Political Commentary
Pollyanna and the Tories
patrick cosgrave
Every connoisseur of sentimental fiction will recall Pollyanna's " glad game," from the novel of the same name by Eleanor H. Porter (which has just been brilliantly serialised on BBC television). It tells of the adventures of a little orphan girl who comes to stay with her unbending aunt and meets a chilly. unloving reception. Pollyanna, however, has a policy for every misfortune met in life — the " glad game " — and she succeeds in converting all arqund her — including practically the entire population of a small New England town — to the game, not merely as a pastime, but as a way of life. The game has only one rule: when anything bad happens, find something in the circumstances to be glad about. Thus, for purposes of illustration, if one is ill, one must not be sorry for being ill, but glad because all one's friends will come to visit and bring nice things. And, if one has no friends, then one can still be glad, because it will give one time to read, or draw, or whatever. And if one cannot. . . but there is no need to go on. The Tory Party has been playing the glad game since about three o'clock last Friday morning, when they heard that Mr Tim Sainsbury had lost a mere fourteen or so thousand votes of their 1970 majority in Hove. The utter and complete destruction of the Labour Party in the by-election, the easy victory of Mr Fletcher in Edinburgh North, the narrow squeak in Berwick — all these were things to be glad about. The displeasing facts that Berwick was lost, and that Hove — one of about two dozen supposedly utterly safe Tory seats — came fairly close to being lost, could thus be forgotten in gladness. Now, one doesn't want to take away from the Tories their right to relief, or their happiness at Labour's discomfiture — and one must remember that, through the playing of the glad game everything came out right for Pollyanna and her friends in the end — but it just does not do to become complacent, or even very happy, about a situation in which the despised third party takes more than thirty-seven per cent of the vote in Hove and nearly forty per cent in Berwick, and in which the combined protest vote — of Nationalists and Liberals — in Edinburgh North would have been nearly enough to overturn the Conservative victory. On figures like that the Liberal Party and ,those northern allies towards whom Mr Thorpe is now directing his blandishments could form the biggest grouping in the next Parliament.
I don't actually think that is going to happen, however. But there have been one or two things about the Tories in the last few weeks, and one or two things about their tactics, worth noting. First come the interesting reports of the two polling companies who asked questions of voters leaving polling stations at Hove and Berwick on Thursday. Aside from their figures, both sets of pollsters told their employers that the Tories had done especially well in the morning, while the Liberals had been strong in the evening. Now, a good Tory machine polls well all day; but it has always been particularly strong in the evening. Had the Berwick effort been stronger in that way, the Tories might well have taken the seat. Then, too, that interesting BBC film shown on Thursday night — Assault on Hove, concentrating mainly on the egregious.Mr Wilson's effort — showed all manner of Liberal re-canvassing methods during the campaign itself, and made clear the fact that the Tories were not embarking on the same kind of effort. The
reporter was wrong, however, to suggest that sophisticated re-canvassing is a new invention of Jones the Vote. Tory machines have been expert at it for years: are they flagging?
I should say here that I was roundly chastised by my friend Alan Watkins on the wireless the other day, for suggesting that machines at local level had much to do with electoral success. In that view he was, of course, following the general conclusion of the Nuffield school, and particularly of the regular general election books produced by Dr David Butler and various colleagues. All I can say is that nobody who has organised a campaign, even at ward level (as I have), can doubt for a moment the difference made by a good machine (particularly in a tight contest).
