Mr Heath lets himself go
POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH
In the cold air of an English February it is very hard to see how Vietnam could ever become a major issue in British politics. If our interests are involved at all, which is arguable, the in- volvement is at many removes, and we are already being protected to the best of its ability by the greatest power on earth. Only inside the Palace of Westminster, where a huge central heating plant is ready to burn midnight oil in unlimited quantities at the taxpayers' expense, can one begin to understand how important it is to strike the right attitude.
On the Conservative side, Mr Biggs-Davison has suggested that we send a 'small highly trained British contingent of volunteers to fight alongside our Australian and New Zealand fellow subjects.' Mr Donnelly (who has not yet
formality applied for the Conservative whip) is More generous than that, and suggests we should send a division, and on one occasion Admiral Morgan Giles, speaking, as it hap- pened, from the Conservative front bench, suggested that we should send a naval detach- ment: but everyone now agrees that this was a slip of the tongue as far as official Conservative policy is concerned.
On the left, nobody has suggested military assistance to the Vietcong, at least in public. And so the question remains one of the right attitude to take in conversation.
Mr Heath's Early Day Motion pledging support for the Americans was interpreted by many as no more than a gambit to reveal deep splits inside the Labour party—what Mr Wilson denounces as 'playing politics with Vietnam.' Sure enough, an anti-American amendment immediately attracted 108 Labour signatures, including those of a large number of Labour loyalists who do not belong to the left. This was partly because the amendment was cleverly worded, calling upon the Prime Minister to act in accordance with the resolution carried at the last Labour conference, but partly also because there has been a significant. shift of opinion inside the centre of the Labour party. As the disagreeable aspects of war are increasingly brought home, the only respectable attitude for non-belligerents seems to be a militant pacifism; moreover, those who claim knowledge of American psychology are increasingly worried that American reverses will drive the country into the use of nuclear weapons.
Mr Wilson's position is more complicated. Having dissociated himself from an earlier phase of the bombing of North Vietnam, he now appears to have reassociated himself as the bombing continues and grows in intensity from day to day, but threatens to dissociate himself again if the Americans resort to tactical nuclear weapons. If that doesn't stop them, nothing will. But there can be no doubt that Mr Wilson was speaking for the greater part of his party in his Washington speech, and possibly for a large part of the Conservative party as well. There is an uneasy feeling in all segments of the political spectrum that a nuclear fireworks display in the Far East might be prejudicial to essential British interests, as well as an affront to our moral influence.
But the feeling does not appear to be shared by Mr Heath. Perhaps encouraged- by the fact - that his Early Day Motion had attracted some
160 Conservative signatures, he strongly attacked Mr Wilson's support of the American position for its half-heartedness. Since the Prime Minister's only serious hesitation had been over nuclear weapons, one might almost suppose that Mr Heath was prepared to go all the way with LBJ in this matter, too. But, of course„ he was implying nothing of the sort, and if asked point- blank whether he would support the use of tactical nuclear weapons, he would certainly have demurred.
If the Americans are going to lose the war and be driven into the sea. as Mr Enoch Powell has publicly argued. the question still remains as to what we stand to gain by saying so. Mr Powell, whose signature on Mr Heath's Early Day Motion must be regarded as a bow to convention, rather than an expression of politi- cal conviction, would probably counter this by asking what is the best advice to a friend whom one sees to be set on a disaster course. But Mr Nicholas Ridley, a keen critic, like Mr Powell, of the Government's earlier East of Suez policy, justifies his signature on the motion by pointing out that if the Americans are so ill- advised as to undertake a hopeless commitment of this sort, there is nothing to be gained by failing to stand by them, at any rate morally.
Perhaps this is how Mr Heath himself justi- fies his Harrogate speech in his lonely moments. Mr Wilson, whose capacity for self-delusion is almost unbounded, has succeeded in convincing himself that This advice can have a restraining influence on President Johnson, just as he has convinced himself that the Russians would like to see a peaceful settlement in Vietnam and that the gulf between the contestants is a small one. Neither Mr Heath nor Mr Wilson is capable of wondering whether the whole affair might be none of his business. But whereas Mr Wilson succeeded in producing a formula which satisfies nearly everyone in his party—and in this con- text I must make it plain that Mr Wilson is not playing Vietnam for party advantage, but in the deepest sincerity of his self-important nature —Mr Heath produced a formula which quite gratuitously offended several highly articulate members of his party, including a number of the old anti-East of Suez group which was at one time thought to comprise about fifty members. It is scarcely surprising that when Mr Heath added insult to injury at Harrogate, young activists on the Tory back benches started mooting a contrary resolution. All this might have been calculated to give poor Mr William Whitelaw, the Conservative Chief Whip, a heart attack, and was extremely thoughtless of the leader, especially when one thinks of the con- tortions he has allowed over Rhodesia.
But the further one inquires into Mr Heath's behaviour, the less it seems likely to have been prompted by any political considerations at all. One would like to think that he had been con- verted to Mao's short-lived policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom, a hundred schools of thought contend, and that by taking a provo- cative line on a subject of very small interest to the electorate at large, he hoped to stimulate debate inside the dialectically flaccid ranks of Conservatism. But his sharp reaction to sugges- tions of a conflicting Tory amendment, and the methods he employed to secure signatures for his own Early Day Motion, all point in the opposite direction --he really wanted the Conservative party to show a united front.
The number of signatures is impressive. It would be tempting to make a list of Members who did not sign, and draw significant con- clusions from that, but unfortunately there are many Conservative Members—some of the most admirable among them -who avoid signing anything on principle. I know of only one mem- ber who refused to sign, although I could name a further half-dozen or so who would have refused on grounds of their disagreement with it, had they been asked. Shadow Cabinet signa- tures were collected in a most unusual manner: there was no discussion of a Vietnam motion at Wednesday's routine meeting of the Shadow Cabinet; instead, Willie Whitelaw approached members individually in private afterwards and asked them if they could bring themselves to sign without any possibility of alteration or amendment. They all did -even Sir Alec Douglas-Home who was in Africa by the time the motion was announced.
If one were dealing with the Labour party here, one would see all this as a calculated gambit by Mr Heath to isolate the Powellite school from the main body of Conservative right-wingers an answer, perhaps, to Mr Powell's dramatic pronouncement on immigra- tion. Of course, the Conservative party is not like that, and Mr Heath, for all his qualities, is no Machiavelli. On the evidence available, there can be little doubt that he was only concerned to create an impression of unanimity.
To what purpose? Perhaps our American and South Korean allies took heart, along with our Australian and New Zealand fellow subjects and South Vietnamese friends. Certainly, Mr Heath was profoundly impressed by Mr Lee Kuan Yew during his recent visit here, and may not have noticed how that wily gentleman is far more concerned with his own internal racial problem between the Malays and Chinese, with the Tunku and with the behaviour of Indonesia, than he is with the outcome of the Vietnamese war. Recently, the leader of the Conser- vative party has been displaying, under the tutelage of Mr Malcolm MacDonald. almost as obsessive an interest in South-East Asia as he has long had in the continent of Europe. If his affirmation of stronger, warmer, louder support for the Americans satisfied any need, it was an emotional one. Leaders of political parties are only human, like everyone else, and require the occasional outlet for their feelings. Perhaps that is really what Early Day Motions are for.
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