Political commentary
As good as a wink
Ferdinand Mount
Mr Heath is a regular attender at the House of Commons. He may not vote as often as some, but during questions and the opening speeches, there he usually is, in the corner seat on the front row below the gangway that divides the placemen from the waifs and strays. You cannot overlook him any more than you could overlook the White Tornado man who used to irrupt into suburban homes. He gleams silver and tan amid the sombre worsted; the power of his personality vibrates in the stale air. In fact, it is this very magnetism which forces upon your attention his brooding resentment, his lack Of occupation, his political deflation. He stares at the wilderness of Left-wing ranters and malcontents opposite him with a glacial melancholy, his head prevented as though by some surgical means from turning fortyfive degrees to the right to contemplate the frightful spectacle of That Woman a mere five or six feet away.
Yet sometimes you are conscious of some indefinable filling-up process having taken place inside him, as though a long way down a ration of spirit had been pumped into an empty tank, some slight relief afforded to the aching void left by the loss of power. The process is scarcely visible at surface level — or at least was until the controversial episode of The Wink. The facts are still in dispute.
At all events, Mrs Thatcher was having a difficult quarter of an hour with the Prime Minister at question time and was struggling, not very successfully, to fight back under a barrage of jeers from the Labour benches. According to the resourceful Simon Hoggart of the Guardian, Mr Dennis Skinner, one of the leading barrackers, shouted across; `She's having a rough afternoon, isn't she, Ted?' To Mr Skinner's astonishment and that of Mr Russell Kerr sitting beside him, Mr Heath smiled and definitely gave the two of them a huge, meaningful wink. Other sources confirm the smile but not the wink. My own impression was of some kind of twitch or rictus possibly suggesting nictation, but observation was handicapped by the fact that the wink, if wink it was, was given by the left eye, the far side, and so would not have registered on the Press Gallery's Trinder scale (used on all British nictatometers, although the Metrication Board plans that we should convert to the somewhat less exact Chevalier Scale in the mid-1980s). .
Only a couple of days later, once again Mr Heath's manner suggested some inner reflation. Once again, a smile hovered. Had he perhaps purchased a splendid new sloop or pinnace? Had he given the definitive performance of some Chopin Etude? Had he lunched well? The subject of the debate — the government's blacklist — seemed unlikely to generate such high spirits. It was not until dusk that the explanation of his bienseance emerged on the tapes. Ted was enjoying the deep, deep peace of one who has put the boot in.
Again, the circumstances were a little odd. Mr Heath was being lunched by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising who had asked him to speak about A Tory View of Advertising, which he did, with special reference to the abolition of re-sale price maintenance, the writing of bestsellers, the fight for commercial television, the three-day week and others of his finest hours.
Questions followed. Mr Heath defended his economic policy. Then came an• indistinct question filtered through a beard at the back of the hall, the only decipherable word of which was 'pussy
footing'. Revealingly, Mr Heath immediately took this to be a criticism of the 197074 administration (although the questioner later explained that he was referring to pre sent party advertising) and embarked on a further defence of his record. He defended
his conduct of the February 1974 election. He defended his reforms of local government and of the National Health Service. And finally he defended the 1971 Immigration Act.
His criticism of Mrs Thatcher was impatient and unmistakable. It was the first time that I can recall that his attack was directed at the actual words she spoke rather than to any trend which she might be supposed to represent.
Friends of Mr Heath suggest that it is his passionate loathing of racialism that led him to speak out in this way. They point to his anti-fascist past, his sacking of Mr Powell from the Shadow Cabinet, his steadfast holding to the commitment to accept the Asians from Uganda. All admirable but not exactly unique either in politicians or others. For Powellites who still protest that their master has been traduced, I can only recommend a re-reading of the Bir mingham speech of April 20, 1968—excreta through the letterbox, wide-grinning piccaninnies, Tiber foaming with much blood and all; it was and is inexcusable. There is simply no comparison between this nasty stuff and Mrs Thatcher's inept and illbriefed but morally harmless venture. It is after all precisely for fear of being 'swamped' that successive governments have passed a series of acts and set up ever-growing bureaucracies to control immigration. Swamping is what it is all about. And Mr Heath's 1971 Immigration or Anti
swamping Act was no more and no les,s racial n its intention than Rab Butlers 1962 Act or Jim Callaghan's 1968 Act. What really annoys Mr Heath is not the incoherence or racialism of Mrs Thatcher 5 proposals but the fact that she dares to Of any proposals at all. Indeed she compounds her offence. Not merely does she fail to acknowledge that the 1971 Act represents the be-all and end-all of immigration control, she claims that the subject has not had proper public discussion. In Mr Heath's eyes that Act is only one wing of a huge national monument — the record of the 1970 Administration of whiehd he feels himself to be the beleaguered an isolated custodian. While former colleagues, trample heedlessly onward in pursuit en fame and power, he painstakingly rescues each forgotten fragment and reconstructs the once splendid edifice for the benefit of interested passers-by, while Mr Peter Walker takes the tickets. The indignation which this provokes among Tory backbenchers can hardly be imagined. Their aggrievedness all the greater because the incident haPPells in a week in which Mrs Thatcher has rens' serted herself in the Parliamentary tussle and forced Mr Callaghan to come up With the old dodge of suggesting an all-party con: ference on immigration, the political ecliw valent of 'holding' in boxing. Mr Heath hils also taken some of the shine off the lateSt National Opinion Poll in the Daily Mad which shows a Tory lead of eleven per cent. Politicians ought by now to have learnt to take the ups and downs of the polls with a certain serenity. After all, as recently as December, NOP showed Labour ahead bY eight per cent. This remarkable finding Was not published in the Mail, although it Wos circulated to subscribers in the usual we* Hmmm.
Nothing unusual about that, snYs the affable Mr John Barter who Inas' terminds these things, they take a stat,e, of-the-parties poll most weeks and the eigo' per cent one seemed 'a bit out of line' with other findings and could not be related tO any particular political development; their doubts were confirmed by the return of th,e parties to more or less level peggings in their next poll (January — Labour two per ant ahead). But might not the eleven per eellt, Tory lead in February be similarly out o' line? Ah, but you see, there's Mrs Thatcher's broadcast to account for that. Post hanc, ergo propter hanc, ergo Hmmm again. I feel that Mr Barter's ruing might not have approved of all this picking, and choosing. You must eat what's Pit' before you, Master John. Mr Heath may indeed have weakened the electorate's confidence in the Tories' Woe; ity to govern, but he has certainly weaken° his own jealously fostered reputation for, statesmanship. Malice and the rewriting.tn history are the traditional solace of politicians out of office. In Mr Heath's case, these pastimes have until now borne the more dignified aspect of anger and vision. l'Invy the dignity seems to have gone.
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