SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
I've been struck by the hint of sourness which has tinged the celebration of the votes for women jubilee. In one sense the phenomenon is familiar: some cause or other generates an emotional crusade; battles are bravely fought and ultimately won; then comes the reaction when the world is seen to be different, maybe, but still conspicuously defective. Some of the heiresses of the suffragettes, however, seem more positively disenchanted than this pattern would account for. The fact is that an awful lot of women regard their political emancipa- tion as something of a frost. It didn't need recent essays in scepticism by women journa- lists (one of them even appeared prominently in the Guardian, of all papers) to reveal this: it's a matter of common observation. If it's any consolation, the periods following the passing of the Reform Bills saw comparable disappoint- ment among male electors. The vote is a shining symbol but its tangible benefits are less obvious. So far as I can judge, what these dis- illusioned feminists are kicking against has nothing much to do with the franchise, any- how; their complaints are really about the lot of the modern urban toiler, with all its restric- tions and stresses. I've seen it argued that it was political emancipation which led women to this particular treadmill. It wasn't, though; it was the evolution of the economy, and could well have happened without female suffrage. French women, after all, didn't vote until after the last war.
I looked in at the Ives exhibition an 'Work- ing Women in Public and Political Life.' As I examined the ageing photographs and posters, the voice of Christabel Pankhurst was coming off a tape-recorder, piercing as a hatpin. I don't suppose she foresaw that it was women's work, not their share in 'public and political life,' that was going to matter most, fifty years later.
Labour's love lost
The words `intellectual' and left-wing' have been roughly synonymous in the public mind for a long time now. The equation began to take shape in the 1920s, gained conviction in the 1930s, and had its greatest impact in the elections of 1964 and 1966, which saw the vic- tory of the view that Labour was the party of intellect and of knowledge, with the Tories merely the party of obscurantism and preju- dice. The subsequent spectacle of a Labour government falling down time and time again precisely because of its intellectual failures is, no doubt, the major cause of present dis- illusionments. Historians will one day have a happy time charting this thwarted love affair. Meanwhile, I see Tibor Szamuely has con- tributed a long essay on the subject to the Tory quarterly Swinton Journal, in which he argues, with characteristic pugnacity, that it is really an historical aberration, that the highest achievement of British (and American) political thought throughout the centuries has been the 'conservative tradition,' from Hobbes onwards; and that there is now evidence of a return to this by the intellectual community.
I should have thought, at this stage in the game at least, that the evidence of divorce from Labour was much greater than the evi- dence of any new allianck with the Conserva- tives. It's normal for a party to gain votes through the mishaps of its opponents : a strenuous effort of the imagination, however, is required to conceive of the present-day Con- servative party becoming the natural habitat of the intellectual elite. My own growing belief is that this role will be won—if at all—by a party which can successfuly reassert the im- portance of standards, in the intellectual and every other sphere. No party is at present in sight of this, and all succumb to the itch to be trendy. It is, of course, a political task of the first magnitude, although it may grow easier if the general discontent leads in that direction. Just how difficult it is was briefly indicated by the fate of a stillborn Tory campaign a couple of years ago to popularise something called 'Ole pursuit of excellence.' It hit the electorate with all the zest of a wet fish on the back of the neck.
A footnote on this question of standards: I see that Tuesday's Guardian reported that, as a way of blocking the introduction of prescrip- tion charges, 'some progressive GPS are plan- ning to register all their patients as "chronic sick."' The word 'progressive' has been used to mean almost anything under the sun by now, but this may well be the first time it has actually become a synonym for 'dishonest.'
To the north
Sir Gerald Nabarro predicted this week that the Scottish Nationalists would win a string of seats at the next general election. I take a certain relish, I confess, in the thought of the commotion such an invasion would cause at Westminster. But even if it doesn't quite hap- pen, it is pretty clear that something will be done before long to try to meet the sense of grievance which they represent. David Steel, the liberal MP, has just published his plan for short- term improvements in the government of Scotland: one of his jollier ideas is to introduce fortnightly meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee of suss in Edinburgh. This so-called Grand Committee is in reality a bit of a joke, meeting only about half a dozen times a year and then not to any marked effect; it isn't even exclusively Scottish, in fact, since some English Tories regularly have to be included to pre- serve the party balance existing in the House. (It's said the Tory chief whip threatens diffi- cult backbenchers with appointment to this body if they don't mend their ways.) Making it meet frequently, in Scotland, would most probably expose its dimness even more cruelly to Scottish eyes. Which, presumably, is what Mr Steel would like, since he is in favour of a separate Parliament for Scotland anyhow.
Sentence
Justice is no doubt not only blind but over- worked. Perhaps this explains the occasional court decisions which produce a twinge of dis- belief or dismay when they are reported. The other day an old man not long out of prison ordered himself an excellent meal at the Ritz and had no money to pay the £6 8s bill at the end of it. He was sent to prison for three months: he is seventy-seven years old.
At this rate of punishment, a train robber who made off with a million pounds would be sentenced to prison for more than 40,000 years.
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