STRIFE FOR STRIFE'S SAKE
Is the nation divided, and if so who or what is dividing it?
Mr Harold Wilson has now accepted that Mr Heath is, as a matter of fact, conduct- ing that 'radical change in the style of government' which he promised us. And Mr Wilson does not like such radical change. It is hurting him; or, at any rate, he is squealing as if it were hurting him. We had all better get used to the idea that, whether or not a particularly radical change is being conducted, both Mr Wilson and Mr Heath talk and behave, and see to it that their minions talk and behave, for all the world as if the present Adminis- tration had determined upon. and was already carrying out, such a radical change. The evidence for the existence, in everyday practical terms, of such change is mixed and confusing: the refusal of a bridging loan to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board is a sign of change, but on the other hand £42 million (or whatever it turns out to be) of public funds for Rolls- Royce is very much the mixture as before. Our European and foreign policies are largely unchanged. There are no great divides of principle between Mrs Castle's attempts to substitute some degree of statu- tory control in place of industrial strife and Mr Carr's Industrial Relations Bill now coming before Parliament. Mr Bar- ber's mini-budget contained many of the kind of cheeseparing economies that Labour chancellors in the past had grown adept at making. And, far from the workers being clobbered, they are presently receiving wage increases greater propor- tionately, and in real as in money terms, than they have ever had before. Indeed the most obvious, not to say glaring, example that there is radical change in everyday practical terms is the example in the pay packets of the successful applicants.
Nevertheless. and on balance. the inten- tion of Mr Heath to put into practice his `radical change' is becoming clearer; and although we may confidently expect to see more interventionist acts of government to support such industries. or regions, as it decides, for domestic political reasons or (more likely) for consideratiOns of foreign - and especially of European policies, it is necessary to support, such interventionist acts will increasingly_ become abnormal, exceptional, specific. They will go against the grain of government. They will have to be apologised for, explained away. The intention to reduce the amount of govern- ment is an admirable intention; activities designed to put that intention into effect are likely to be admirable activities; and there is no need whatever in this process of governing to go the whole hog at once, or even at all. The fact that, on principle, the government is determined to reduce its interventionist activity should not obscure the political imperative upon all govern- ments to trim its principles to fit its cir- cumstances. (Indeed it might be hoped that the present Government could see its way towards a clear understanding of the prin- ciple that it is not necessarily unprincipled for a government to override itsprinciples.) Thus, we conclude that, although the prac- tical evidence is confusing, Mr Heath is doing what he says he is doing; and also that Mr Wilson, from his interventionist point of view, is quite right to start yelping as if he were being seriously scourged.
What is happening to Mr Wilson is his recognition that the Prime Minister is bent upon the destruction of that political con- sensus represented usefully enough by the ugly word Butskellism. If such terms as `right' and 'left' be employed, then the political direction of the country can be said to have been moved from that central position between the two main parties (but never, incidentally, successfully occupied by the Liberal party) to a central position within the ruling Conservative party. In such a shift, not only political feelings but also individual interests will be hurt; and when this is seen to be imminent, then political strife, as well as industrial strife, can be expected to supervene. The prob- lem facing the Heath administration is to carry through its reforms, knowing the inevitability of strife, in such a way as to keep that strife within tolerable bounds; ' and this 'it best can do, possibly can only do, if it maintains and is seen to maintain, the general support of the electorate. Like- wise, the problem facing the Opposition is to oppose with sufficient vigour to main. tain its own cohesion, yet not so shrilly as to risk forfeiting the electoral support it presently represents. If strife engendered by the Opposition, or thought by the public at large to be thus engendered, or at any rate thought to have the encouragement and support of the Opposition. should become go excessive that the public at large be revolted by it, then the Opposition will have failed to keep the strife within toler- able bounds. If strife engendered or thought to be engendered by Government words and deeds should produce a similar revulsion, then the Government will have failed.
In this situation, where it may well appear to many observers accustomed to the consensus of the past two decades that both Government and Opposition are determined upon strife for strife's sake. the language of politics cannot fail to be• come more violent. The nation cannot fail to appear, in so far as its politicians repre. sent it to the outside observer, as becoming increasingly divided. In particular. the `One nation' ideal to which the Prime Minister repeatedly expresses his devotion is bound to seem at times an ideal very much out of countenance with his policies• But the decibel count of the noise of political strife does not necessarily rise pro- portionately to the divisions of the nation: and it could strongly be argued that only a nation of sufficient unity could tolerate successfully the degree of political and industrial strife we may well be in for. Many will question 'is such strife necessary' at all?', and for those who are content that this country should jog along and slowly downhill as in the past. comfortably de- clining into a condition of semi-retirement from the world at large. careful not to cause offence, fearful of new ideas. pre- serving nevertheless better than in rnosl other places the decencies of living and a vestigial respect .for the traditions of past, the answer must be 'We do not need this strife'. The attractions of such a view of ourselves and our place in the world are very great, indeed beguiling. But this is not the view of this country taken by its Prime Minister; and it is not the view taken by the Leader of the Opposition, at least now that he is in Opposition; and there is little evidence that it is a view taken by the majority of the country either. There is ureat impatience about; there is much dis- quiet with the pass to which we have come; there is, therefore, more than at any time since 1945, the feeling that the time has come for a change, and the prepared- ness for the divisions and the strife that change cannot avoid creating.
Mr Wilson is, thus, to be congratulated upon the honesty of the formulation of his Opposition; and upon the frankness of his attack on Mr. Heath's speeches for import- ing 'a degree of ideological malice de- signed to divide the nation and to profit politically by so dividing the nation'. It remains to be seen whether so frank an acknowledgment of the differences between himself and the Prime Minister will bene- fit Mr Wilson; much as it also remains to be seen whether industrial action taken in the one-day strike of 8 December against the political purposes of Mr Robert Carr's Industrial Relations Bill will (as both Mr Wilson and Mr Vic Feather suspect) lose the strikers. far more public support than it will gain them; and much as it also re- mains to be seen whether Mrs Castle's em- barrassingly vehement opposition to the Carr proposals—'we shall fight any legisla- tion based on these proposals tooth and nail. line by line, and, however long it takes, we shall destroy the Bill'—will harm the Labour party's public image more than it will improve it.
With public opinion seemingly remain- ing now as volatile as it was during the Election period, none but a fool would confidently predict the outcome of that period of political strife into which we are most probably entering. Such strife is by no means to be deplored : rather is it essential that, from time to time, it should occur, lest without. it political debate should atrophy, and the body politic. bereft of stimulus, decline into a supine mass upon and over which petty tyrants might, without resistance, trample.
In such a developing situation it is obvious that in one sense the nation is divided: and that it is divided by and be- tween thosewho think like Mr Wilson that the Government, the State, should cease- lessly seek to intervene, as often as not in the name of 'social justice'. and those who think like Mr Heath that, in the name of `freedom of the individual' or some such name, the Government, the State, should ceaselessly seek to reduce the amount of its own intervention. It is obvious, also, that in another sense, the nation is not so divided for such divisions to threaten its integrity. This being so (and it would be disastrous to suppose otherwise), a degree of political strife is to be welcomed rather than feared. Mr Heath's stimulus, and Mr Wilson's response, have destroyed the old corlsensissilt is not before time
CARR v THE INDUSTRIAL DINOSAURS
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