SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
It is a thoroughly unscientific habit, no doubt, but many people find it natural to visualise large, incoherent organisations in terms of one person. Repeatedly, this week, I have been visi- ted by a figment conjured up from many long hours spent in the past in the echoing confer- ence halls of Blackpool, Brighton and Scar- borough. This figment takes the form of an elderly man, a bit battered in appearance, and markedly unfashionable in his dress. He is seen, in this brief sequence in my private mental cinema, climbing a rostrum and making a speech: the paper bearing his notes flutters in his trembling hands and his voice, with its pleasing regional tones, is uneven because of nervousness. His grammar is shaky and at times chaotic, his delivery unpolished and inclined to be stumbling; but he is earnest, even passionate, about trying to do the right thing. He relishes the technicalities of procedure, and values a good, mellow composite resolution above most other things in this world; he is inclined to be long-winded and rambling at the rostrum, and cuts a dim figure, later, on television.
Looking at him, you guess him to be a good- humoured sort of family man. What you quickly learn is that the great dread of his life is that he will one day become unemployed; his father was on the dole' for years. He doesn't much try to hide the fact that he is out of his depth when the talk is in the realm of macro- economics; neither does he hide his mortifica- tion and anger at what his 'Movement' has done to him and his like in the name of that abstrac- tion. He admits to being muddled and possibly old-fashioned; he can't imagine ever breaking his allegiance to the party, but recognises that his children think the Labour lot are just as much of a giggle as the rest. As a stereotype he is a long way from the white-coated techno- logical whizzkids some of his leaders try to sum- mon from the air. He is, I'm sure, 'irrelevant': but at least he is still the most sympathetic stereotype available from any of the parties.
Backing the winner
I suppose that in a quiet way the most startling thing to happen to the Labour conference was to be told by the Sunday Telegraph's Gallup Poll that their party is now the favourite to win the next general election. Not quite the message one would have derived from, say, Monday's prices and incomes policy debate. But the reasoning by which this conclusion was arrived at was engagingly simple. The Tories now lead by 10 per cent, according to Gallup. Since the war there have been four parliaments which have lasted more than two years, and in three out of the four the two years leading up to a general election have seen a swing back to the party in power of 5 per cent or more. Such a swing in the next two years would, of course, wipe out the present Tory lead. Ergo, put your shirt on Labour.
But surely this, with all respect to the good Gallupers, is taking an awful lot for granted. Of course, Labour could perfectly possibly win the next election. Nevertheless, the performance of three previous governments is rather fragile evidence—especially as two of the three happened to be Tory governments. The biggest swing back occurred before the 1959 election, when 11.4 per cent switched to support the
bright new Macmillan administration: how relevant is that to Mr Wilson in 1971? And consider the precedent in this series which, if followed next time, would not return Labour. This is the Tory performance in the run-up to the 1955 election, when a swing back of only 2.5 per cent was recorded. The curious fact about that modest advance is that it returned Eden with an increased majority—the first time for almost a century that a government in- creased its majority at a general election, and an occasion causing much confusion among all lovers of a good, sound, reliable precedent.
Pay at the door ?
No one, unless I suppose he happens to have got rich himself by the process, can take pleasure in the escalation of prices of works of art. The motive power comes all too plainly from financial and nit aesthetic sources. To many people, at least, it is offensive to see an artist's work equated with stocks and shares as a hedge against inflation or a smart investment to show a quick capital gain. And the problems posed for important public galleries are acute: indeed, after reading the Tate's annual report this week, with its many pages given to reciting the difficulties of galloping prices, one is tempted to think such a gallery is bound to lose. But it is not so. The Tate trustees have put in, boldly, for an annual purchase grant of £500,000. With that, they could operate pretty effectively in the art market, to. the steady im- provement of the national collection, for a time at least. I wish them luck, especially as so much or our money is spent in so many futile ways.
Meanwhile, the Tate trustees would love to open on Sunday mornings but are not allowed to recruit the five extra attendants who would be needed. I can't see any sensible objection to raising that money by making a small charge at the door. Students and so on could still go in free. It always seems strange to me that one travels to the Tate by state bus and unquestion- ingly pays for the journey : when one gets there, for some woolly-minded reason it is thought immoral to pay to look at the state pictures.
Old Whig
Who said, back in 1966, that if the Vietnam war were still on in 1968 then 'no power on earth' could prevent the Republicans from 'trying to outbid the Democrats for the- peace vote'? Richard Nixon. I found the quotation (along with a mass of interesting information and opinion) in I. F. Stone's new book of collected pieces, In a Time of Torment (Cape 45s). Izzy Stone is a unique figure in journalism, and his I. F. Stone's Weekly is a shining example of small circulation and large influence. My col- league Murray Kempton, in his introduction to this volume, calls Stone America's 'very last old Whig'; certainly he has an admirably open- minded approach to politics despite his firm liberal attachment. Even a couple of years ago he was recalling how, in 1952, many saw in a victory for Eisenhower the best hope of ending the Korean war, and reflecting that in 1961 `another interlude of social stagnation' would be a price worth paying-for a Republican president who could stop the war.
Previous page
