Political Commentary
Warnings to Mrs Thatcher
Patrick Cosgrave
Whatever else is true about the referendum campaign, this is indisputably so: that the campaign was a triumph for Mr Heath and a considerable setback for Mrs Thatcher. This is not so just because Mrs Thatcher was, or appeared to be, somewhat quiescent in the cOurse of the campaign itself, not because there was or is any reason seriously to doubt her commitment to our membership of the Common Market. No: the setback she has suffered, while it has to some extent been her own fault, or the fault of the way she has been managing the leadership, has been much more clearly the result of circumstances beyond her control, and of the deliberate disloyalty of colleagues. It was always, of course, inevitable that whatever line Mrs Thatcher took on the EEC Mr Heath would be the most prominent Tory in the campaign line-up. Whatever his other faults and failures had been, he deserved some recognition for having .achieved his lifetime's dream, and a good deal of coverage in the defence of that achievement. By comparison Mrs Thatcher had little experience of foreign affairs, and less of the EEC. What, however; was expected only by those who have studied Mr Heath long and carefully came to pass — as one small part of a campaign of systematic disloyalty to the Leader who replaced him Mr Heath conducted his European battle without reference either to Mrs Thatcher or to the Conservative Party. And it was in the course of his efforts that one remarkable generalisation about the present Conservative parliamentary party became apparent; with certain notable exceptions — like Mr Norman St John-Stevas — the more devoted to the European cause a Tory is, the more likely he is to be hesitant in his loyalty to Mrs Thatcher,
Now, there are many complicated reasons why this should be so', and not all of them are bound up with the passion and devotion that is inherent in commitment to the European cause — a passion and devotion which regards anything less than itself in strength — like Mrs Thatcher's judgement on the EEC — as treason if not heresy. The principal such reason is the curious way in which Europeanism has come to be bound up with coalitionism. In White's bar currently, for example, a number of more or less distinguished Conservatives are to be heard consistently combining advocacy of coalition with disloyalty to their Leader; Mr Julian Amery has proclaimed the virtues of coalition from a public platform;' Mr Heath is about to preside over a revised and revived version of the moribund left wing Conservative organisation PEST with (it is said) Mr Ian Gilmour as his deputy, and this new PEST is to open talks with a similar about-to-be-founded Labour organisation, the Social Democratic Alliance. And all these activities grow, as Mr Prentice assures us, out of what has been learned in the course of the European campaign.
rwilr not dwell for long on the demerits of the coalition idea. Both Mrs Thatcher — most elegantly on the day after the referendum — and Sir Geoffrey Howe have pointed out forcefully that the so-called.Labour moderates, who might be willing to work with more or less unspecified Conservatives for the purpose of national salvation, are moderates in word only, and not at all in deed. Aside altogether from the fact that Mr Prentice and Mr Jenkins have accepted in Cabinet every one of the so-called extravagances of Mr Berm they, in their own particular areas of ministerial responsibility, have been quite as radical, quite as socialist, and quite as extreme, as has the former Lord Stansgate; and no one in this Labour Government has been remotely as extreme as Mr Prentice.
How is it then that the press — or some elements thereof — and the Heath wing of the Conservative Party can contemplate alliance with such people, if all Mrs Thatcher's and Sir Geoffrey's accusations against them are correct? The answer comes in two parts. First, most of those who remained loyal to Mr Heath to the end, and particularly those who were especially suspicious of Mrs Thatcher, have, as a result of the experiences of the Heath Government, come to the view that there can be no such thing as a successful Conservative government — Tory, that is, in deeds as well as in name. For some of them (like Mr Robert Carr, who produced a weekend statement on the economy so closely attuned to that of Mr Anthony Crosland that one might have thought them rehearsed together), of course, even Mr Heath's own policies of 1970 never held any appeal and they were actually relieved when events forced him to change course from the individualist to the corporate state. But the essence of their experience — and Mr Gilmour, though he is within the Shadow Cabinet, has repeated this again and again — teaches them that that the job of the Conservative Party, when it manages to gain office, is to administer the Socialist state it finds as best as it can, moderating its onward march to the left as decently and reasonably as it can. Hence, such people find it quite exceptionally easy, say, to forget Mr Prentice's extremism in education, because they have long accepted that socialist doctrines will prevail, and long accepted that there is nothing they can do about it: to them Mr St John-Stevas is the extremist lone voice, rather than Mr Prentice.
But there is a second reason for the willingness of those whom I have called the Heath Wing to be willing to contemplate alliance with people who should be their Opposites. Mr Heath himself was once, after all, a radical Tory, and he may even have the occasional twinge of remembrance of those days? he was not always, at any rate, -a man stuck in the rut of consensus. But his hatred, and the hatred of those closest to him, for Mrs Thatcher, knows no bounds. Some of his most devoted acolytes were last weekend urging him to contest the leadership against her this coming October, not only because they had forgotten the dangers and difficulties of such a proceeding in the wake of their euphoric European victory, but because their sheer inability to accept that Mr Heath was ever beaten — and to accept that he was beaten by Mrs Thatcher, of all people — has blinded them to all reality, and all honour.
Now, however understandable this attitude, and the behaviour consequent upon it, is, there can be no doubt of the debilitating effect it has on the Conservative Party and, especially, on the possibility of that party regaining power in its own right and with some prospect of enjoying a successful period of government. There is, of course, singularly little chance that, whatever blunders Mrs Thatcher had made, the Conservative backbenchers would, of their own volition, return Mr Heath to the leadership and themselves to the kind of regime which he imposed on them. But the existence of the continued threat, and of the constant sniping of Mr Heath's friends in the Commons tea room, White's bar, and the constituencies helps create confusion in the minds of many party activists, dismay among those who have hoped for a Conservative rival, and joy in the ranks of socialists. It is not, moreover, behaviour that the Conservative Party has ever tolerated towards a new leader; and the time is approaching when there will be a need for one of the party's elder statesmen to issue a rebuke on the subject. It has, however, been hard for Mrs Thatcher in recent weeks to outflank her enemies. There is still a considerable measure of uncertainty in the higher echelons of the party on the subject of policy. She was bound to be in the shadows rather than the limelight during the referendum campaign. The reorganisation of the party machine is far from complete and, even in quite minor matters of administration, Central Office is far from having recovered its pristine clan and efficiency. The establishment of her own private office is very far indeed from completion — indeed, she was 1}eard to remark wryly the other day that Mr Heath's private office, donated by the European movement, was much larger than her own. And she has — and this is her fault alone — allowed herself to be overburdened with work and engagements.
Nonetheless, the ability of those who are determined to destroy Mrs Thatcher has yet to be fully tested; as has her ability to resist them. From now until October she will have a much clearer run than hitherto, and many more opportunities to develop the kind of Conservative policy and rhetoric which brought her the leadership in the first place. Especially in the country she remains the most formidable orator that the party possesses, and it is on party platforms outside Westminster that she needs to begin the construction of a truly formidable power base. In attempting that task between now and the party conference she will still face some difficulties, of which uncertainty about policy and the hostility of some sections of the once-Conservative press are the most formidable.
But between now and the autumn I expect to .see Mrs Thatcher fighting back; and that is likely to be a remarkable political spectacle: and to end in overwhelming success.
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