`Moving to the Right'?
By 'a Conservative'
About newspaper claims to know who we are, we propose to say nothing except that there has been as much misunderstanding of our identity as of our opinions. We wish simply to point out that a pseudonym en- ables a communal opinion to be expressed where a signature would not, and the pro- cedure we have adopted is not very different from that adopted by any other of the com- munal columns of which English newspapers are full. It remains only to add, for the bene- fit of the columnist who believes 'a Con- servative' to be a pseudonym of Mr Enoch Powell that there is much less reason to believe this than for believing that 'Peter Jenkins' is a pseudonym of the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
About Mr Peter Paterson's parting mess- age in last week's SPECTATOR also .we shall say nothing. except that it shows what odd illusions can occupy the minds of even the most sheeplike social democrats • when Mr Powell is under discussion. Mr Powell is not, as Mr Paterson seems to it noose. in any sense our 'idol'. We are not looking for a 'lost leader—a Churchill, Drake. King Arthur or de Gaulle'. We hope that Mr Heath will succeed in the tasks he is under- taking and we are sure we want the present Government to succeed more than Mr Pater- son?We occupy, as we have shown before, a broad Conservative position which we are not surprised that Mr Paterson fails to under- stand, and we don't think that we, or the SPECTATOR, are engaged in 'moving to the Right'. Mr Paterson, of course, wants to make it seem that we are 'moving to the Right' be- cause he knows as well as we do that the best way to discredit an argument with which he disagrees is to summon up the sound of marching jackboots. Ow point, however, is not just that 'Right' means very little in SPECTATOR terms but that it means very little in national terms. There is not much of a religious Right. There is no pith- licly articulated military Right. Whatever social Right there is has gone to ground politically for thirty years and shows little sign of emerging from its hibernation. There may, perhaps, be a Capitalist Right, but it cannot be identified with any of the active Capitalist organisations which seem as de- termined as the -ruc to make the present system work. If there is—as there is—a large body of opinion which resents the compro- mises alleged to be necessary for the work- ing of the system. it has not really achieved open. practical. political shape.
Indeed. in a continental or counter-revolu- tionary sense, there is no sense of a political Right. All there is is wealth, status, educa- tion, moral respectability and social responsi- bility. sprawling with varying degrees of sensitivity to their own situations in the large area between the comfortable social-demo- crat parliamentary manipulators at the one end and whatever is meant by the 'unthink- ing right' at the other. The main point of this column has been to suggest that a diver- gence exists between those who have power and status in the politico-social system and the understanding the great body of the people have of their thoughts and opinions. The main reason for such support as we give to Mr Powell is that he addresses himself to this problem by combining rejec- tion of the bromides by which the people have been bored with a negative attitude to the liberal illusions they have never accepted.
This does not mean that Mr Powell can lead the Conservative party or by himself determine its direction But he is performing a service which the party needs, and is likely to need more frequently in the future. Our commitment to Mr Powell is political, not personal. and we do not doubt that in present dealings personal difficulties are considerable. It is. however. ridiculous that he is not allowed to do the party's work for it and it will become even more ridiculous as time goes on.
We, therefore, repeat what we have said before. We don't believe that there need be a revolution or counter-revolution around the corner; and nor do we believe that Mr Powell does either. What we believe is that there are many difficulties ahead and that many of these difficulties will be difficult for the present Government to resolve. Whether the economic difficulties can be resolved is partly a political, but largely an economic question; if they cannot be resolved, the political problem. and the problem of public comprehension, will be acute.
We don't. in a sense, care what Mr Powell or Mr Heath feels personally. Whatever they feel, we feel that they should come together. It is unlikely that they are going to (although it would be easier for Mr Heath the stronger he becomes). The probability that they are not going to come together doesn't stop it being our business to say, from a Conserva- tive viewpoint, that it would give the dn- servative party maximum equipment in facing its problems and make the Govern- ment very much stronger if they did. Is that, perhaps, why Mr Paterson doesn't want them to?
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