13 JUNE 1970, Page 20

TABLE TALK

Waterloo or Passchendaele?

DENIS BROGAN

'A damned close-run thing' the Duke of Wellington is supposed to have said of Waterloo and with his accustomed skill he patted his own back for the result. If the Labour party wins it will be (if I believe all! read and hear) Mr Harold Wilson who will be entitled to pat his own back and will overcome his natural bashfulness far enough to accept, modestly, the compliment .he will get—and deserve—from a party so badly demoralised as the Labour party was a year ago. And Mr Heath's position in his own party will be very badly damaged indeed, if he doesn't make it, and he may not get all the praise he deserves even if the Con- servatives win. There are several prime don- ne in his party who will be too busy patting their own backs to have much time for pat- ting his. But he will after all, have the patronage and that melts hearts and opens eyes wonderfully in the political world of any party.

But first of all, I ought to come clean. For the past three months I have been recovering from a very serious operation and have only very recently been, even in a modest way, 'out and about', so that! have been remote from the gossip of the clubs (or of the high tables) or of El Vino's and other gossip markets like the parliamentary world. So I have been forced to fall back on memory and reflection.

I have another reason for not being abreast of the latest news. Both in hospi- tal and at home, most of the time in bed, I have been preoccupied by the bad news from the United States and have seen in that news, the joker in the British pack. A modern Gladstone or Peel or Salisbury might be made impotent or driven to disgraceful (and unsuccessful) dodges as the 'most powerful nation' in the world plunges deeper and deeper into anarchy and folly. For if you are tied to a high-powered motor boat going over Niagara, the choice between cutting the painter and going over the falls may be inescapable but has almost equally disastrous consequences.

Then, I am temperamentally reluctant to make prophecies after my experiences in 1948, when I not only said that Governor Dewey was a sure thing at a time when, as I realised an hour or two later, the American people had decided to elect President Truman: I even bet ten dollars with my host who had told me that he had never voted but knew a loser when he saw one. He had seen one whom I had refused to take seriously. So I take with double scepticism all the pro- phecies, and Gallup and other polls, and I have never bet on an American (or any• other) election ever since. The New Yorker drawing of that time showing a deeply depressed professional prophet, sending out his secretary for a new crystal ball, remains engraved, like 'Calais', on my heart. But what has been the impact of the cam- paign (so far) on an observer not much more active than was Miss Elizabeth Barrett before the maid introduced Mr Browning, or Miss Nightingale after the height of her fame when she was immured and reduced to the Order of Merit? One has been (to my surprise, though less to my surprise than was the Democratic miracle of 1948 in America), the irreducible strength of the Labour party. It may still be beaten. It may, indeed be badly beaten. But basically Chesterton's 'People of England' have spoken. Despite permanent or temporary prosperity, colour TV, two cars in every council garage, the 'workers', in the mass, have not moved, psychologically, into the middle class. It is still 'us' and 'them'. Tory Democracy is further off than ever, for the - Tory Democrats are dying and the economically promoted workers, unless they have been really shot upwards, are more suspicious of their betters than were the Tory working men of a generation or even two or three elections ago. Why this is so (if it is so) is a matter for later reflection but that is another story. There will be no political 1931. Even if Mr Wilson were tempted to 'do a Ramsay Mac' (as I am sure he is not), he wouldn't even have the equivalent of J. H. Thomas with him. We may need a 'national government', but even in face of catastrophe, we won't get it.

But there are more options open. Suppose that Mr Wilson (I avoid saying 'the Labour party') makes it (and not in the manner of 1964), he will still have to face the alarming problems presented by the American situa- tion. Suppose that the war in Indo-China is guttering to a humiliating defeat and evacua- tion in 1971? Suppose that the Democrats and a good many Northern Republicans wash their hands of the disaster, how can Messrs Wilson, Stewart, Healey get out gracefully? More serious is the possible semi- anarchy of the streets in America plus a con- tinuance of the economic seizing-up. lithe American political and economic situation is not much better by the end of a long, hot summer, we (and France, Germany, Italy. even the complacent Swedes) will be deeply and possibly disastrously involved. Maybe nobody should want to be PM in this dread year. But didn't Himmler take seriously his succession to the Fuhrer in 1945 and Jefferson Davis refuse to resign in 1865?

Also serious will be the react ion as the sad news leaks out that none of our rulers or would-be rulers can, during the campaign at any rate, do more than reproach each other with the-general lassitude or offer any very convincing remedies. The belief that, with no doubt a few serious faults due to the foolery or knavery of the other side. the heart of Britain is sound may be dangerously harmful, for it may divert at- tention from the problem of whether the head of Britain is sound. There is some reason to doubt it.

So far the abrasive leader of 1944 recalls.' 1970, either Bonar Law or Baldwin (both are knocks not boosts). And the Tories may lose their tempers if they lose again and then have to ask themselves, have they missed the boat? Will it never be bright confident morning again? Are the notables on the way out? If the peripeties of the World Cup •N,IPe out memories of the Cricket Council, and the mcc becomes an equivalent of the life peers, we might have time to think of really revolutionary measures and adopt baseball as the national game with perhaps the Australian variation of Rugby as a second string.