VIEWPOINT

The style of Harold Wilson

GEORGE GALE

Many years ago, when it was one of my obligations to visit the Marquis of Granby —a public house beside Transport House, then the headquarters of the Labour party, the TUC and the T&GW-ht order to find out what the members of the national executive of the Labour party and of the General Council of the ruc were saying about each other and about the affairs of the day (usually in that order), I sometimes would check up later with one of those members of the national executive who tended not to drink in the Marquis of Granby.

I was working for the Manchester Guardian, and I would check up with some- one who was once, somewhat earlier, turned down for a job there. He having come on and up in the world a bit since, but retain- ing that kind of fond affection and respect combined with superior despair that most men who've done well feel towards those who once dispensed with their services, was invariably nice to me. This is not my point, He was also invariably honest: and this I have not forgotten.

By honest, I mean what I say. I would sometimes ring him up and ask him what had happened and often he would tell me that he could not say. Other times he would tell me that I had it wrong. or right, as the case might be. Occasionally he would tell me what had happened—not. of course, the whole truth about what had happened, but, so far as I was able subsequently to tell, nothing but the truth. He never, so far as I knew, gave me a bum steer. Since then I have followed the career of that member of the national executive with as much interest as anyone else and, at times, with more sympathy than most. There have been many times since then when I have suspected him of giving Lobby journalists a bum steer, but not being of the Lobby, nor by nature clement towards its inbred methods and its more bumptious members. I have felt tolerant towards him in anything he may have done in this direction: it being, I think, legitimate to give Lobby correspondents a bum steer if you can think of nothing better, or different, to do, on, say. a thin Friday in March. I mean, what else are some Lobby fodder for? Let them eat bum steers. There are, as Harold Wilson might say (and in- deed did on Monday morning, in not all that different a context) some very honour- able exceptions to the rule.

It is, of course, of Harold Wilson that I speak, or sing. Of whom else? He has be- strode this election like a cosy pet and cuddly toy Colossus. I cannot contemplate his performance without wishing to break into hoots of laughter; and laughter chiefly with him, what's more: not against. It has been a very funny performance. Those with delicate stomachs have squirmed a bit at some of his more outrageous antics: but none, as yet, has thrown up. Those whose guts have suffered more in past years from swallowing the behaviour of other, lesser, politicians are strong enough to take him neat. As Ted Heath has rightly said (missing the point, alas, in saying it), nothing has been too trivial for him. A child, just turned seven, pinched his father's pipe. The father, a political educa- tion officer turned teacher, was at hand. The child, mouth full of pipe, said 'I'm Harold Wilson'. This was on Sunday morning at Hartlepools, a north-east town distinguished for being traditionally up at the top of the unemployment table. Wilson came to Hartle. pools that afternoon, and in the biggest Labour club hall in the north-east, sat down at the table by the rostrum. No sooner had he sat down than Mark Brown, the child, appeared. (He told me later he'd been told to go up. Others had it that it was his own idea.) He placed himself alongside the Prime Minister and started pretending to smoke this blasted pipe. Nor was this all. He. the child that is, despite that the sky was blue and cloudless and the afternoon excessively warm, was dressed in a miniature Gannex coat, just like the Prime Minister used to wear, when the weather in England was all cold and wet, before he started making Britain great again (or for the first time: l'm not sure, writing without all my files).

So there was this boy—Ed have said brat, except that it wasn't really his idea at ail, only his father's—sitting next to the Prime Minister putting this pipe and wearing this Gannex coat. Is nothing sacred? I sighed to myself. What does his nibs, or Wilson as the Lobby Chaps call him, do next? One guess. Right. He heaves out of his jacket his pouch of baccy. Baccy, that's it. Pouch of. He says, shamelessly, 'Here you are. I'll fill your pipe for you. But don't you smoke it. Give it back. to your father'. The young lad's father took the pipe and lit it. saying to me. 'You can quote me as saying "Harold's tobacco is magnificent" '; as if I'd have quoted him as saying anything else. Having stopped smoking myself_ a couple of years back, I thought Harold's behaviour in the worst of taste and I said this to him but he was quite unrepentant; and when I said, well, what then is the filthy shag you smoke, he said 'It's not filthy shag at all, it's a very fine tobacco. It's Rattray's of Perth, Scot- land: their mixture.' Good flashy stuff. I thought, like Ted Heath and his malt scotch; none of your Bruno flake.

Following the Prime Minister around. one traipses into council house living rooms, all neat and tidy until people like us arrive, making the place look a mess. and especially the front gardens, lawns trimmed, roses ready to burst. Mary Wilson says. rightly and pleasantly. 'It must be awful, having us all come in. and even going upstairs.' There are two reasons for going upstairs, and the main one is so that Harold can lean out of the bedroom window to make a speech. At the end of the north-cast tour he suddenly declares. 'Mary and I have come to a con- clusion. We have been in and out of your houses, here and everywhere else. We have made a list of people's houses we have been in. We are going to invite everyone to come to our house, after the election.' To make it sure what house he means, he adds, 'Ten Downing Street is our house'. So it is. So it must remain. I cannot think that he will leave his house involuntarily. His cool, his calm, his confidence is like nothing I have ever seen from a Prime Minister (or Opposi- tion leader) lighting an election before.

