Manifestoes
Heath's old promises
Patrick Cosgrave
It has long been a commonplace judgement on the present Government that it is lacking in the capacity for — even, perhaps, in the will to — communicate. And the failure implicit in that judgement has usually been traced to the Prime Minister's own lack of command over words. We have — most of us — felt that communication between governors and governed is important and, had it existed, might have resolved some of the difficulties that government has come up against. Likewise, we have — most of us — felt that this communication gap was a problem that could itself be resolved by an application of will on the part of the Prime Minister. Of course that is not true: if a man is inarticulate he will remain so, whatever he wants to do; and however much rhetorical cosmeticry is available to him. Mr Heath's slogan has for some time been "Action not words "; and he has tried to live up to it.
Mr Heath is above all else a realist in terms of his appreciation of his own strengths and weaknesses. Having said all that it remains to be seen whether there is not still a point of valid criticism, in the realms of communication and information, to be made of the Heath Government.
I believe that there is. The point arises, not out of the lack of grace and fellowfeeling of the Prime Minister — which influences colleagues more politically gregarious by nature than himself — but out of his failure simply to give the nation information. Take an example. When RollsRoyce went to the wall the Government had a perfectly good case for the nationalising action it took. That case was not explained by the Prime Minister, in a public speech to the nation, until several days after the myth that the Government had made a fool of itself, by adopting subventionist economic doctrines supposed to be unpalatable to it had taken hold. When the Prime Minister did explain 'his ease he did so in a clear, logical, quite tinrhetorical, but totally convincing way. I asked a colleague of his why that speech had not been made earlier; and was told that Mr Heath's diary was too full to allow for a speech — on however important a subject — before the date on which it was given. That inability to overcome the dictates of a diary was graceless, tiresome and disheartening. But, more important than the fact that the public was denied the emotional gratification of a Prime Minister justifying his policy was the fact that they were denied him explaining that Policy: they were denied information about the reason behind the Government's policy to which they had a right.
I do not use the word " right " because of any analysis I have made of what Should be due to a citizen in our modern rn. eritocratic democracy. I use it because it is a right which Mr Heath himself once promised us. It was part of his manifesto, and, as we know only too well, he is especially fond of the activity of ticking off manifesto promises kept, thus supporting the philosophy of action, not ' words. In that remarkable political document — the preface to the Conservative Manifesto of 1970 — Mr Heath wrote: I want to see a fresh approach to the taking of decisions. The Government should seek the best advice and listen carefully to it. It should not rush into decisions, it should use up-to-date techniques for assessing the situation, it should be deliberate and thorough. And in coming to its decisions it must always recognise that its responsibility is to the people, and all the people, of this country.
No man ever wholly fulfills his ambition. And, while it would be easy to guy the Prime Minister for his failure always to live up to the deliberative promise of that paragraph, it would be silly so to do: he has certainly tried. In the last sentence of the paragraph there is, however, a clearly elitist statement: it is said there that a Heath Government would be ultimately responsible to the country — say, at an election — but not intermediately so. Here is no charter for participation; rather, the reverse.
What, then, happens between the time when the Government starts to brood on a problem, and the time it announces its decision? What treatment is the ordinary citizen entitled to during that gestatory period? There was another undertaking given in the Manifesto:
We will eliminate unnecessary secrecy concerning the workings of the Government, and we will review the operation of the Official Secrets Act so that government is more open and more accountable to the public.
It is true that, under the pressure of the judgement given in the Sunday Telegraph and Jonathan Aitken case, an inquiry into the workings of the Official Secrets Act has been undertaken. But nothing else whatever has been done to make the workings of government more open to public scrutiny. On the other hand, in the House of Lords, the Government resisted yet again proposals for amending the European Communities Bill so as to make more information about the workings of the communities available to legislators and public alike. While the Bill was on its way through the Commons there was an, albeit tenuous, logic to such resistance, for ministers claimed that, under the guise of such amendments, anti-marketeers were trying to wreck the Bill. Certainly no such defence was available to Lady Tweedsmuir when resisting the proposals of Lords Shackleton and Beswick this week, for, as the terms of their amendment made quite clear, neither was trying to overthrow the principle of the Bill itself: they were merely attempting to ensure an adequate flow of information for the future.
Perhaps the only proposal — and it was in the nature of a hint rather than a proposal — for altering the system of communication between Government and the public was that recently given an airing by Peter Jay in the Times. Mr Jay reported his understanding that the Prime Minister was considering the introduction of large scale press conferences, on the model of General de Gaulle, as the primary means
of putting out Government thinking and reasoning on matters of national policy. If this system was adopted, the report ran, the Parliamentary lobby of journalists would be abolished, and the Prime Minister himself put decisively and immediately in touch with a large national audience. Of course none of that reasoning had any validity, for the press conference as an information distributing interest — as opposed to a propagandist exercise — is, at this level, virtually useless. What was more interesting was the reasoning which, according to Mr Jay, lay behind this new governmental idea. It was to the effect that ministers, and the Prime Minister particularly, felt that the existing media and means of communication were given an insufficiently clear and straightforward picture of what the Government was about, and from what motives and reasoning they were proceeding. In other words, the Government felt it was losing the publicity battle; and wanted to change the rules of the game in its own favour. There was nothing here by way of evidence of an honest desire for more open government rather, there was the reverse.
Despite the often considerable faults of the press and other media in this country we do, on the whole, possess a remarkably sophisticated and relatively honest instrument of interpreting politicians to people. Of course that instrument has not merely faults but a spotty record as, for example, o.n the Common Market issue, when the better part of the press banded together to ensure that the marketeers had the better of the case. If any Government cannot use this instrument effectively, and bear with its criticisms of that Government, then it is the Prime Minister and ministers of the Government, rather than the reporters and critics of television, radio and the press, who should shoulder the blame.
We shall, in the next year or so, see very considerable changes in the political life of Britain, the most important of which may well be a decisive shift in the character and distribution of political power. Departments will get bigger, and stronger relative to the legislature. A new and incalculable source of power will affect us from its base on the Continent. Even within our own governmental structure we are likely to see, if not a Department of State responsible directly to the Prime Minister, at least a very much more powerful executive designed to serve him, and designed to redress the balance of power between himself and the Civil Service. This last development I regard as wholly good — as I wrote the other week — and long overdue. But it will make a difference in power; and it will therefore make a difference to the kind of relations the Prime Minister and his government have with the public at large. Open government, honest argument, and plain dealing will become ever more important, not just for the sake of a politician seeking reelection, and discovering that the electorate will not return him if they feel he has been ignoring them; but for the sake of the democratic process itself. It is high time Mr Heath delivered on that promise about a more open and more consultative style of Government.
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