Brighton Commentary
The Muffin Man
‘V E ought to have a television, I suppose, said a woman in the hotel lounge, 'in order to know what the ordinary person is think- ing.' Apart from the wildly surrealist notion that you can discover what the 'ordinary person' (or anybody else, for that matter) is thinking by watching television, it would have been difficult to find anyone more thoroughly ordinary, in every way, than the speaker; her clothes were ordinary, her voice was ordinary, her hair was ordinary, her husband was ordinary. Yet she clearly regarded herself as something special, set off in some way from those people whose views are so readily ascertainable from a glance at the goggle-box. Need I add that on her lapel there nestled the round, white label that Proclaimed her a delegate (they are called representatives, actually) to the Tory Party Conference? Nor was she alone, if I can yet trust my five senses. From the moment the conference began (the principal difference between the Labour and Tory con- ferences, I have decided, has nothing to do with politics; it is that for the former the organist wears a white jacket and plays the delegates in with Tea for Two, while for the latter he wears a black jacket and strikes up Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven) the odour of complacency wafted up like stale Chanel Number Five. What acres of tosh was written, before Mrs. Walter Elliot rose (beneath as ludicrous a hat as I have ever seen outside West End intimate revue) to declare the proceedings open, about the fierce mixture of anger, frustration, bewilderment and despair that strove and bubbled in the delegates' breasts! As a matter of fact, you would have had to go to Jersey to find so many placid ruminatives in one place; apart from the lunatic fringe of Little-Englanders, Beaverbrookians, gadsirs, lees-bash-Mr.-Cousinsists and a lady who stood outside the hall in even the most inclement weather carrying a banner saying 'Abolish the banks,' the only criticism of the platform from beginning to end was in the sphere of party publicity and propaganda, and even there Mr. Oliver Poole (and how came he so clever all of a sudden, may I ask?) was constrained to point out that no propaganda can make an unpopular policy popular.
Of course, it is a truism to say that the two conferences fulfil different purposes. The Labour Party meets to decide on, or at least to approve, its policy; the Tory convention is an annual don't- eat-your-bun-till-the-Vicar-tells-you outing. This is an oversimplification, it is true, as Mr. Robert Mackenzie has been at pains to point out; but by and large the Tories go to their annual con- ference to gaze on the great ones (and even tread on their wives' feet at the conference ball), to be filled with the old familiar juice, to be uplifted and occasionally to uplift. There was no anger, frustration, bewilderment or despair that I could see; there was just a smooth, solid smugness, an instinctive feeling that Mr. Macmillan would not let them lose the election, and that even if he would then the Lord God Jehovah would not. By the end of the conference, as we shall see, the mood had subtly changed; the feeling at the end was that whatever Mr. Macmillan and Jehovah might do, they, the four thousand chosen ones, were going to have to pull their weight if Mr. Gaitskell, and Bolshevism, and ruin, and the Consummation of All Things, was to be avoided.
Whence came this bracing spirit? At the be- ginning of the conference it was clear that they could not have fought their way out of a paper bag; by the end—only three days later—even Taper would not have given you six to five for a Labour majority higher than eighty. Ipswich may knock the wind out of them with a rush, of course; but it cannot alter the fact that they went home with a new spring in their step and a hectic flush on their cheeks, and I dare say that even my would-be televiewer was talking less about finding out what the ordinary person was thinking and more about going and getting him to vote Conservative.
Of course, some of the speeches from the platform helped. Though Fluellen Thorneycroft (it is said that Pistol Wilson is still snarling, 'Tell him I'll knock his leak about his pate upon St. David's Day') was as flabby and unconvincing as I have heard him, which is saying quite a lot, and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, despite his astounding achieve- ment in making a whole speech without once mentioning Suez, went a long way towards re- storing my wavering contempt for democracy, there was undeniably some good stuff. Mr. Macleod was in tremendous form, serious and clamant at the same time. Mr. Simon was excel- lent. As for Mr. Boyd-Carpenter (was I alone in savouring the peremptory gesture with which, as he rose to speak, he waved away the proffered lectern and indicated that he had no need of such things as notes, let alone a typescript?), he could not actually announce that the old-age pension was to be increased, along ,with the contributions that pay for it, as this would have been unconsti- tutional; but he made it clear enough for even Crossbencher to have no excuse for missing the point. What is more, Spring-heeled Jack's speech contained more than an announcement; it in- eluded a chillingly thorough mincing of the Labour Party scheme, a sound mixture of bolt ness and caution on the long-term problem. 