary party. However, the Common Market does not provide a complete answer to the doubts of the back-benchers. In some ways, indeed—because of the uncertainty involved—it may exacerbate them. Certainly it is no substitute for some evi- dence that the Government knows where it is going, not in the next four years, but in the next four months.
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