Honour bright
Hugh Trevor-Roper Sir Harold Wilson has sometimes allowed himself to be compared with Mr Gladstone. There are indeed some resemblances. Both W00 Many elections and enjoyed long spells Pi office, and,were helped to do so by a skilful combination of tactical agility and pious Phrases. However, there are also differences. Roth the resemblances and the differences struck me recently as I was reading a historical document : a manuscript diary of the last their of the last Gladstone ministry and "leir aftermath.
Gladstone's final resignation, unlike was slow in coming. When it came, in
March 1894, it did not entirely please his ,Pacty, especially since the great man did not aide his belief that, without him, the Liberal government would soon collapse. For this rteason, before going, he took care to provide cr his friends. He also kept everyone in sus,.13e,nse while he went on a private trip to Biar." ,-,4. The faithful who gathered at Charing `Joss to see him off on this trip were not Pleased. 'There he goes', one of them friends for 'execrated by his colleagues and
for his selfishness'. 'There was no
crowd or demonstration at the station', recorded another, 'and no cheering, and! could nw help saying, "And is this the end of such a a„Teer r He looked diabolically cheerful r" gay as he walked up the platform', he,4,dirtg a grandchild by the hand, 'as if he no responsibilities to anyone'. Stageg,eered bY such irresponsibility, some of his 0–leagues declared openly that he had gone trtlt of his mind : his behaviour 'really desCys the shreds of respect one had left for 1a,1111'. One of them remarked that 'he seemed "te the prophet Habakkuk, capable de tout'. Gladstone's trip to Biarritz, with his fam jand court, like many other such jaunts, seas Paid for by one George Armitstead, a st Ptch financier on whom the whole Glad: werte family were accused of 'sponging . he Gladsione finally resigned, Armit'–'" hinted discreetly that he would much ap drePreciate a peerage. But here Gladstone VV the line. He was of course deeply grate ex„ite, 'this good-natured creature', but he vie" amed that since Armitstead's signal serLtbes had been not to the country nor to the se„eral Party but to himself as a private pera D"' ce could not properly reward them.with that: 1/lic honour. So it was as a commoner eort Iurnitstead, four years later, would esAtb, Gladstone to his grave in Westminster
uey,
, Husv Wils, much more fortunate are Sir Harold cisel "It's rich friends! I do not know preat services they have performed, but test a the Labour Party and the country proDeer:I equal ignorance, and since the vetting could not discover any public services ('the fellers have never done anything', says one of them), we must assume that they are personal. The Times indeed—an indulgent newspaper—sees these new peers as dynamic capitalists, like Mr Gladstone's supporters in the nineteenth century: men whose anti-socialist drive is much needed by our tired economy. But is this really so ? The great sociologist Max Weber made a distinction—crude, no doubt, but useful—between modern 'rational' capitalism with its puritan ethic, the constructive capitalism of the nineteenth century, and what he called 'Jewish adventurer capitalism' which can be found in all times and places and which constructs nothing but private fortunes. Before agreeing that Sir Harold's friends belong to the former rather than the latter category, I would like to know what they have created.
Meanwhile I am more interested in the disease than in the symptoms. For here I see one of the many differences between Sir Harold and Mr Gladstone. When Gladstone set off for Biarritz, his colleagues lamented that such a career should have such an end. It seemed to them untypical, unworthy of the previous record. But Sir Harold's career seems to me far more consistent. In spite of all his tactical tergiversations, he has been constant in one character: constant to the end.
What is that one character ? For me, it is a compulsive triviality. I have listened to many of Wilson's speeches—election speeches, television speeches, after-dinner speeches—and always, behind the purr and the burr, there is the same basic note. Great issues are trivialised, serious problems are reduced to petty conspiracies, national distress is dismissed with a partisan sneer. At a time when we needed a Prime Minister who could speak for Britain, who by some touch of magnanimity could transcend party differences and evoke the true spirit of the people, we have had one who has regularly taken refuge in marginal issues, in diversionary tactics, in partisan jibes. He has kept his party in office, but at a heavy cost. Whatever he has touched, he has cheapened.
In particular, he has cheapened our institutions. The parliamentary system, the rule of law, the efficacy of government—all these are threatened and need to be strengthened and defended. He has subtly undermined them all. By his referendum on the EEC, his double standard of legality on the Clay Cross affair, his attitude to picketing, his constant surrender to particular interests, his evasion of responsibility in defence and foreign affairs, he may have preserved a façade of unity in a divided party, but he has weakened the fabric of society and the vitality of its essential organs. Moreover, by spontaneous gestures, he has positively identified himself with the fashionable belittlers. The era of Wilson has been the era of mindless satire, and the most mindless of the satirists have been owned by him.
It is in this context that I see the faice of his resignation honours. The honours system may, in itself, be an archaism, but it has, or can have, a useful and innocent function: by it, inconspicuous merit can be inexpen
sively rewarded and the second chamber of the Legislature, essential to any liberal system, can be reinvigorated. Sir Harold Wilson, to do him justice, has never used the system responsibly. To him, with his peerages for actors and honours for pop-singers, it was always a mere piece of patronage. Mr Heath, who recognised that peers were legislators, stayed the process of decline. But on returning to power, Sir Harold Wilson resumed and quickened it. In this last slapstick act of his comedy, peerages, like other honours, have been gewgaws and perqs for personal favourites. We are reminded of the reign of James I, who so vulgarised and abused both offices and honours that, in the words of a distinguished historian, 'the scandal and discontent caused by a putrefying social system helped to provoke the Civil War'.
But I return to my more recent parallel. After Gladstone had retired finally from politics, he was visited at Hawarden by his former secretary, Sir Algernon West. West reported that the ex-Prime Minister was in excellent form, but he added 'that he is wasting his time writing a concordance to the Psalms instead of his political reminiscences'. Sir Harold Wilson has already given us more than enough of his political reminiscences. I hope that if his ex-secretary visits him in his retirement, she will find him too studying the Psalms—the Penitential Psalms.
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