80 Mr. Boyd-Carpenter's familiar portable footsto°/' which he carts about with him wherever he Pei to facilitate the climbing of the ladder of Pr°° gress. The rungs of this ladder, by the by Pre° sented much material for speculation. Mrs. provided a running key to one view of it by 116 tiresome but helpful habit of announcing the names of everybody on the platform three 0r10 times a day. Equipped with the patent 1314 applause-meter (consisting of two ears join( d t(:" gether by a head), I kept a chart of the apilaus each platform-personality received at each stage in the proceedings. First time round, before of them had contributed to the conference. certa things were clear. Nostalgia paid its due to 1 Llacif Fred with the warmest applause of the merniei and good political sense its due to Sir David , with the coolest. (My growing suspicion ti9 there is no such person as Lord Gosforc strengthened; when he was called, ut applauded, and Mrs. Elliot, pointing him oat' directed the conference's attention to an erre chair. Besides, I have never met anybody w ho has ever heard of him.) Apart from Uncle Fred. tilc greatest meed of approval was that wonb V ! 1°r' Macleod; Mr. Sandys was farther down the list than I would have expected. After they had beeli in action there were several changes. Mr. Mac' leod, for instance, had increased his lead ov4l Mr. Sandys, Mr. Watkinson was nowhere, Thorneycroft Thorneycroft had slipped back a place or Mr. Selwyn Lloyd had gone up a place or 013' But towering above them all, well ahead of Nit' Macleod and even Uncle Fred, was the nolli° man himself. The spectacular rise of Lord Hailsham IS,I suppose, the most significant fact of the code(' ence. When it began he was just the new !rile 3t Central Office, and the only thing the repre!en0; tives knew about him was that his socks elide.1 match, to which was presently added the intelly gence that his muffler and overcoat had aPPat‘ ently been found in a field just outside Basing! lol'es' where they had been indignantly abandoned bY$ not particularly self-respecting scarecrow. next aspect of Lord Hailsham to which Bright° was introduced was his belly, and before hreal'' fast at that. (You will not hear any more of subject from me; there are some themes el° corrode the ink in even Taper's pen.) The bingo! —Lord Hailsham had taken charge. 14! speech to the Conservative Political Centre Thursday evening was the only topic of conver° tion at breakfast on Friday; and well it might be' It was a dazzling piece of work, no less. I ali4 I can sum up my own opinion of it fairly stic. cinctly, for instance, by saying that if Mr. Mee; millan could think like this he would be a g°°v Prime Minister. More and more there stands from this oration the bitter truth of Grimond's remark : 'What a commentary on tile Conservative Party that they should take se able a man from the Ministry of Education and him in charge of their party machine.' Incited' would go farther; what a commentary oil society that so able a man, with so fine a rill° should have been convinced that his duty ICY le take part in the threadbare game of party politi° And, my goodness me, but didn't the Minister show up badly beside him ! We can dis- miss all this preposterous talk about Lords re- form being dropped because Mr. Macmillan is frightened of being supplanted by Lord Hailsham If the latter should get back into the Commons; but unless Mr. Macmillan is a rather more saintly Person than anything I know about him leads me to suppose, the green-eyed monster must have been troubling his dreams on Saturday night. For It Is the very things that Mr. Macmillan does badly that Lord Hailsham does so well. To begin With, he looks, and sounds, enthusiastic; Mr. Macmillan makes me think more and more of Mr. Timothy Shy's description of someone whose eyes gleamed like long-dead oysters in a tub of dough.' Then, when Lord Hailsham strikes a ges- ture it is fresh, free and frank; the Prime Minis- ter's are so tired and ridiculous that they would get him flung out of a theatrical company headed by Sir Donald Wolfit. Lord Hailsham's wit, when he turns it on the Labour Party, is sharp enough to wound; Mr. Macmillan's is scarcely sharp enough to open a tin of sardines. Lord Hailsham's allusions clearly spring from the range of his learning and understanding; Mr. Macmillan's give every sign of having been found in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and not very long before the speech was due to begin, either. In Short, Lord Hailsham is a splendid fellow and raper loves him, and Mr. Macmillan is not and Taper doesn't; and I began to see the point of Lord Hailsham's remark to the effect that 'only a fool would want to be Prime Minister.'
And there is every sign that the Tories are going to waste the greatest asset they have. I do not refer to Taper's love, but to the possibility of dividing the responsibility for leadership in such a fashion as to make the best use of all their resources. With Lord Hailsham to ring the bell a suspect that if the Prime Minister had thought of that master-stroke he would have passed the thing to somebody else to ring for him) in every sense of the word—for it would be the profoundest mis- conception to imagine that Lord Hailsham is nothing but a Tory tub-thumper; he is also that sorely-needed figure, a Tory philosopher—and Mr. Macmillan to run the country in a somewhat More sensible fashion than he.has been running It hitherto, the bell might indeed ring for victory. but if Mr. Macmillan goes on trotting in Lord Hailsham's wake as a second-hand Elijah, people --nasty people like me, anyway—will begin to Point out that he gets £10,000 a year and a Pleasant house in SW I for being Prime Minister, and wonder just what they are getting for the money.
Meanwhile; the Tory Party rose to Lord Hailsham as they rose to nobody else. Lord Hailsham, in fact, is the Frankie-boy of the Con- servatives, little though he may like the compari- son; he is the unorthodox, different leader in Whom the rank and file can suddenly recognise their hopes and their desires. And oh! the joy, the pure, refined, flavoursome joy of the moment When Mr. Butler's' telegram, which Mrs. Elliot had barely started to read, was drowned in the rear of cheers for his Lordship, who had chosen that precise moment to enter. To see the biter bit is a laudable human ambition, and deeply satis- fYing when achieved; but is it not finer yet, think You, to see the carter carted?
TAPER
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