POLITICAL COMMENTARY

What about the workers?

DAVID WALDER

A nice little clutch of by-elections gathered together into a mini-election provides very good entertainment, especially for those who at this time of year can sit back with a warm- ing drink and watch the results on the box.

Unfortunately, this time, with the Bridgwater and South Ayrshire polling days separated by a week in time I feel deprived, as if the two Chief Whips concerned had somehow let me down. On reflection however they may be right. The two con- stituencies, three hundred miles apart, as some hardy amphibious crow might fly, scarcely provide much of the stuff of com- parison. Or for that matter of drama.

Ayrshire may still prove me wrong, but it is doubtful if Labour's previous majority of twelve thousand will be diminished to the ex- tent that the late Emrys Hughes will be succeeded by a Tory—or, for that matter, a Scottish Nationalist, although that party's voting pull is unpredictable. By-elections have a way of dredging up all sorts of atavistic voting urges and many a swithering Scot may still plunge for the illusory simplicity of what d'Annunzio called 'think- ing with one's blood'.

Although, therefore, the Scottish result is that bit more interesting, pride of place has already gone to Bridgwater in the psephologists' almanac as the first con- stituency in which the candidate's political affiliations have appeared on the ballot paper and the first to fight on a register which includes the eighteen to twenty-one year olds.

The first change, although perfectly sensi- ble and long overdue, is hardly likely to have great pith and moment in the future. Even in Wales, where occasionally the ballot papers look like extracts from the telephone direc- tory with groups of Joneses and Davieses, they seem to be able to sort them out on the day. The over-eighteen vote is more in- teresting, not so much for its real effect as for the attitudes of the political parties towards it. Not officially, you understand, for naturally all stoutly maintain in public that youth, like all good things such as truth and beauty, must be on their side.

Nevertheless the party workers in the con- stituencies hug to their bosoms some private hopes and fears.

Tories are still a trifle apprehensive, plagued at times with visions of bearded or Vietnamese head-banded hordes, primed with pot, voting blindly against even the most mildly right-wing candidate. Labour

stalwarts feel, however, that perhaps Roy

Jenkins's remark about the civilised society will have been well received and see the same persons, sated with permissive sex, stagger- ing in to vote for their national benefactors. Liberals, with justice but no regard for the lessons of history, hope for something out of gratitude as the only party which actually advocated votes at eighteen in their election manifesto in 1966.

In fact none of these things will come to pass. The 'flappers' vote' for wqfnen under thirty had none of the frivolous effects feared by serious political men after 1928. The unrepresentative handful of youthful anarchists are indifferent to anything as democratic as a vote and will doubtless prefer, unregistered, to shout, sit down or break and enter. An activity even as minimally literate as putting a cross on a bit of paper is not their scene.

If research is possible into the voting habits of the newly enfranchised it would, I suspect, reveal once again the somewhat unexciting operation of heredity and en- vironment. The child (of whatever age) who votes contrary to his parents' habit is still the exception.

To me what is still the most interesting factor in by-elections (and general elections for that matter) is not the new but the old. It is the phenomenon that we accept almost without question, because it is so much part of the background. Yet it is still very remarkable—all those people with rival rosettes canvassing, manning committee rooms and driving about with their fields of vision severely reduced by sticky labels. They are sometimes described, collectively and inaccurately, as 'the party machine', but of course they are not. They are all volun- teers, unpaid and working in their spare time. 'The party machine', Tory, Labour or Liberal, is one harassed agent, at by-elections even more harassed by other agents drafted in from neighbouring constituencies.

Of the party workers the interesting ques- tions can be summed up as who? how? and why? Unfortunately no one seems to have bothered to find the answer. The only time the spotlight switches to the party workers is when, untypically, there is some sort of row brewing, as at Islington, Worthing, Clapham or Surbiton. There has been a great deal of research into voters, but little into vote- getters, or 'party activists', as they are begin- ning to be called in America. Of course they vote too, save when they forget on the day, being fully occupied in getting others to do so. (Which happens, as I well know, more often than you might think.) Really, the first harsh question about their activities is, as Jeremy Bentham would have put it, 'what is the use of it?' And it is almost impossible to answer. The Liberal canvassers in Netherford West are out because the

'Sanctions already beginning 10 bite, I see.'

Labour canvassers are out and they are there because the Tories—and so on in a circle.

The competition principle is strong. There is hardly a candidate who has not been told at some stage that one of his opponents is using a loudspeaker from an elephant's back and shouldn't he ring up Harrods' zoo depart- ment and see what they have left.

It would be interesting to have a con- trolled experiment—a sort of canvassing truce and see what effect it had on the size of the poll. That possibility, however, is about as likely as the successful outcome of disarma- ment negotiations—and for exactly the same reasons. Even if a government, or private member, introduced a Street Offences (Can- vassing) Bill and it became law, we would only see, on a familiar analogy, the task of persuasion driven underground. There would be telephone calls, clandestine assignations and perhaps advertisements outside seedy newsagents shops—'Liberal lady wishes to meet ...' etc.

Anyhow it would be unwarrantably cruel to deprive even Tories in the Rhondda and Socialists in Surrey and Liberals nearly everywhere of a little healthy political ac- tivity. Perhaps a more practical line of in- vestigation would concern itself with the workers themselves, for even if canvassing were forbidden by law, their other activities —money raising, discussion groups and the rest—would continue.

Strangely, the social composition between the main parties does not differ as widely as class-obsessed sociologists and cartoonists would have us believe. Horny-handed sons of toil do not trudge the streets for working class Harold nor do directors of fifty com- panies glide about in discreetly bedecked Rolls-Royces for the sake of private en- terprise. Liberals, Tories and Socialists would nearly all seem to be our old friends the middle class, not driven on by any particularly direct self-interest, and fre- quently occupied with a variety of non- political charitable and social tasks as well.

Nor are local political associations full of ambitious persons anxious or willing them- selves to enter Parliament. Consequently the desire often expressed for a 'local man' when candidates are selected is rarely satisfied. Nor do associations seem to want to use the powers they undoubtedly possess. For instance, in the Tory party there always seems to be a majority of women over men, certainly they do the largest share of the wor,k. Nevertheless (or perhaps because of it) they choose fewer women as candidates than the Labour party does. Maybe the answer, irritating as it might sound to Dames Joan Vickers and Pat Hornsby-Smith, is that to get more women into Parliament local Tories should recruit more men to make tea.

Periodically each party launches a drive for subscribers and the hope is always that from those recruited a proportion, and it is always small, can be encouraged to participate more actively than through their pockets. Unfortunately no one knows how it is done. The Labour party's recent un- promising invitation by advertisement, 'no pay, hard work and no thanks' seems to have brought in a whole advertising agency. Perhaps the very audacity of the thing caught them unawares.

I myself was committed to politics twenty years ago in absentia by a powerful aunt.

Canvassed, she said 'my nephew will come along and do some work', and he did. That, however, although true, seems to be no sort of answer to give to some serious young researcher from the Department of Politics at the University of Strathclyde.