There is no substitute for skilled canvassers and a well-oiled machine; and. the fact that so many Tory canvassers nowadays feel shy about approaching the electorate, and that many Tory spokesmen (laudably, no doubt) concentrate on national issues in byelection campaigns, is something to which Central Office must needs pay heed. And there is a bit more on this question. In Govan the Labour Party' membership had shrunk below all recent figures. I would not for a moment suggest that the tactics of Mr Ron Wallis in Hove — simply to concentrate on getting known Labour voters out, and hoping that the other two would kill one another off — were wise. But, in Govan, an entrenched Labour machine, rivalry within which had long been prevented by emasculation, went down to disaster. Nor is this the first time in this parliament when a local Labour Party has itself destroyed the chances of victory of the party, first Iv seeking only its own perpetuation, and second by concentrating on itself and its own navel to the exclusion of the interests of constituents: Lincoln was an even more dramatic example. Tory locals do not, of course, behave quite ; like that; and they are far more responsive to Central Office. But there may well be slack in
that rope too. This is particularly so if, as has been suggested, the Tory canvassing effort 15 slacking because the ground of communitY politics has been ceded to the Liberals. TheY have no monopoly over it. Three MPs, Mr Erie Heffer, of Liverpool Walton, Mr Enoch Powell; of Wolverhampton South-West, and M Teddy Taylor, of Glasgow Cathcart (a Tarr held Labour seat if ever there was one) hawe all at various times told me they feared ns Liberal challenge on community politic! grounds — because they each did their job 01 looking after their constituents. CertainlY' while all about were losing their heads to the Liberals in Liverpool during the last set ef local elections, not one ward fell in Mr Heffer's domain. The other thing that strikes me about Tod tactics is the emphasis and savage detail 01 their attacks on the Liberals, and their seem' ing conspiracy with Labour to pretend ' that the third party are outsiders — which. emphatically, they no longer are. On television, again, on the night of the by-elee. tions Mr Alick Buchanan-Smith and Mr TonY Benn (a shrunken figure now he has lost his hyphen) seemed willing to join together te , outflank Mr Grimond. At the same time senior Tory spokesman after senior Toil spokesman assails Mr Thorpe's merry na They have recently had the attention of Sir Alec Douglas-Home himself, and of the Tell Chief Whip, Mr Francis Pym. One hesitates te say that such attacks ought not to be under' taken, by senior front benchers of either the Labour or the Conservative Party, since their matter is so obviously true. But it strikes me as bad tactics all the same. It is the Liberals for whom the people are voting, and to savage them suggests one is scarecL-Fer better to wait for the press and radio and television to recover their critical instincts, — and try to understand what the Liberals stand lie — for. nd Mr Heath and his colleagues might do Well to take a leaf from the book Mr Wilson wrote in his heyday. It was he, we may recall, Wb° made Mr Jeremy Thorpe a Privy Councillor, an act which drove Mr Heath and the Tories to distraction. Mr Wilson's tease in those deYs was to pretend to treat the Tories and the Liberals as equal opposition parties, to bend his ear to the cadaverous Mr Thorpe as oftell as he leant it to the plumper Mr Heath, and generally to suggest that neither he nor his ministers got down on the floor to scramble with the children. Mr Heath might be better advised to treat Mr Thorpe exactly as he treats Mr Wilson (actually, he ought to treat 'both of them with more courtesy than he does, but he is an impatient man), for the Liberal Party,, save in so far as it is an alternative to everybody, is essentially an alternstive to the left.
In this analysis at -least the Tories, Pollyanna-like or not, are correct; and Mr Thorpe was also correct to proclaim 51t Southport that it was Labour his minuscule (as yet) legions were determined to rept The Liberals attract few rock-hard Labour and few rock-hard Tory votes. Such of the ink idle of the road voters of goodwill, starry-eYed folk in the main, whom they attract at bYelections, probably come in roughly eatial proportions from the occasional partisan! ; of both the other parties. But they have a Or better chance of keeping the Labour-inclined • than the Tory-inclined come a general elec" tion. People who incline, in our Mild parliamentary democracy, to the left are bY nature optimistic, those who lean to the right. pessimistic. The latter are satisfied with less' and do not for long go a-whoring after strange gods. If the Tories are reasonably LIP f to the mark in governmental success, and i they repair their machine, they have everY hope of greeting thousands of prodigal sons and daughters come election time, Much les! loct wsoeeLka.b. our, about whom I shall write n
Previous page
