A Spectator's Campaign Notebook
Has Harold Wilson had a stroke? There has to
b i e some explanation for the striking difference between his bounce and vigour n the last couple of weeks of the old parliament and the sag in voice and step that he showed In the campaign. As nearly always during the last three years or so, his speeches were over-long and, quite often during the last enty minutes of various hour-long orations his right eyelid began to twitch alarmingly. One experienced reporter put this down to a 11,0‘v overdeveloped desire to imitate his political mentor Harold Macmillan, who had a very distinctive habit of continually hooding the right eye as a rhetorical trick, but Wilson seemed much less controlled than that. Then, toe., there was a continual and extraordinary reliance on the letter of prepared scripts, and °ss of memory is one of the characteristics after-effects of a stroke. At one point, even, reilson read a prepared statement of only a ,W lines of some matter of trade union interest, and he did so with the utmost care. When he had finished what was written on tlrnle side of a record card, he glanced several 'es at the blank reverse, as though expecting to find more words there. His -scarcely Undiminished ability to deal with hecklers Would
Sitroke not, moreover, itself disprove the theory: a stroke does not necessarily .nhibit such spontaneous capacity, but pnn
,ciPally the functions of the memory. And, r ,511,1111Y, Wilson tended throughout the cam1 i,;;Pl to confuse words, and use them in a ,.`"'e opposite to what he meant — he used Pelude,' when he meant 'exclude,' for rt.Xarnple. Nor would a stroke necessarily— if slight i; ogiit — prevent him from meeting a ruelligcampaign schedule: Sir Winston tr urchin, who admittedly pbssessed an exordinary constitution, seemed able to r a
se,eover almost entirely from his various I Lrekes in a matter of days. Whatever the 1.1atio0 about his health, Wilson did not look
4 „ a man with a zest for politics; and an i he wins retirement was thus hinted at even f L' e wins the election.
tosion in the north
Phic°,se private polls on which both Central itiu"ceLe and Transport House have spent so faseiu Money appear to have thrown up some earr,`,41.ating results. At the beginning of the -trugn the Tories expected the Labour vote t6,...e North of England to hold firm, while ctr;"n the south suffered erosion. In fact, the orInservative psephologists report, it is the erPosition in the north which is undergoing to2c),,s,t, while that in the south holds kit7;a"'LerNews of an interesting and mixed take !fere for the Liberals as well. The Tories keipmn for granted that their candidate, Tim bervnin, Will bring down Jeremy Thorpe in aided by the addition of 20,000 mainly voters from Torrington. More surprising
is the Tory conviction that David Steel can be defeated in Roxborough. That was also expected, of course, in 1970, when it was thought that the young Liberal's attachment to abortion reform would hurt him grievously in a constituency with a large Catholic population. It did not, however, happen and Steel, partly at least because of excellent constituency work, held on. This time even the normally cautious Conservative experts are prepared to take bets that Steel will be out of the next parliament.
Marginal comment
In spite of that, however, a widespread Tory fear is that the Liberals, though they will take more Labour votes overall, will manage to snatch a disproportionate number of Conservative seats. Surbiton, it seems, where Nigel Fisher fought off right-wing Tories a few years ago, is likely to go, and also Richmond. Carshalton, Robert Carr's seat,.-ilLj highly mar ginal and the Labour candidatle left-wing Peter Walker — appears to have been an unsuitable choice, particularly as he was supported by Michael Foot, not a speaker likely to endear Labour to Surrey suburbanites: thus the Liberals might make a gain there as well. The most startling conclusion of much Tory investigation, however, is that the biggest Liberal impact will not be in the marginal seats, but in Conservative constituencies regarded as safe strongholds. From another marginal constituency come reports of the desperate fight being waged by Tony Benn. Still incredibly youthful despite his now wholly grey hair, Benn has been campaigning at a cracking pace. His principal asset has been the unbelievable enthusiasm of Labour Party members in Bristol for their most prominent candidate. When Harold Wilson spoke in the Methodist Central Hall last week Benn drew even more applause than the party leader, and his short speech was greeted rapturously. Benn, of course, is not merely an ordinarily good and energetic Member of Parliament, assiduously caring for his people, but one who has undertaken a remarkable experiment in political communication, involving correspondence with every single one of his constituents. The Tavernite candidate, imported into Bristol to seek to smash the hated lefty Benn, seems to have made scarely any impression at all and, difficult though his problem undoubtedly is, Benn seems likely to survive. A Daily Express poll suggests that a large majority of voters would like William Whitelaw to succeed Ted Heath in the event of the Tory leader having to be replaced. What exactly would happen if, after a defeat, or a reduced majority, the party came to the conclusion that a new man was needed at the helm? Well, an authoritative figure who would certainly play a major part in any necessary manoeuvrings would be Sir Alec. Douglas-Home. There is no indication whatever that Sir Alec — win, lose or draw— proposes to step down from active politics: last week he was used by the Tories on television to counteract the possibly dangerous effect of Enoch Powell, and he has been the only ministerial sidekick who seemed able effortlessly to draw the limelight away from the Prime Minister at the one Smith Square morning conference at which he appeared Sir Alec demonstrated a number of his endearing and carelessly aristocratic mannerisms — notably an inability to get the right button of his jacket into the right buttonhole — and breathed an effortless dominance of the situation which appeared not at all to please the Prime Minister, sitting restlessly beside him and anxious to get back to the centre of the stage.
Over the Border
It is comforting for the Tories to recall that, as recently as the general election of 1955, they held a majority of Scottish seats; and there are stout hearts in Conservative Central Office who feel that the situation could be recreated in 1974 if the Scot Nats and other parties to the left of the government split the dissident vote between them. Certainly, Labour are finding the going tough in Scotland, and even hardline former Labour Secretary of State Willie Ross is having to Modify his anti-nationalist line — which persisted throughout the years of the Wilson Government. Some odd candidates may of course get in: Jimmy Reid, for example, the fire-eating communist shop steward from Clydeside is reckoned to have an excellent chance in Dunbartonshire, though Tory Central Office, in an almost meaningless bid to attract at least a few votes in this reddest of red Scottish seats has introduced an engaging young candidate with a Scottish accent. Since Sir Alec Douglas-Home, campaigning as a young man in Lanarkshire, had to escape through a back window for a fear of meeting an assemblage of angry workers, the Tories have usually tested the mettle of their Etonaccented young men in the rougher of the Scottish seats. That practice has now clearly been abandoned, but it would be wrong to leave the subject without a salute in the direction of one Stephen Eyres, a Tory campaigning in the virtually hopeless seat of Central Fife. Eyres, though a tutor at Swinton Conservative College, is no darling at the Conservative establishment, being a founder member of the right wing Selsdon Group, created to remind the Prime Minister and the Tory Party of the economic policies and philosophy of 1970 and the Selsdon Park Conference. Any man has courage who will go to Fife and campaign for free markets, and an end to industrial and regional subsidy.
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