Until around February he thought he might lose; but then he suddenly knew, so he is inclined to say, that he had it made. 'The enemy is delivered into my hands.' Each day's campaigning finds him more re- laxed and more at ease with his own political future. He looks ahead with pleasure, secretly telling himself, I think, that now, now will come the time, now that the economic problem of the balance of payments is manageable, now, now when he has won thrice over, will be the chance to change the place, to make the country different, to show himself to be a great Prime Minister instead of simply a success- ful party manager.

What other ambition, after all, can be left? Why else should he move throughout the country regally, and nicely, not having to argue the toss about this or that tedious electoral issue? Come to my home after this is all over, and I'll give you tea.

Not even Macmillan would have dated this. Macmillan, it's true, would scarcely have welcomed hundreds of house-proud Tory housewives into Downing Street; but had Macmillan thought of it, he might have gritted his teeth and borne it. Not so Harold and Mary. Mary thinks of it: not to be borne, but to be welcomed! Harold makes a little speech. Hey, ho! We have a new Queen Mum already; and a king of sorts in the offing. When Harold waves his hand, as his motorcade sweeps past, is it just my fancy that discerns a regal limpness in the gesture?

So cool and confident is this Wilson cam- paign that Wilson's splendid PRO—easily the best to have emerged from either political party in the many years I have followed . their activities—felt it not absolutely essen- tial to remain constantly awake during a chat the Prime Minister had with some of us on a train. Since the Prime Minister him- self was stretching out his legs at the time, and obviously felt that relaxation was quite proper. there was no question of dereliction of duty. Among the topics we found our- selves discussing, in an amiable, academic kind of way, were, what the Tories should have done, what the Tories should do now, and what the Tories probably will end up doing. He is full of splendid and quite gratuitous advice.

His present technique, of breaking away from formal meetings, he regards as an overdue but very welcome break from tradi- tion. He has ha--I other breaks in mind. I do not think he regards manifestoes as all

that much use, for instance, and election addresses, and fixed meetings. He thinks all this is traditional and nothing else: kept going, that is, because of tradition, and for no other reason. It even crossed his mind to announce a new Cabinet in the middle of the campaign. I don't say the idea stayed there for long, but it did crop up. It would have been awkward having new ministers announce answers to old ministers' prob- lems, I think he'd allow, although since nobody in this campaign seems to be paying any attention to the questions they are being asked by the others, even this problem might have been overcome, or otherwise obscured. The polirical difference between overcoming and obscuring a problem is not great, as Wilson knows, and Heath perhaps does not appreciate.

There is a streak of cruelty in Wilson's performance. Many in the press sense it, in that they see Heath as the toyed plaything. ' Although Heath, it sometimes seems, feels that he is being severely dealt with at his morning press conferences, the fact is other- wise: journalists hold back, fearing to occa- sion a collapse. Not so with Wilson: when journalists hold back with him, it is because they fear their own deflation.

Wilson has begun to flaunt his own super- iority. The performance, justified doubtless on political grounds, is—or has been until the beginning of this week: for I write prematurely, and everything I say must be construed as premature—somewhat grue- some, like bull-fighting, cock-baiting, fish- teasing, hunting, shooting.

When are you going to let us have a drop of rain for our gardens?' Wilson was asked on Monday. 'I shall have a word or two to say on the subject later in the week,' he replies. He declares, 'It's been a good year for beer'. He says, 'The Tories say they're going to apply general pressure on the wages problem. I don't know who the hell General Pressure is.' He goes outside and there he holds another press conference, this time with small children from the school whose hall he has borrowed. `Do you think wages should go up for unmarried women?' an eight-year-old asks him. 'I wouldn't give up hope yet, dear,' he replies.

Down the road, Heath says, asked about some Wilson remark on the World Cup, 'I am sure there is no form of triviality to which this man will not descend.' Heath appears profoundly to disapprove of Wil- son's frivolity. He keeps asking Wilson, via press conferences and speeches, elaborate questions, then says 'I don't expect in the least any answer from Mr Wilson to my questions'.

Mr Heath says he cannot say whether or not Britain faces economic peril, because he 'hasn't seen the books'. I ask him whether he has asked to see the books: 'Of course not,' he snaps. Someone asks him whether he will reintroduce hereditary peerages. 'That is an improper question. It depends entirely between a Prime Minister and Her Majesty.' Isn't that a stuffy answer?' someone asks.

Behind Heath, in his portable Central Office stage set which he takes around the country with him, are a series of concentric circles. Wilson loves these circjes. 'They show Heath in the middle,' he says, 'and outside everything is going round in circles. I've also heard it said that they represent a vortex, up into the middle of which Heath will disappear. shortly before polling day.'

It's not fair.