Political Commentary.

Willie's next trick

Patrick Cosgrave

In deepest Ulster Mr Heath's withdrawal of his proconsul, Mr William Whitelaw, has given rise to acute concern, since political leaders of all colours regard him as indispensable. It seems right, therefore, to start with a few words about the characteristics and the virtues of his successor, the hitherto obscure Mr Francis Pym. The adjective ' Cromwellian ' has sometimes been applied to this second Chief Whip to take on Northern Ireland: it was well earned during the period when he worked assiduously to force the EEC Bill through the House of Commons. But Mr Pym is more than ruthless, and a great deal more than just firm.

He worked for some time as deputy Chief Whip to Mr Whitelaw himself, and some of the master politician's attributes have rubbed off on him. A slight, and slightly hunched, figure, Mr Pym's essential gift is for the ra tional working out of alternatives. The furrows in his forehead deepen; the slant of his thin lips becomes more pronounced;

though a small man he bends forward to lis

ten, as he prepares to argue some case, or coax some recalcitrant opponent out of his

heresy. He has far more patience than Mr Whitelaw, and a great deal more interest in detail. He does not possess the élan or

ebullience which most Irishmen found so attractive in Mr Whitelaw: " I am quite con vinced," said Mr Brian Faulkner, that the personality of Willie Whitelaw had a great deal to do with the success of our negotiations." It is unlikely that Mr Pym's personality will be, in quite this separate way, a serious factor in discharging his Ulster task. But it may be that he will actually be better at the business of implementing the details of the Whitelaw settlement than would have been its creator: both Mr Faulkner and Mr Fitt are deeply, indeed totally, committed to making the executive-designate work, and the strategic diplomacy of Mr Whitelaw is probably not now needed to keep them on the straight and narrow. The highly down-toearth Mr Pym may well be better at this crucial new stage of political reconstruction. And the Irish will eventually find, I fancy, that they come to value his clarity of mind and persistence of character quite as much as they now value Mr Whitelaw's charisma. Finally, Mr Heath was wise to make this move — contrary to Irish opinion — before the tripartite talks start, as they do this week. The Prime Minister himself, and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, will take the brunt, while Mr Pym plays himself in.

In spite of all that, however, the moving of Mr Whitelaw demonstrates that Mr Heath no longer gives Ulster first place in his list of priorities: that now goes to the virtually impossible task of keeping a creaking antiinflation policy in existence. It is striking that that job has gone to a politician of the old, pre-1970 mould, just as the Ulster job has gone to another politician of the same cast. Mr Whitelaw is the only member of the Heath government who has gone from being nothing to being a star during its lifetime, just as he is the only politician since Balfour to come out of Ireland with an enhanced reputation. As in Ireland, he takes over a situation which has already begun seriously to deteriorate and, as in Ireland, he is being asked to perform the impossible.

Or at least the highly difficult. It will not have escaped Mr Heath's attention that, of all his ministers — and certainly very much more than the hapless Mr Macmillan—Mr White law will be able to persuade people that whatever he is doing is fair and reasonable: the lustre of what he has achieved in Ulster will see to that. Thus, even if Mr Whitelaw fails in the task of getting the unions to lie down under Phase Three (and whatever phases succeed it) he is likely to succeed in preparing for the use of that failure as the means of an election victory. The days of the crude tactics of Mr Heath's first essay in incomes policy, the days of open confrontation, and the days of anything but the most adroit diplomacy in handling prices and union militancy, are numbered.

But Mere is something else about Mr Whitelaw's new task that merits emphasis. He has been given a great deal more power than Mr Macmillan, but not in the same direction as that once enjoyed, when the Department of Employment and Productivity, by Mrs Barbara Castle. His accretion of power comes from taking over some of the functions of the Treasury. Precisely what functions he will take over is unclear, and past cases of Prime Ministers trying to snatch away bits of the Geroge Street empire have not been happy ones. But Mr Whitelaw has an extraordinary capacity, not merely for diplomacy, but for wriggling out of the straitjacket of old strategies into the open air of new ones. When he negotiated with the IRA that was an extraordinary departure from rigidly established policy, and it brought him close to destruction. He has a Geller-like ability to pass his hands over, things and transmute them and although it seems at the moment that he has merely the thankless job of implementing and popularising an unalterably predetermined policy, it may yet be discovered that, in administering the policy, he has radically altered it.

