Notebook
Blackpool He sits upon the platform, on it but not of it. There is seldom any expression to be discerned passing across his face. He broods over the conference like a sullen Cloud. Mainly he sits sideways and his Prow-like face points diagonally across the hall at its farthest corner where no-one is to be recognised, no eye caught. What on earth is going on inside that burnished, fleshy head, beneath that trendy, silver thatch? When the conference started and they sang a hymn, the television cameras deliberately focussed upon him at the line Lo, the hosts of evil round us...'. Does he believe himself to be surrounded by evil and folly, does he think himself to be the only Pure and sane man? Edward Heath seems to become more, not less, of an enigma as the years pass. I spoke with a Tory who had acted as his general dogs-body and baggageaster at a general election some years ago: I was with him for three weeks on end, day and night, and at the end of it I knew him 40 better that at the beginning', he said. 'I on't think he knows himself,' I remarked. That's it,' the Tory said, 'He doesn't know "ho he is.' Lord Hailsham put it differentIY, more concretely, better: `No one can know him. You can't talk to him. He Shakes his head when he agrees with you. He shakes his head and shoulders laughing, when he disagrees.' This week, I have found my eyes and thoughts persistently returning to Heath, the man who demanded loYalty and cannot give it, the disciplinarian Who now mutinies, the U-turner who now requires that Thatcher dance the same motions, the Selsdon victor of 1970 who now repudiates his own victory and insists he Was right when he was the loser of 1974.
The Selsdon Group have cruelly reprinted an excerpt from Heath's 1970 tilanifesto and swamped the conference hall With the words which helped to carry him a,ricl the Tory Party to his famous victory: Once a decision is made, once a policy is !stablished, the Prime Minister and his colI,eagues should have the courage to stick to Nothing has done Britain more harm in tille world than the endless backing and fillbIlg which we have seen in recent years....'. allsham defended Heath's recent int.erventions. 'He has so much spleen, but he !s entitled to have his say.' Why?' I asked, tie had his turn. He ruled us for four Years . What more could he ask? He had a ,oetter crack of the whip than you had.' OdcfllY and nobly, Hailsham continued to de51d Heath, Quintin the bell-ringer who "Ight himself have had his turn, who deserved it more and might have used it better.
We were talking in the train up to Blackpool. The Lord Chancellor is a marvellous man, a great relic of civilised politics, of artful conversation, of irrepressible fun. We talked of the Social , Democrats. 'Shirley Williams,' I said 'is very attractive electorally. Everbody seems to like her.' Yes,' he said, 'They do. She's dowdy, that's what it is. They like their women politicians dowdy. Not like Margaret, with her smart hair-dos. The Social Democrats: good over 100 yards. I've seen it all before. Mind you, it might be different this time.' 'You mean, they might keep on running'. 'They might keep on running.'
(-lea Parkinson, the Tory Party's new NI,—,chairman, did not, I thought, get off to a particularly good start. The official conference handbook still has Lord Thorneycroft as chairman. Parkinson lacks Thorneycroft's casual authority and at Monday evening's press conference he was very ready to defer to Edward Du Cann. He was altogether too solemn in officially denying to Robin Day that there was no dirty tricks department. He was not particularly convincing when he said he'd been down to Croydon where 'the vote is holding up well and I believe we can win.' His speech on Monday was poor and flat, although he got a standing ovation for it. I noted only two sentences from it: 'It would be awful if we looked like the Labour Party' and, 'selling ourselves is of the essence.' Both sentiments could, I felt, have been better put.
It is quite extraordinary, and really pretty disgraceful when you come to think about it, that Tuesday's conference debate on Northern Ireland was the first the party has had for five years. Jim Prior skated delicately around a resolution which asked for a new forum in Ulster and protested a shade, I thought, too much that, `no concessions have been made to the IRA and there will be no perpetration of anything which looks like concessions to those who commit violence. The end of the hunger strike allows us to search for peace and stability.. .let me make it absolutely plain. There were no deals, there will be no political status.. .there has been no question of gestures of goodwill towards the IRA.' All right, all right, we heard you, Jim.
T enjoyed the contribution of Roger Evans from Arley who said 'this is a bloody, barbarous and un-British dispute' and compared Northern Ireland with AlsaceLorraine and the Saar, and suggested redrawing the frontier by plebiscite. Once, anything which, however slightly, questioned the wisdom of the union would have been howled down by the Conservative and Unionist Party. Not any longer. Now, Jim Prior can tell the party that the British people 'expect the people of Northern Ireland to seek to get on with each other, to get on with their close neighbours in the Republic, to get on with the job of healing and reconstruction.' The sooner the British dimension of the Irish problem is admitted into discussion of the province's future the better. I look forward to a Prior initiative.
'M ymother,' Hailsham recalled, 'came from Nashville, Tennessee and try as she would she couldn't obliterate her accent. Just like Margaret. Just like Ted. Oh he's worse. You can always tell. "Brown cow." You can tell. Whenever my mother got really excited she'd come out with "aw shucks", from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm sure Margaret once had a strong Lincolnshire accent. My son has a seat there. They all speak in a horrible way. She must have done so. Sitting on her accent makes her strident.' But she's taken good care,' I said 'quite apart from her accent, to lower her pitch, the tone of her voice.' Artificial silks kept popping in to say, 'good afternoon, Lord Chancellor, good afternoon'. He wears black lace-up boots and thick hand-knitted grey wool socks and now uses two sticks to help him along. 'My joints are all nuts and bolts,' he complains. 'What do you think of Ted's European fence?' he asks and answers , 'all wrong. All wrong, nothing in it.' He has to make a speech tonight. He has to get back to sit on the Woolsack tomorrow, he has to go to Washington to make a speech about Cornwallis where the French will all be boasting. 'Ha bloody ha,' he laughs aloud, as full of mischief as an imp. 'Oh judging,' he sighs. 'I wish I could do more judging. That's what I like. That's what I really like.' He gets slowly to his feet. 'Too many nuts and bolts. Too many nuts and bolts.' And bright as a bird's are his eyes.
George Gale
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