VIEWPOINT

What about the people ?

GEORGE GALE

We tend to be smugly proud of our two- party system. Indeed it works tolerably most of the time, and virtually all of the time if the object of politics be defined (and there are many worse definitions) as the indefinite postponement of violent revolution. If the political system we happen to tolerate, if not to enjoy, is such that politicians are kept reminded of the public's fickleness and the public is kept content with periodic oppor- tunities to change its rulers, then that tolerable if not enjoyable system will, in fact, suffice. From time to time they, our rulers, must pay some heed to us, the ruled. The two-party system makes it relatively easy for us to change our bosses, provided they and we stick to the conventional rules.

This system is not particularly democratic ; but then there has never been much demand from the public or the politicians that we should seek to inhabit the wilder shores of democracy. The system also presumes that when the country is divided, that division will be reflected, however distorted the reflection ay appear, in partisan hostility. When the ountry is divided on matters of economic serest, which is the usual division, the two- arty system works particularly well.

The system presumes also, of course, .eneral doctrinal agreement between the wo main parties. There will be a lot of itualistic shadow-boxing, and this may per- aps be best compared with those splendid omfool television displays we are provided ith by natural history chaps with zoom nses, of insects and such sparring up to ch other before they mate: sound and fury ignifying if not nothing then not much.

In this metaphor, which I confess to be a far-fetched, a general election is to be garded as the culmination of the courtship rocedure of insects. I exclude—so far, since e have avoided revolution—those insects ke, I believe, the praying mantis, the female f which, after mating, eats its mate. Like- Ise, it is revolutions, not two-party systems, hich bury their dead.

Now then. Here in Britain we certainly ve doctrinal agreement. Neither party is motely revolutionary. Both parties promote e mixed economy. Both parties reject Nsez-faire and communist theories. Both rues promote governmental intervention advance the interests of young, old, halt d lame. Both parties are constitutionally ne prepared to take turn and turn about running the enterprise.

In foreign affairs, both parties have sought peaceful demolition of empire, have per- tted the run-down in our overseas military rdens, have upheld NATO and the American section, and have shared a general dis- • le for all totalitarian regimes, which • taste has normally fallen well short of on, he public has shown itself to be generally tent with this general bi-partisan agree- nt which is the base of any two-party tern. Elections have been about which nch of men are to run the economy and taxes. So long as the economy and taxa- are the principal subjects of party debate also the,•principat concert:L.0f the•elec-

torate then no man can consider himself seriously disfranchised.

But if an issue of major concern to the people of this country should arise, on which the people were divided but the parties were agreed, then it could come about that many people and quite possibly the majority of people in the country could find themselves, in effect, without the vote. At such times, the parties' leaders normally argue that they possess superior wisdom, either moral or technical, and proceed to ignore the brute prejudices of the majority. However, and particularly when a general election is im- minent, the temptations upon a party which fears defeat to heed the majority's voice are most sweet and most beguiling.

For a reason which escapes me, it is con- sidered disreputable for a politician to listen to the voice of the majority ; instead, it is presumed that he is morally obliged to instruct that majority as to its errors. Hang- ing is an issue where the politicians of both

parties have chosen to heed their consciences rather than their voters. Immigration is an issue where the politicians have wobbled, and consciences have deferred to the voice of demos. What, we may legitimately ask, is now happening with respect to the Common Market? The party leaderships are in accord.

Polls indicate increasing public hostility. Those people, who may well now be the majority of people in this country, who have no desire that Britain should adhere to the Treaty of Rome, are at the moment dis- franchised. As the election gets nearer, the temptation might well become quite irresistible upon whichever party most fears to lose that election, to give the anti- marketeers the vote.

Mr Enoch Powell is blazing the trail. If the recent history of immigration controls provides any lesson, neither Mr Wilson nor Mr Heath will discover in his conscience any insuperable barrier against listening to what the people say. Nor, indeed, do I my- self think it to be invariably disreputable to heed the popular voice.

I do not suppose that the Bishop of Stepney converted many souls as a consequence of his lengthy yak with the Member for Wolver- hampton South on television last Sunday. Father Huddleston struck me as a muddled sort of fellow unable or unwilling to grasp the central assertions of Enoch Powell that 'I cannot as a politician assume that that which will happen as the Kingdom comes is happening or has happened' and that as a politician his duty was to heed human nature as we know it and not as presented in Christ.

But what really made me take note was when Father Huddleston, declaring his own confidence that Britain could happily absorb a coloured minority of ten million by the end of the century, added 'It would at least bring some fresh blood into a tired old country.'

The Preamble to the Reich Law concern- ing Hereditary Homesteads, promulgated in September 1933, begins: 'The Reich Cabinet desire to preserve the peasantry as the source which keeps the blood of the German people vigorous . . . '

Hitler, and Rosenberg, his theorist, wished to restore vigour to what they regarded as the enfeebled, or 'tired', blood of the Ger- mans. That Hitler proposed that blue-eyed fair-haired 'aryans' should improve the German stock, whereas Huddleston appar- ently recommends the admixture of the blood of brown-eyed and dark-skinned 'coloureds' to invigorate this 'tired old country', strikes me as symptomatic of a change in fashion rather than of argument.

The notion that all blood is red but that some is more vigorous than other, is offen- sive. About the only respect in which black and white men are equal in the world as it has happened and is happening (other than in the sight of God, Christians may argue) is in the redness of their blood. Spilled. I might add, it everywhere dries the same dirty brown.