Conference Season
WHEN Mr. Masefield announced that he must go down to the sea again, it is all hell to a china orange that he was not contem- plating a visit to the annual gab- fests held by the three political parties and the Trades Union Congress. In this respect, I differ from Mr. Masefield; from next week exceptionally keen-eyed bird-watchers may be lucky enough to spot that late summer migrant, Taperis howbellsws, alighting with its quaint, high-pitched cry of 'Yoodeecee, yoodee- cee' on the sands at one after another of our leading holiday resorts. First comes the TUC, to be found at Bournemouth, where it is rumoured that the roads have been decorated by the thoughtful committee members of the local Con- servative Association with notices saying 'Bourne- mouth welcomes careful yes-men.' I have not stayed a night in Bournemouth, if my memory serves me correctly, for fourteen years, though I did spend some hours there recently, driving round and round looking for a wedding in an exceptionally well-concealed church. After the TUC in Bournemouth come the Liberals in Torquay, where, judging by the demonstration accorded last year in Southport to Colonel Lort- Phillips, who had after all come bottom of the poll at Gloucester, they will probably cheer them- selves unconscious at the sight of Mr. Mark Bonham Carter, who was actually top at Tor- rington, lang may his lum reek. Torquay has palm trees, like Africa and Beaumaris. But at any rate I should be able to have a pleasant bathe while Mr. Jeremy Thorpe is taking the collection.
After that, and a few deep breaths of good, rich, carcinogenic London air on the way through, it is sing hey!' for the Labour Party at Scar- borough, where I hope his new-found role of elder statesman will not inhibit Mr. Herbert Morrison from calling for the hokey-cokey at the Agents' Ball. And then a night or two in York, where the locals are doubtless still talking about the record time in which I made a complete cir- cuit of the wall (that, of course, was before I had my trouble), and on over the Pennines, which I once crossed on a blazing summer's day in the back of an open lorry driven by a man named Joe, and the world was very young indeed. (And where are last year's snows, eh? Tell me that ;f you can.) On, that is, to Blackpool, where the Tories (may they be gnawed, lock, stock, barrel and Conference Arrangements Committee, by the worm which dieth not) are determined to ruin what is left of my summer. My neighbours tell me that I am still occasionally to be heard scream- ing Norbreck Hydro! Norbreck Hydro!' in my sleep, so this year I have fled up the coast to. St. Anne's and propose to commute daily to and from the Winter Garden. (The knowing ones say that St. Anne's is just 'as bad as Blackpool ; we shall see.) But, as I stow my few precious possessions (the monogrammed hairbrushes from Mr. Harold Wilson, the gold cuff-links from the Foreign +Secretary) into my carpet-bag, it is worth, 1 think, reflecting for a few moments on each of the four bodies whose more or less galvanic twitchings I am off to inspect, to glance down the road each of them has travelled since this time last year. and even to try to catch a glimpse of the road that lies ahead. This week, I shall deal with the first two stops on my runabout ticket; after the TUC is disposed of, it will be the turn of the last two. • And how fares the TUC? On the face of it, well enough. The only really major defeat inflicted on the unions during the past .year has been that of the London busmen, and Mr. Cousins's handling of that dispute was so inept that even the public, by the time the seven weeks were over, knew where to lay the blame. The General Coun- cil took good care to get out from under this, the one industrial mess of the year that could have harmed them, and are now looking askance at that loud, pushful fellow in the horn-rimmed spectacles at the other end of the table. Bro. Cousins, it was rumoured, was hugely displeased at the attitude of his fellow-members of the Coun- cil, who point-blank told him to stop playing the fool and go back to work, and was supposed to have left instructions at the TGWU hotel in Bournemouth that he would not be needing tomato juice for breakfast, as he would have plenty of blood after the first day's session. I doubt it; Bro. Cousins can make mistakes, like the rest of us, but he is nobody's fool, and although when he comes to move the motion (now an annual event) reaffirming the opposition of Congress to wage restraint he will doubtless take 4, poke or two at some of the well-fleshed ones under the arc-lights, there will be no actual mayhem on the floor.
That the possibility of it should be the topic uppermost in the minds of those of us who are off to Bournemouth is itself a fair index to the mood in which Congress is meeting. The Group- ing Committees have yet to play here-comes-a- chopper with the resolutions as they appear in the agenda; but at the moment there is nothing in them to raise the least firmly anchored eyebrow. They don't like the Government, they don't like the Rent Act, they don't like the Cohen Com- mittee (they like it a lot less now than when the agenda was printed, I'll be bound), they are in favour of people being healthy, educated and prosperous. From the direction of Botany Bay there arises a thin, mocking laughter, but they know what they are doing, all the same. The members of the unions (as opposed to the TUC) are doing very well for themselves at the moment; here a bob or two, there a report of the inquiry into the docks dispute—it all adds up to a good deal of pudding behind the watch-chain, and the Council, which knows how badly it would fare in a real fight, is content to coast gently along in the middle of the stream. True, their constitu- tion says fiercely that they want to nationalise land (if it comes to that, it says equally fiercely that they want to nationalise the railways), and from time to time they feel bound to make a threatening gesture in the direction of a wicked capitalist or two, or even the Government. But the Third Estate owns too big a stake to fool around with matches and, short of not holding an annual congress at all, the watery kind they held last year is the best thing they can think of to keep attention off them and their shortcomings. I venture to predict that for the second year run- ning Congress will go to its end without a single card vote being called for.
At the Liberal Conference in Southport last year they had a card vote, as I recall, though I cannot for the life of me remember what it was all about. 'Get on or get out' was Mr. Grimond's slogan for that gathering, and since then he has indeed got on. But how far? The muffin-man and others have been declaring that the Liberal
revival has spent its force, that Mr. Bonham Carter was not a swallow making a brave attempt to convince everybody who would listen that summer was icumen in, but a lone bee looked out of the hive while the frost came killingly on. Well, some say one thing and some say another, but certainly for the Liberals this conference must be the most important since 1954, and probably since before the fall of the Labour Government. It is extremely unlikely, to begin with, that they will have time for another before the election. It is therefore on the decisions they take at Tor- quay, and more important on the spirit in which those decisions are taken, that they must present themselves to the electorate for their last fling —for not even the most sanguine of Mr. Grimond's supporters, surely, would argue that there is any real future for the Liberals if they do not take significant strides at the next election.
Last week I was suggesting one way in which they might hope to get under the vast mass of
public political inertia—a correspondent writes to say that under my aegis he is determined never to vote again ('I can call spirits from the vasty deep')—and I shall be looking out sharply for traces of my handiwork in the platform resolu- tions. I shall be disappointed, of course, but Ntr. Grimond must know that some bold and imagina- tive stroke is essential if all those tears of joY shed at Rochdale and Ipswich and Torrington are not to waste away into the golden Devon sands• The Liberals cannot afford a draw, as the TL'C cannot afford anything else; for them it is indeed 'get on or get out,' and if they stand still th.1 will freeze and die. But enough of such gloomy thoughts! The sun is out, and the sea at Bourne- mouth is inviting, and the donkeys on the sands are calling just as surely as the ones in the Pavilion. Next week a stick of rock will be given away free with every copy of the Spectator, and —yes, you have guessed—all the way through it
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