The Reluctant Politician
By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS
THE British public seems to demand that about one in three of its Prime Ministers should spend his time in saying how much he hates politics. It is its method of giving expression to its incurable love of the ama- teur and also to its ambivalent atti- tude to party poli- tics, by which it likes there to be a party system but likes it not to be taken too seriously. No one expected either Gladstone or Disraeli to go about saying that ne did not care for politics, but (a relief) it was thought greatly to Lord Salisbury's credit that he was believed not to have known most of his colleagues by name, and to Lord Rosebery's credit that he was much more interested in Winning the Derby than in being Prime Minister. Balfour did not like politics, but then he did like metaphysics—which was even worse—and the country after him had to resign itself to five Political politicians in a row. This made it all high time for Baldwin and his pigs and Worces- tershire at blossom time. Since then we have had four more politicians who did not deny that they were interested in politics, and now we have Mr. Macmillan, who, for all his grouse and standing a man .a pint in Kidderminster and 'the Vatican City' of Whitehall, makes no bones about it that he likes being Piime Minister like mad. Does this mean that it is time that another 'reluctant Politician' had a turn?
Politicians do not stand very high in the public favour at the moment. The Conservatives are certainly gaining surprisingly in the polls, but their gain, in so far as it is not simply due to the fact that they have the Socialists against them, is almost entirely Mr. Macmillan's personal gain. In so far as the public is concerned, the other members of the Government might as well not exist. The only exception to that is Mr. Heathcoat Amory. About him alone is there curiosity, and about him the public knows now that he has tea at a Lyons Corner House, that he is a Boy Scout, that he takes home his dirty socks to be darned by his aunt, but over and above that they know one thing more. It is now an axiom of political thought on which Socialists and Liberals, dis- sident Conservatives and loyal Conservatives are agreed, that Mr. Heathcoat Amory is a very nice man.
What are the reasons for this? The first reason is that undoubtedly it is true. The second reason is his invariable courtesy to thosp from whom he differs—unless, of course, they happen to be foreigners. (His attitude to foreigners is some- times not unlike that of the Duchess of Omnium 0I1 the Bohemian clergyman in Phineas Redux: He must have been a brave man for a foreigner (Christopher THE RELUCTANT POLITICIAN. By W. Gore Allen. tt-Iristopher Johnson, 18s.) to have attacked Mr..Bonteen all alone in the street.') The third reason is that the evident appe- tite for success is not an attractive quality and it is an intelligible perversity in human nature to prefer that the prizes of life should go to those who have not been too obviously striving for them. Of course, that very fact makes the cynics cynical. Mr. Gore Allen* speaks of Mr. Amory as 'the Reluctant Politician,' and it would be too much to expect but that some will be found to say that a pretended shrinking from advertise- ment is one of the most effective forms of ad- vertisement.
But I have known Mr. Amory now for more than thirty years and I do not think that there is anyone who has known him who would not agree that the cynical explanation is not only untrue, but ridiculously untrue. He' is a man devoted to public life, but to whom public life meant naturally local public life—who went into Parliament for his local constituency with the notion of serving his neighbours. He entered Par- liament in 1945 almost by accident and under protest, and it certainly never occurred to him either that he would stay there for long or that he would ever come to hold any of the great offices of. State. After he had been there only a couple of years he was, as Mr. Gore Allen truly says, endeavouring to retire, and, though Mr. Allen is doubtless right in thinking that he has now reached a point of no return where it is no longer possible simply to go back, yet he was certainly still contemplating a retreat to Devon- shire 'even after he had attained ministerial rank. Indeed, even now I have no doubt at all that he would without hesitation and without regret leave public life if some issue of principle which called upon him to do so should arise.
His lack of ambition and his dislike of pub- licity are both sincere to a remarkable degree. How far they are to be welcomed is a more difficult question. Some people, like being talked about and some people dislike it. Some people like being talked about a little and then have had enough of it. Some people do not mind one way or the other. There is much that is ridiculous, but nothing that is very wicked about a modicum of vanity, and it is very arguable that success in public life is almost impossible unless publicity is to some extent congenial. Yet, if so, that makes it all the more valuable to the public if by some stroke of chance success comes to someone who lias not at all wished for it. For, as Plato says, no one is fit to have power unless he dislikes it.
There has certainly been an element of luck in Derick Heathcoat Amory's career. He has Moved up through the resignations of others— Sir Thomas Dugdale and Mr. Thorneycroft- resignations which he neither desired nor planned. There are two great conundrums in his career— Suez and this resignation of Mr. Thorneycroft. Neither of them is Mr. Gore Allen able wholly to resolve. As to Suez, newspaper gossip of course widely reported . him as an opponent of Suez within the Cabinet. He hotly and flatly denied this. Of course, if he was not going to resign, he could hardly have done otherwise, but I quite agree with Mr. Gore Allen that Mr. Amory is not a man who would be willing to say one thing in priVate and another in public. He would have preferred resignation and retirement. Never- theless, these matters are not matters of pure black and white. If you think that your leader is utterly wrong, you resign: but, if yours is a different department and you had no say in how things were done, then, if you think the purpose of the policy defensible but that mistakes were made in execution, your pOsition is more difficult. For a Cabinet Minister cannot half-defend his colleagues. He must defend every action, wise or foolish, or else resign. I feel confident at any rate that, whatever Mr. Amory may have thought of what happened in the past, he will at least use his influence to see that the same things do not happen in the future.
So, too, with the Thorneycroft episode. When Mr. Thorneycroft resigned, the issue seemed at first clear. It seemed that the rest of the Cabinet was not any longer willing to support Mr. Thorneycroft in the measures which he thought necessary to combat inflation, but, as time has gone on, it has become increasingly difficult to see what it is that Mr. Amory has done which Mr. Thorneycroft would not have done. It may, of course, be that Mr. Thorneycroft by his resig- nation frightened the Government out of some action that it was proposing. I should not be surprised if that should prove to be so, but, judging by the actions that they have in fact taken, it is difficult to see any very sundering difference between the policies of Mr. .Thorney- croft and those of Mr. Amory.
The great difference between them has been rather a difference in the temperatures which they have generated. Mr. Amory, more than Mr. Thorneycroft or indeed than any other politician, is a man to reduce the temperature. He is very little of a party man. I do not mean by that merely that he is courteous to opponents. I mean that, whether the government at the moment be a party government or a national government, it is his belief that the country can only prosper if there is essential unity of classes and parties. His family traditions are Liberal. There can be little doubt that if the Liberal Party had been in vigour at the time he would as soon have gone into Parliament a Liberal as a Conserva- tive. His family was the first in the land to intro- duce those experiments in co-partnership which have ever since played so prominent a part in Liberal programmes. He has always been insistent that the main cause of class division is bad em- ployers, and that the schemes which he has 3t heart can only succeed if they gain the support of a strong trade-union movement. Such causes„ as the abolition of capital punishment are the causes to which he naturally gives himself, and if he should ever go out of Parliament 'there can be little doubt that his further activities would not be party activities. On the other hand, there is nothing new in the Conservatives turning, as they did with Sir Winston Churchill and several times before in their history, for leadership to a man who is not of their tradition, and it is obviously not more than about six to four against that Derick Amory will one day be Prime Minister. If it should be so, I do not know that he will intend to make any drastic attack on the party system as it now is, but the effect upon it of his government would be interesting to see.
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