Political commentary
Honourable gentlemen
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Is there a spectacle as ridiculous as the House of Commons in one of its periodic fits of collective self-pity? One might not. have thought so during Tuesday night's exceedingly unsatisfactory debate on the future of Messrs Maudling and Roberts. It was always a safe bet that Members were going to take a more lenient line than the cricketing authorities, and would not banish their colleagues from first-class politics for having signed up with the Poulson 'circus'. What was startling was the way in which the debate turned into a series of testimonials for Mr Maudling.
The man who looked most miserable at the end was Mr Michael Stewart who, as its Chairman, had been defending the work of the Select Committee. Member after member, at least on the Opposition benches, agreed with Mr Maulding that he had been ill-used. It was left only for Mr Heath to tell us that his Right Honourable Friend had acted in accordance with the highest standards of public life. Almost the only good word for the Select Committee came from Mr Maudling himself, who was 'deeply grateful' for one of the things the Report had said about him. Incidentally, it is not quite clear why the House continues to use the device of the Select Committee to investigate the conduct of Members since it has been pointed out for more than a century that it is an unsatisfactory procedure.
It would be ill-natured to suggest that Mr Maudling's conduct could be interpreted in any other light than his friends would have it. As Mr Heath said, he is an honourable man. Oddly enough, no one made the most telling and irrefutable charge against Mr Maudling: that, however scrupulously honourable he may have been, in a way which moral theologians would recognise, he behaved with deplorably little discretion. I have always maintained that Lord Lambton deserved to be sacked not for consorting with his lady friends but for driving to the louche place of assignation in a ministerial motor-car with an RAF flag on the bonnet. Mr Maudling's association with Poulson, it could be argued, was worse than a crime: it suggested a combination of indolence and carelessness which should not inspire confidence in a public man, especially when Mr Maudling's other business activities are recalled.As Lady Bracknell might have said, to be involved in one bankrupt enterprise might be regarded as a misfortune, but ...
In the Press Gallery as well as on the floor of the House there was more sympathy than might have been expected for the two Members. The argument goes that no one is particularly honest nowadays; that it is impossible to make, and keep, large sums of money both rapidly and honestly; that it is unreasonable to expect higher standards from politicians than from everyone else; and who are journalists to talk, anyway?
It is not easy to dispute this without seeming a prude, a pharisee or a humbug, but let me take that risk. I suggest that standards have declined more rapidly in public life than elsewhere. In the first place the belief that there has been a general, national collapse in standards of integrity assumes that there was once a golden age of Buchmanite absolute honesty observed at least by the middle classes. I do not believe it. To take an obvious example, it is well known that journalists are not scrupulously accurate about their expenses. But they never have been. (Read Scoop.) It could almost be said that fiddling exes is for journalists a venerable tradition, like miners' free coal, or lappage or spillage (or whatever it was called), the portion of any alcoholic cargo which dockers were expected to consume in the days before containerisation.
A quite different code was expected Of and observed by politicians. That itself was a relatively recent development. In the eighteenth century it was accepted that men went into political life to better themselves financially. The first Lord Holland was puzzled and upset that anyone should reproach him for doing so. By the twentieth century a different convention — and that is perhaps the right word — had come to be accepted, as a result of Victorian morality, the nonconformist conscience and the rise of mass democratic parties.
That is the age which we are now leaving. Not long ago an historian could write, as an observation of some significance, that Lloyd George was the first prime minister since Walpole to leave office flagrantly richer than he entered it. He has not been the last. To be more precise, the fashion now is for former prime ministers to emerge from subsequent periods of opposition richer than they entered them, which none of us should begrudge them. Which chain of thought led me to wonder whether Sir Harold Wilson's well-known book of memoirs is still in print and if so how many copies are in Lord Weidenfeld's warehouse. I recall that rather more than 20,000 copies of the first (and only) edition were printed; the immediate sale after publication was somewhat lower than that figure. But I digress.
It is not, of course, that the House of Commons has been taken over by venal and corrupt men. It is that all MPs are nowadays 'professional politicians'. The very phrase was once a term of abuse, distinguishing the minority of Members who were in Par liament for personal advancement and gain, even if it was only the gain of holding salaried ministerial office. Randolph Churchill recalled how, when his father became Chancellor, he was congratulated with bitter irony by other boys at Eton; they were so pleased to have the son of such a successful politician in their house. Would the son of any Member be sneered at thus today?
Then, parliamentary life was a form of public service, carrying more responsibilities and obligations than privileges. Now it is a career. That is illustrated in many ways. Take another affair of the moment, quite unconnected with declarations of interest or accusations of corruption. Mr Eric Varley is suing the Daily Mail over the Leyland story. He is perfectly entitled to do so, of course. But some twenty-six years ago, John Strachey was libelled by the Evening Standard. It is fair to say that the libel was far grosser than the Mail's. (Strachey was linked in a particularly crude way with Fuchs, who had just been arrested for spying.) Strachey wanted to go to the courts, but was told by Attlee that Ministers of the Crown in his Administration did not sue: abuse and even defamation were among the trials of office to be endured. No such interdiction comes from Mr Callaghan, and Mr Varley stands to pick up a handsome (and tax-free) sum: just like anyone else in any other line of business who sues for libel.
The fact is that MPs do not quite know what their role is. The line taken by some on the Labour Left, that no Members should have any outside interests at all, is really no more sensible than the attitude that the House is a place to look in on after a lucrative day in the City or at the Bar. Quite apart from the fact that a high moral tone from below the Labour gangway will come better when there are no longer any rich Tribunites with East European business connections, the whole implicit claim that being an MP is or can be or should be a full-time job is absurd. A full-time job which begins after lunch every day? With twenty weeks holiday a year?
It seems tasteless to return to the subject of money, but this is alas the root of all these awkward problems. It was an interesting and not entirely happy coincidence that some way below the Maudling-Roberts debate on Tuesday's Order Paper were motions to place an upper limit of £3,652 on Members' expenses; and to supplement parliamentary salaries. The irrepressible Mr Michael English moved an amendment that MPs were entitled to £8,000. Out of delicacy as well as fatigue I did not stay. (It's an odd thing that salaries and allowances always seem to be debated in the small hours at the end of sessions). Perhaps Members themselves had the same feelings as I did, for only eighty-eight of them stayed to vote on Mr English's amendment. And, yes, they defeated it by fifty-two votes. There is a warming thought to take away for the recess. As Mr Heath might' have said, they are honourable men.
John Grigg is on holiday.
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