Revolt of the rich
The rules of Michael Foot proclaim
ll Workers should be paid the same, 111,4 talk of equal income ceases
when miners and engine-drivers claim increases; With equal shares it is essential To keep the proper differential.
The
miners say there's coal enough.
Oe three-day week was all a bluff. now we'll strike and thus make sure 'here will not be enough for four.
Christopher Hollis about old age pensions. Jeremy told him, in a concise and simple little economic discourse. Liberal policy in this field is too well known to need recapitulation; when one hears it expounded by the leader against such a background it seems unanswerable. One's only doubts .arise from the fact that it is founded on his conviction that "we are still a very rich country." He said this several times. "A very rich country?" One wonders.
From the old folks' club to a toy factory. Here a different Jeremy emerged — a man who might have been outstanding on a board of directors. But even here the sense of compassion was evident. I remarked to him that although it was obviously an admirable factory, light and airy, filled with smiling faces, I still thought it was soul-destroying to stand in front of a Machine making -robot movements all day long. Whereupon he told me of a very different sort of factory where he had asked a girl the function of the small bolt which she had to twist a thousand times an hour. She had no idea of its function, she just had to go on twisting, and this struck him as very shocking indeed. "Afterwards," he said, "I told the management that if they hadn't the imagination to enter into the minds of their employees, to give even a glimmer of interest to their work, they'd have a strike in three months. In precisely three months they had a strike."
On and on, faster and faster. The last port of call was a street-corner, where we assembled with a quantity of mothers and expectant mothers, discussing means by which the road could be made less dangerous for children. It was here that he showed his most fervent interest, and it was here that he used the aforesaid royal 'we'. When we made our adieux he stood in the middle of the street, airily disdaining the possible assaults of juggernauts, and in an impeccable Oxford accent announced ... "We know. We are informed. We will see that something will be done."
After having had some converse with this dynamic figure, it is inevitable that I should ask myself whether I can visualise him at No. 10 Downing Street. Here, perhaps, it may be relevant to mention that of all the pictures I retain of him, at home, in the House, and on the hustings, the most vivid is set in a church — the very beautiful old church of Tavistock.
He feels very deeply about this church, with its bellringers' tower, its exquisite sixteenth century screen of oak, the delicate plasterwork of its ceilings, the sumptuous alabaster monuments to the noble families of the land. In spite of his manifold preoccupations he finds time to fight for it, to broadcast for it, to campaign for its rescue from decay. You watch him wandering through the shadowy galleries, pausing in contemplation, studying the messages on the ancient headstones, he seems very much a part of the continuing traditions of British history. In his fashion, he is a religious man. This may not help to answer our question which, in any case may be regarded as academic. But, in these days, some academic questions have a habit of suddenly demanding urgent practical attention, and in fairness to Jeremy Thorpe we should consider this one, however briefly. One of the commonest criticisms of the Liberal Party, and of its leader, is that they have no clear-cut policy and that we do not know what they stand for. This is unjust. If we do not know what they stand for it is for two very simple reasons, firstly, because we do not listen to what they say, secondly, because we do not watch what they do. A typical proof of this is to be found in the factual record of their consistent policy over the theory and application of the Government's Prices and Incomes policy which compares very favourably indeed with the record of both the other parties.
Oddly enough, in spite of the fact that they are led by a man with an exceptional gift for the vivid phrase, a man who would be the first to acknowledge his debt to Lloyd George, the Liberals are not always very good at getting their ideas across. And there is one quite vital matter on which the views of Jeremy Thorpe should be made very clear indeed, for without them this portrait would be sadly incomplete. This matter is the relationship of the white world to the black. It is central to his whole philosophy, and — though for the moment it seems to be comparatively quiescent — it probably transcends all other problems. For it is based on a deep-rooted fear — the fear of a third world war.
I quote ... and I quote from the quiet context of a cottage in the Devonshire hills with the thunder-clouds looming up on the horizon: "I have no fear of a war between the Marxist and the non-Marxist worlds. It is not on the cards. But a war between black and white — that is different. Hideously different. And when you talk to me of 'gradualism', when you suggest that after a decade there will be a greater degree of black independence, and after another decade a still greater degree, you are forgetting one vital fact that has been proved, ad nauseam, in the history of human affairs. When independence is in the air, the clock ticks faster. And it goes on ticking faster and faster, until you suddenly discover, to your horror, that it has become a time-bomb. Which is the situation where we find ourselves today."
Beverley Nichols, as readers may have gathered from his recent 'Notebooks,' describes himself as "an old-fashioned Liberal." That The Spectator publishes his vivid profile of Jeremy Thorpe does not, of course, constitute an editorial endorsement of the Liberal Party programme.
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