Kissing Cousins
By 3. W. M. THOMPSON
THE transformation of Mr. Frank Cousins, so many people's favourite ogre and the bellow- ing irreconcilable of the Labour conference, into the mild, even diffident charmer of the Nuneaton doorsteps, is one of Mr. Wilson's most appealing achievements since he came to office. Mr. Cousins, at the age of sixty, is a novice candidate, and his trade union eminence and his high place in the government do not exempt him from the old round of handshakes, smiles, homely chat, and yet more handshakes, into which every humble politician must plunge himself.
The process is one of the more rewarding sights of Nuneaton. Mr. Cousins arrives outside his headquarters at the Miners' Office, parks his large and gleaming black Princess saloon with fond care, and then as he climbs out into the drab street he seems to slough off all the heavy burdens of the Ministry of Technology and of the Cabinet itself. In the act of compressing his long and bulky frame into the waiting Mini he seems to undergo a sort of personal reduction in scale, so that when he has been whisked off to one of the local housing estates for a spell of canvassing he has become completely the unassuming local candidate, happy to gossip with housewives about the need for a playground, endlessly solicitous about the health of the old folks, and bravely heedless of flapping washing as he calls out 'Hello, love' to break the ice with young matrons busy at their clothes-line. The professionals waiting at the gate may fret a little at his habit of letting a doorstep encounter drag on and on to the jeopardy of his schedule: the truth is that Mr. Cousins, startling thought though it may seem to quite a few employers up and down the country, reveals himself in this exercise to be rather endearingly shys and like many shy men he appears to find it difficult to end these con- versations once they have been launched. For all that, he is distinctly a success at this business.
That Mr. Cousins will duly win this election is not, of course, in doubt, for Mr. Frank Bowles, on his sudden ascent to the House of Lords, left behind him a watertight majority of 11,702, and nothing that either Mr. Cousins or his Tory and Liberal opponents do will be able to overcome that. But Mr. Cousins, when not actually elec-
tioneering,•generally gives the impression of being a proud man : he will not be content with any-
thing less than the unqualified 'vote of confi- dence' for which he appeals from his election platforms, and neither, clearly, will Mr. Wilson nor the Labour Government as a whole. It would be a poor day for the government if the Labour majority took a nasty knock. The Conservatives, for their part, desperately anxious to hasten that day of portent, have brought in a strong team of professional help from outside; they are work- ing hard on keeping their supporters steady and reclaiming as many as possible of the defectors of last October, and in Mr. David Marland they have a former candidate with a breezy, optimistic style admirably suited to these tasks.
The terrain for this small but intense con- frontation is a nondescript bit of Warwickshire, embracing coal-mines and farms, engineering works and textile factorieS, and housing a large number of men who work in industry in Coventry or even as far away as Birmingham, twenty-two miles distant. The Labour vote is sturdily trade unionist, and the Liberals have put up a shop steward, Mr. John Campbell, as their candidate.
The Liberal's place in this encounter is interesting. Mr. Campbell has fought a couple of elections here before, and his vote went up by 1,700 between 1959 and 1964. He need only col- lect a few thousand extra votes to pull up into second place: and if he were to achieve such a thing Liberals would feel that their party's prospects were suddenly distinctly brighter. Mr. Marland and all the other Tories, it must be said, scoff at any hint that such a reversal is possible, and Mr. Marland is most insistent that numbers of those who floated away from the Tories last year are now pledging themselves, even before Labour's Hundred Days are over, to return dis- enchanted to the fold. Well, he knows the people and the place: the prudent outsider, nevertheless, will enter the reservation that some sort of Liberal advance, in the present political fog, seems possible enough.
One wonders, for example, whether the con- fusion of the Tory Party over its leadership could not be a handicap. This is admitted readily enough by the Nuneaton Tories as a theoretical possibility : and Sir Alec, it is willingly con- ceded, is not 'the most saleable image' (not my phrase) in an area like theirs. But, they add at once, no one ever seems to raise this with the candidate or canvassers, and they reckon they can more than match any attacks on this score by attacks on the government's performance, contrasted with its general election promises.
Thus the Tory campaign, as exemplified in Mr. Marland's election address, is a direct appeal to disillusionment. In place of the usual beaming picture of the candidate on its front cover is the stark question: 'NOW can you trust them?' And inside is a weighty series of contrasts between 'promises' and 'actions,' e.g., 'No increase in taxation? . . . sixpence on income tax and six- pence on petrol'; 'Home ownership will be made easier? . . . Building society rates almost certain to go up'; 'No Stop-Go? ... 7 per cent Bank rate and a credit squeeze.' And much more of the same kind. It is an unusual document, a modest collector's piece of the politics of attack. It makes the equivalent paper from Mr. Cousins look mild. Some voters may ask, after glancing at M'r. Cousins's address: Has nothing happened, then, since last October? Are we still at the stage of worthy aspirations and noble,, but vaguely- sketched, objectives? If they read on, they will see some references to various items of dynamic action ('work has started on a fair and just in- comes policy,' for instance, and 'My own Ministry of Technology has made a determined start'). But the essence of the contest might be said to be: whether the voters are to look back in anger to- wards October 15, 1964, or forward with high hopes to—October 15, 1964. They will, no doubt, settle in sufficient num- bers for the latter course. Indeed, when a fore- gone conclusion such as this has to be considered, it is tempting to think rather more about the consequences that will follow the inevitable result. One watches Mr. Cousins the candidate but one thinks of Mr. Cousins on the Govern- ment Front Bench. He is manifestly a man armed with great energy and determination, he gives the impression of passionate feelings strain- ing for expression, he can also be sunnily charm- ing. If, as one gathers, he sees his role at the Ministry largely as that of a propagandist, per- suading and bestirring and energising industry into accepting the future, he may easily prove to be one of Mr. Wilson's most effective ministers. If only his speeches were a little more lucid and a little less in the wordiest trade union tradition 1 After his jolting, shapeless oration in the Nuneaton Co-op Hall it seemed that one had been listening to the speech of a strange, spectral figure, compounded of Ernest Bevin, President Eisenhower, Peter Sellers impersonating a mili- tant unionist, and—could it be? Mr. Cousins would never forgive the thought—the Ramsay MacDonald of those impenetrable later years.
The applause, it should be added, was loud and long. In the House of Commons the audience will not be so unanimously predisposed to cheer.
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