Parliament Aview from the bridge (3)

Wilfrid Sendall

'lr' my knapsack I have been carrying for some years two quotations and one anecdote, in much the manner, I am told, that prospectors carry basic equipment for assaying minerals. I use these as a test for sorting out Political personalities. The first quotation I acquired as a schoOluo. Y when, with sudden voracity, I devoured (in translation) the novels of Anatole France. ri the Revolt of the Angels he writes: "The rice most fatal to a statesman is virtue: it „eads to murder." He wrote The Gods Are A

thirst about Robespierre to make the pame Point

The second I have never seen in print. It Was related to me by Sir Morrice James, now Our High Commissioner in Australia, when we Were both subalterns in the Royal Marines. He !,old me that in his old age Lord Grey of r.alloden was asked if he could distil his poliical experience into a single phrase. After a little thought, he replied: "I would say: 'To ,o the right thing is, politically, quite often Lne right thing to do'." The anecdote was told me by Reginald Maudling of the days when Sir Winston i?mrchill led the Tory Party and he was a ackroom boy in the research department. Reggie was summoned by the Leader on the trit}rning of one of those majestic orations Which used to conclude Tory Party ennferences, He found him in bed, his spectacles on the end of his nose, the bed dniothered with pieces of paper.

" All, Mr Maudling, you are the very fellow. Hugh this afternoon to say this about "ugh Dalton." Here he read out a blistering Piece of diatribe. "But, sir," said Maudling, "you can't say that."

"And pray, who not?"

"Because it wouldn't be fair."

Winston took off his spectacles. "Young man," he said, "I have been in politics since before you were born. Have never been deterred from doing or saying anything by the consideration of whether or not it was fair."

Maudling retorted: "But the public won't think it's fair." Winston resumed his spectacles and tore up one of the pieces of paper.

"That," he said, "is a very different consideration."

These three bits of equipment are a marvellous help in classifying politicans.

Those who suffer from virtue, in the Anatole France sense, would react negatively to the other, for it would go without saying that anything they felt was convenient to them would also be not only right, but obviously fair.

Had they been born in the historical circumstances of the French Revolution, I could imagine both Stafford Cripps and Enoch Powell in Robespierre's role. I am not sure about Ted Heath. I feel he has some taint of that terrifying self-righteousness. Unlike Winston, he does try strenuously to be fair, but his frustration is that he cannot convince the public of it. For that, no doubt, he is blaming the public, not himself.

Harold Wilson's self-righteousness is not of this order. It could be that he has only a mild infection. I cannot detect in him that certainty of his own virtue that would steel him to send men to execution. But I doubt if Anthony Wedgwood Benn would hesitate for long. There can be isolated among politiciar s a rare condition of virtue, that which induces a man to go to execution himself rather than admit the possibility of his own error. Once, when discussing a possible anthology of great speeches from the scaffold, I told Michael Foot that he would make a fine speech from the scaffold, given the opportunity.

And so he would. I would gladly tramp out to Tyburn to listen to him.

The trouble about the Earl Grey maxim is that the judgement of rightness must be subjective. Attlee, I am sure, tried to follow it, and in his case it proved more often than not to be advantageous. In the case of Anthony Eden, it led him in the end to disaster. What would have been right in 1936 proved to be rather wrong in 1956.

Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson sought too assidiously for the right — in the sense of the clever, the advantageous — thing to do. Both became too involved in their own cleverness. It could have been Wilson's misfortune that he admired the other Harold so much and was so eager to eclipse him in what was probably not his finest quality — dexterity.

Neither of them possessed the remarkable talent of one whom both despised — Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Whatever Sir Alec did, the public was predisposed to believe that at least it was fair. This is still true of the Old Laird, and from time to time, when they contemplate Ted Heath, the Tories remember it.

However, I am beginning to think that the philosophy behind the Winston anecdote is fast becoming obsolete. It treated politics as a kind of huge schoolboy game, in which it was quite honourable to cheat a bit. It followed that, if you were found out, you owned up like a decent chap, as Winston did when a Labour MP quoted one of his 1911 speeches totally contradicting all his 1952 arguments against nationalising transport. With a broad grim, he said: "The hon. gentleman is correct. It is a good thing to be consistent. But it is even better to be right."

This approach — the 'politics is fun' attitude — was all very well when governments had relatively little power over the real, economic life of the nation. Nowadys, when everybody's living depends on what the Government does, it is not such fun. So maybe we shall be stuck with the Heath approach, which is as sober as befits the responsibilities of the Managing Director of United Kingdom Ltd. Mind you, the ' fun ' attitude was always qualified historically by a tacit understanding that, when something really serious arose, like war or the threat of it, the political protagonists stopped their nonsense and formed an instinctive consensus. This they called "raising the issue above party." Moreover, it had another considerable merit. It recognised the rules of the game and that the umpire's decision was not to be questioned, the umpire being the public, the electorate. However mortifying or unreasonable it was, if the umpire gave you 'out,' you were 'out.' Let us not under-estimate how important this is. We are conditioned to Prime Ministers who, grinning wryly, utter some cliche about the voice of the people as the furniture van ,pulls up outside 10 Downing Street. Because it always has been like this, it does not necessarily follow that it always will be, especially now politics is becoming more serious. Suppose you had one of Anatole France's men of virtue in the job. How could he possibly accept a hostile verdict? It would not be just an error, a folly: it would be a moral outrage which it was his sacred duty to prevent. So he would shoot the umpire — or enough of him to bring him to his senses.