Politics

Waldenism

The last few days of the political year resembled the last few shopping days before Christmas. Ministers hurried out to

buy something they had forgotten, attemp- ted to think of something which would please a particularly trying aunt, rushed around, choosing too hastily and spending too much and getting no thanks for it.

Family rows ensued, with acrimonious little arguments about how the money set aside for one thing had mysteriously been sucked up by something else. Husband accused wife of extravagance; wife accused husband of parsimony. Each imagined that he or she was making all the preparations alone while the other was enjoying one long, drunken holiday. In short, the Con- servative Party was being itself, expressing, in its arguments with itself, the sentiments which got Mr Scrooge where he was before those wretched ghosts and that subversive clerk started making trouble.

When allowances have been made for the spirit of the season, however, it is possible to discern less ephemeral sources of worry. I do not mean the opposition between Wet and Dry, although it is true that this has not entirely disappeared. There is Mr Peter Walker, after all, who wants a balance between efficiency and compassion (it is compassionate to be inefficient, apparently); and there are the local autonomists, like Mr Francis Pym, Mr Edward Heath, Mr Geoffrey Rippon, and Mr Anthony Beaumont-Dark, who seems to have pledged himself to deliver an opinion on every single subject in the world and to have come perilously close to fulfilling that pledge. These and others still argue that the true, betrayed Conservatism is pragmatic, cautious, coalescing, cen- tripetal, but their difficulty is that they have to acknowledge that the rash, dogma- tic, divisive actions of the past five years have kept the Tories on top. The conclu- sion is that Mrs Thatcher cannot have been so unpragmatic nor the Wets so worldly- wise as they believed. The Wets are be- coming a little piece of political history, like the Adullamites, or the Fourth Party, or National Liberals, and ceasing to be the standard-bearers of a real cause.

No, the debate has altered. Debate, perhaps, is rather a grand word. It does not do justice to the character of political argument in the Palace of Westminster, where the motives of fear, loathing, self- advancement and mischief occasionally override the disinterested pursuit of truth.

We are discussing something more intangi- ble than debate, but something bigger than

the hum or buzz that hums and buzzes round a subject or a man for a day or two. It is a grumble, a rather generalised corn-

plaint in the body politic, the sort that a wise doctor attributes to stress rather than to a specific disease.

The grumble concerns Thatcherism. I do not know what Thatcherism is, but I use the term because it is defined with wonder- ful confidence by Mr Brian Walden, the chief articulator of the grumbling point of view. Indeed Mr Walden, who has been writing about this in the Standard, claims copyright on Thatcherism. He thought of it first, he says, and he knows what it means. Almost everyone else has misunderstood it because it is so beautifully simple. Thatch- erism, which from now on I shall for greater clarity call Waldenism, means making sure that people who like getting money get more of it. It is designed for the striving classes. Anything that disappoints them runs against the doctrine. These are people who must have a stake (or is it a steak?) in the country.

It is hard not to disappoint a Waldenite, because he is on the alert for disappoint- ments, and easily gets tremendously cross. This is something to do with the fact that he is striving all the time. When he gets home late from a long day's striving, just in time for News at Ten, he is not in a mood to be reasoned with. No good proving to him that, without his mortgage interest relief, the price of houses would drop, and he would pay less income tax. He is only interested in the Bottom Line, a surprising- ly loose concept in his mind, but one which he prizes dearly. In this case, Sandy Gall tells him that the Bottom Line says that he pays out more for the mortgage, and his disappointment is terrible to behold.

It may be that Waldenism is what Mrs Thatcher would like to pursue; but the evidence that it is what she believes is not very convincing. Although she is unceasing in her praise of effort, she does not so much emphasise reward. Not that she does not believe that effort should be rewarded — that would go against her view of justice; it is rather that her mentality favours struggle and not final achievement, a jour- ney and not an arrival. And so her actions have been more puritanical than Mr Wal- den allows. She has not tried to smooth the way of Mr Walden's strivers: she has not, for instance, made major tax cuts, except for the very rich, whose previous levels had been absurdly high. She has not devised a series of immunities for people with houses, pensions, children, life assurance policies and so on (though she has allowed many of these immunities to continue). Apart from the sale of council houses, I cannot think of any major Thatcher mea- sure which is `Thatcherite' in Mr Walden's definition. Waldenism is modernised Mac- millanism; Mrs Thatcher is something else.

But there are many on the Conservative back benches who think that Waldenism is Thatcherism, and who are correspondingly annoyed when Mrs Thatcher does un- Waldenish things. Sir Keith Joseph's attempt to cut grants for richer students was one of these things; anything that interfered with pension tax immunities would be another. The Tory Waldens fear that the Government may be getting too ideological. By this, they do not mean, as the Wets did, right-wing: they simply mean unpopular. They mean that while it may be all right ro refuse the miners what they ask, it is not all right to refuse the building trade. They hear people grumbling at their rotary clubs, and they do not like it.

Purists will say that the Waldens are merely contemptible opportunists. That is unfair. Tory politics has always deferred to the idea of interests. To rule in the name of some doctrine is more arrogant, and there- fore eventually more corrupt, than to try to reconcile and direct the claims of citizens and groups of citizens. The emerging argu- ment is not between fanatics and electoral bribers, although of course there are sever- al of these around. The end — a reasonably free, reasonably rich, reasonably orderly society — is sincerely shared. The difference is about means.

Waldenism likes to think that it talks the language that everyone understands, i.e. roughly, money. It pictures a society held together by nothing but its common desire to make itself materially comfortable. It follows that such a society, in an age of rapid industrial change, must be structured to impress upon its members that their salvation lies in money alone — not because money is God: Waldens are not theolo- gians — but because it is the only social cement. Waldenite politicians do not say 'You should help yourself' but 'We will only help those who help themselves'. Waldenites are what Labour politicians think that all Conservatives are.

The weakness of Waldenism, however, is simple and radical. The striving classes of its imagination do not exist. For every striver is also something else. Sometimes he strives, but sometimes he plays snooker. He may be a father, a ratepayer, an angler, a Baptist, a Jew, a handyman, a keep-fit fanatic, a diabetic. Politics has to accommo- date this diversity, and it cannot do so by ignoring it or by trying to cater for it all. It can only do so by allowing it to flourish. The evidence of the past five years suggests that where people are allowed this room, they take it readily. People may be selfish, but they are not quite so thick as Mr Walden imagines. They do not need to be bribed to act in their own interests, but to be free to pursue those interests them- selves. It is only now that Mrs Thatcher's Government seems to be getting serious about this freedom, which is why Mr Walden is getting tetchy. How serious and how tetchy, 1985 will tell.

Charles Moore