What of the other changes Mr Heath has made? Mr Humphrey Atkins, the most elegant man in the House of Commons, was widely tipped to succeed Mr Pym. He has a lucid mind, and a real capacity for persuasion. Mr St John-Stevas well merited his promotion at the DES, if only for the engaging pugnacity with which he has defended the Government's education, and Lord Eccles will depart unmourned. Mr Macmillan was, bluntly, a failure at Employment, but his ability for dealing with the nitty-gritty of politics will be more than ordinarily useful in preparing the Treasury for the introduction of the Government's radical tax credit scheme, designed essentially to relieve poverty.

But the overall situation is still disappointing. When the Tories won the election it was understandable that Mr Heath would mix, with such radical commitment to new blood as was signified by the appointments of Lord Carrington, Mr Walker and Mr Prior, a solid dose of such experience as was available to him. Even so, it was clear that the new Government was quite strong in Cabinet, strong also at the most junior level, but weak in middle-ranking ministers. Little has happened since then to alter that judgement.

In the Cabinet Mr Campbell at Scotland, Mr Thomas at Wales, Mr Davies at Europe, and Mr Rippon at the Environment — all these at least have been disappointments. Mr Amery, Mr van Straubenzee, Lord Aberdare, Lord Stanford, Mr Heseltine, Sir John Eden, Mr Mills and Mr Grant are among those who have been less than satisfactory lower down. Yet, on the back banches we still have Mr Scott, Mr Tapsell, Mr Fowler, Mr Dykes, Mr McCrindle, Mrs Oppenheim, and Dr Stuttaford, all deserving a chance, not to mention the rebels, Mr Biffen, Mr Bruce-Gardyne and Mr Teddy Taylor.

Of course, it is rumoured that Mr Heath is saving stage two of his reshuffle (really, these reshuffles are becoming increasingly like the phases of the prices and incomes policy) for a little later, perhaps before, perhaps after, Christmas. And he has even been praised for the way in which he has kept his team together, allowing ministers thoroughly to familiarise themselves with their jobs, their civil servants and their routes to and from the office. After the continual hectic tampering with his administration of Mr Wilson, that stability and order has, indeed, been a relief. But it remains an open question whether it is wise.

A minister too familiar with his ministry identifies too readily with it. While this may be acceptable in the more formal departments, such as the Foreign Office and Defence, where permanence of policy, and order and stability in the national interest, is frequently, if not always, highly desirable, it is less obviously the case in domestic ministries. There is a great deal to be said for the fairly constant arrival of new and fresh minds. Mr Pym, for example, will bring a different kind of attitude to bear on the problems of Ulster from that of Mr Whitelaw: and, without grudging the latter even a tittle of his justly deserved praise, that may well be a good thing, since it will compel the Ulster politicians to concentrate a little less on themselves and their problems, and a little more on the difficulty of appraising a new master. Like Mr Whitelaw, Mrs Thatcher has done brilliantly in her job — for sheer brain power she probably ranks superior to anybody else in the Cabinet — and it might have been a good idea to let her sharpen her intellectual teeth of some new task. Sir Keith Joseph, at the Department of Health and Social Services, has shown administrative ability and the will to establish priorities in that most difficult of departments to an ex ceptional degree, and he might well be more public-spirited at the Environment than Mr

Rippon (not that I would let him go to the

Elephant and Castle for a moment). Reshuffling is one of the more important minor arts of government and it preserves, too, the identity of the Cabinet as a Cabinet, rather than as a group of disputing barons, each in charge of the gigantic fiefdom which a modern department of state undoubtedly is. The wider the experience of ministers the better the chance that they will take views wider than the merely departmental. The better, thus, is the national interest, which depends on the general view, served.