POLITICS
The reason why the Conservative Party needs lesbian street theatres
NOEL MALCOLM
Journalists are the drama critics in the theatre of politics; it is, of course, for purely aesthetic reasons that they scruti- nise the political parties so carefully for splits, rows and divisions. Protagonist, antagonist, that sort of thing — you can't have a decent play without them. Tory conferences can often seem like the drearier Greek tragedies, which consist almost entirely of a chorus agreeing with whatever is said on stage. No wonder, then, that such efforts are made to search for dissension among the dramatis perso- nae. The split between 'consolidators' and 'progressivists' looked like a promising theme, but now seems bound to fizzle out as quickly as it arose. 'Consolidating' would, in any case, be an odd word to use to describe a newly-elected government which suddenly refused to carry out the pledges in its manifesto. As I came out of the conference hall last Friday I found myself murmuring the mystic chorus from Goethe's Faust, 'Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan' (roughly translated: 'The lady says we have to go on and on').
The real division within the Conserva- tive Party is undramatic, but nevertheless profound. In fact the Tories are far more deeply divided than the Labour Party in their fundamental attitudes to the nature of government and society. But this division is a well kept secret — so well kept that most Conservatives are probably unaware of its existence. Just occasionally a little crack opens at the surface, and it becomes possible momentarily to peer into the abyss.
Last week's debate on Sunday trading was a classic example of this: a Cinderella debate which suddenly filled the hall with the sound of squabbling ugly sisters. On one side there were the enforcers of Christian values, whether churchwardens from the shires or borh-again believers from the polytechnics, together with the worshippers of that powerful divinity, the Family. On the other side were the free- marketeers and radical reformers, whether spotty young men with degrees in econo- mics or plain-speaking folk such as Mrs Pulford, the Leicestershire housewife who accused the churches of operating a protec- tionist racket. To uphold the traditional English Sunday is, she declared, 'against everything we as Conservatives hold dear. It perpetuates protectionism and acts against the free market.' All over the country, old-fashioned Conservatives sit- ting in front of their television sets must have felt an uneasy urge to check what exactly it was that they had been holding dear all this time, like people in a crowd who reach nervously for their wallets when they hear that there is a pickpocket about. The real division here is not between progressivists and consolidators, or drys and wets, or Young Turks and old fogeys. It is between those who think that it is not the business of government to interfere in people's lives by imposing moral, cultural and religious values on them, and those who think that's just what government is for. 'Libertarian' is a good label for one side of the argument; 'moral majority' is a cumbersome phrase for the people on the other side, so I shall coin the word `mora- litarian' to describe them, which is ugly but pleasingly symmetrical. Libertarians can be found in both think-tanks and taxi- ranks. Moralitarians include both the patri- cian and the prudish, both grandees and Mrs Grundys. In many cases the libertar- ians seem more hard-hearted and extreme while the moralitarians appear old- fashioned and 'caring'. But it is not really a question of hard Right versus soft. On an issue such as censorship, for example, the liberations are 'soft' in the sense of permis- sive, regarding government interference as intrinsically wrong; the moralitarians, on the other hand, have no objection in principle to censorship, which they think of as a natural extension by government of what culture and society can and should do all the time.
Both sides of this argument can agree on many things, of course, and the common ground was well trampled during last week's debates. They could all unite in attacking the excesses of municipal social- ism: libertarians denounced it for imposing its doctrinaire values on people's lives, and moralitarians denounced it for imposing the wrong doctrines and undermining the traditional values. Never has a party's unity depended so much on the existence of a common object of hatred. Scanning the rows of delegates, I looked at the earnest undergraduates from St Andrews and the grannies doing their knitting (one up-market granny was actually doing a tapestry kit) and wondered how many of them had ever come within 50 miles of a racism awareness course or a lesbian street theatre. It is just as well that the deep-sea monsters of the loony Left do exist, some- where out there, so that the delegates can feel a collective shiver down their spines when mariners return with their strange tales from Brent and Haringey. Otherwise the grannies and undergrads might take a closer look at one another, and begin to find the political creeds of some of their fellow-Tories ever so slightly monstrous.
The question of how government can instil values into society is central to Mrs Thatcher's plans for her third term. 'Our most important task', she announced, 'is to raise the quality of education', and when she explained what she meant by this she spoke not of illiteracy and ignorance but of 'extremist teachers' and 'anti-racist mathematics'! Mr Baker had also de- nounced 'the flourishing of anti-family, anti-police and anti-competitive values in schools'. It is easy to agree that left-wing indoctrination in schools is a bad thing; but there is a difference between thinking that indoctrination is a bad thing in itself, and thinking that children should be indoctrin- ated with a different set of values instead.
Morality will not, however, figure along- side maths, science and English in the core curriculum. Children will not be tested at regular intervals on their proficiency in keeping promises or putting sweet- wrappers in litter-bins. Mr Baker did guarantee last week that religious educa- tion would remain obligatory, as in the 1944 Act; but this was a revealing bit of terminological inexactitude, since what the Act requires is not religious 'education' but religious 'instruction'. Butler was talking about instructing people in Christian doc- trines; Baker is talking about what 'RE' has turned into in most schools, namely projects in comparative religion and ex- tracts from Bertrand Russell.
If schools succeed in teaching moral values nowadays, they do so only by means of 'ethos', example and other intangibles. When parents are given more choice, the responsible ones will no doubt vote for ethos with their feet. But the parents who supply no ethos at home will not make much effort to look for it in the classroom. Before Conservatives argue about whether it is right to impose values through the statute book and the textbook, they should first consider whether it is possible. On this issue, where much of the population is concerned, 'What's to stop us?' may have to give way to, 'Can't be done'.
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