TABLE TALK
Storm signals
DENIS BROGAN
I am beginning to ponder the situation of the Conservative government, for there is a great deal of discontent among the rank-and- file Tories at the failure to produce an im mediate revolution in the political situation. It is one of the most general, innocent, but in its effects very harmful attitudes of the rank-and-file of any political party on the edge or over the edge of power to expect immediate results from a mere change in political personnel. There are always prob- lems which cannot be solved overnight. The Labour party was especially affected by optimism in the rank-and-file because it had, until 1945, no experience of being a govern- ment with a majority.
In many ways, the first Labour govern- ment with a majority did much more than many cynics thought it did. Mr Attlee became at once a highly decisive Prime Minister, not (what people who didn't know him expected) a rather dim and ineffectual scapegoat who could be kept in his place by the Labour party's extra-parliamentary leaders like Harold Laski. It did not take Major Attlee much time to impose military discipline on the party, and few Prime Ministers have had a fuller sense of authority than he. This, I hasten to say, is not in the least a criticism of Mr Attlee; it is, in fact, praise. If I had to choose between being ruled by Mr Attlee or by Harold Laski or Douglas Cole, I would not have had the slightest difficulty in making up my mind. Yet the illusions of 1945 lasted quite a long time. It was the future Lord Shawcross, now a stern enemy of radical thought, who announced, 'We are the masters now!' But the illusions held at that time by very intelli- gent people now seem rather odd.
One of the most brilliant of the new Labour MPS was Evan Durbin. He was a bold and• original economist, and a man of great independence of judgment and of great courage. Yet he ran against and fell over obstacles in the political system. Thus, he was extremely annoyed when he was told (I think by his brother-in-law, Graham Hutton) that there would have to be a great increase in the number of parliamentary draftsmen or there would be a delay in carrying out a great deal of the Labour party's policy. Evan Durbin thought it need not take more than about six weeks to train a parliamentary draftsman, and it was hard to persuade him that it would take a lot longer; that there was a great deal of complexity in parliamen- tary drafting, as in-most human activities.
In earlier days Mr Gladstone could dictate a whole statute to a high civil servant who had been his private secretary even if the subject were as complicated as the land law of Ireland. Things had got much more complicated than that by 1945, and no one could be, like Lord Welby or Lord Kil- bracken, a single-minded master of all the problems coming up to 10 Downing Street, as was possibly true as late as 1906. The more the government undertook to do, the more it was at the mercy of technicians who might have no great sympathy with the policy of the government, yet had a mastery of the rather disagreeable, aesthetically un- pleasing but necessary skills which resulted in workable statutes.
Now Mr Heath is facing a problem of not
quite the same kind, but with many simi- larities. He has wisely taken some months to work his way into the arcana imperil, but the public is now beginning to be impatient, or at any rate politicians are beginning to be
impatient, to see exactly what the great triumph of June 1970 means, if anything. It
is in this context that the distinguished former editor of the SPECTATOR, lain Macleod, will be deeply missed. He had both independence of judgment and a great deal of governmental expertise. Mr Heath was also one of Lord Butler's young men and learned in the opposition period between 1950 and 1951 _much about the needs of government from the outside. But the needs of government from the outside are never the needs of government as seen from the inside.
Just as the Labour party met disillusion among its militant members, Mr Heath's right wing is grumbling and perhaps will soon be more than grumbling. There are more Powellites than will admit it, or at any rate will admit it at this moment. They may be ready to admit it more freely if things go badly wrong.
Already numerous speedy reforms we were promised, at any rate by implication, during the election campaign and just after the triumph of the Tories, have been post- poned, and may have to be postponed for a very long time unless many fundamental changes are made in our way of governing ourselves. Mr Heath, no matter how skilfully he has chosen his cabinet, will find that some of the choices are wrong. Members will not live up to their promise, or will not live up to their presumed fitness for the jobs for which they have been chosen. Asquith said that a successful Prime Minister ought to be a `butcher,' ready to get rid of old friends or old and useful allies if the general health of the government, not to speak of the country, called for drastic action.
But what may well be most serious is the discontent and revolt of the rank-and-file. This could take two forms. There will be the simple resentment of deserving Tory MPs (deserving, at any rate, in their own eyes) that they have not been the beneficiaries of the Prime Minister's patronage. I have known some MPs who complained in no bitter way but quite rationally and, I think. quite rightly that a career in the House of Commons in which you don't get office when your party is in power is one of the most sterilising and tedious ways of passing your time. Being an 1.4P as such has no longer the magic it had in the nineteenth century when much was still made of reverence for the politically governing class. There is still the simple fact that people like being ministers: they like the salaries, they like the official cars, they like the reverence that they receive anywhere they go. (That they are so received I have learned from the complaint of a Labour MP whose political hopes were des- troyed in June.) But it is not only. a matter of disappointed ambition for office_that may cause Mr Heath trouble. He will have to deal, as Mr Wilson had to deal and as Mr Attlee had to deal. with an ideologically passionate fringe (1 refrain from saying a lunatic fringe), and they may be a nuisance if the going gets really rough, as it promises to do. So the Prime Minister will have a lot to think of in the next few months other than the very serious economic position which he has partly inherited from the Labour party. as they partly inherited their troubles from the Conservative party. I wish him luck. He will need it.
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