PERSONAL COLUMN

Speaking for the nation

LEONARD BEATON

We received this article through the post from Mr Beaton immediately after he died from. a heart attack in Venice. He had hoped to resume a regular commentary on the Common Market for the 'Spectator' in July. The journalistic and academic words are alike impov4 erished by his untimely death. The following article is the last he wrote.

Now that Mr Heath has launched the Con- servative party on the road to European union, it seems likely that some politician will choose to emerge as the distinct and recognised symbol of national survival. The man who can do it (as Hugh Gaitskell did with his Brighton speech in the same cir- cumstances in 1962) will inevitably gain a political position of immense influence.

Only one Conservative of importance has yet decided to make his stand for the nation rather than the union. He is, of course, Mr Enoch Powell. Like many of the possible Labour candidates for the role, he carries with him a history of European unionism which is difficult to pass off. Mr Powell was a member of the Cabinet in the period in 1962 when the government became more or less irrevocably committed to entry into the EEC—incidentally with none of the terms for the Commonwealth, EFTA and British agriculture which it had made a condition of a successful negotiation.

Mr Powell and Mr Crossman are the two politicians who have so far attempted to rid themselves of such a legacy. Mr Crossman has argued that in 1967 the Cabinet did not commit itself to entry: and Mr Powell could have taken the same position over the Mac- millan government which moved forward under cover of a commitment merely to see what terms were available. The difficulty about this defence is that it depends on the indefensible argument that everything turns on the terms of entry. One of the distinguish- ing features of Mr Powell's position is that he has shown this up for the nonsense it is. The tactics used for changing sides are important because the man who emerges as the national leader cannot be open to the charge of opportunism. There would appear to be three possibilities: to announce that you were once ignorant but now understand the issue; to announce a conversion; or to say that the Common Market has changed. The third is in many ways the least con-

vincing but it is the one that Mr Powell has chosen for his defence. On the whole, he is believed—not because anyone really thinks the EEC is toying with the prospect of a full economic union for the first time but because most major politicians (apart from Mr Heath and Mr Jenkins) would be believed if they announced that they had no stomach for the United States of Europe.

There are, nevertheless, basic difficulties for Mr Powell. The extent and bitterness of the opposition to him on other grounds need not be emphasised. He also has his idio- syncratic dislike of the overseas British— American and Commonwealth alike—which limits the national appeal he can make to the question of independence. This is, of course, the decisive issue: but the British people are accustomed to seeing a place for them- selves in the world and the English-speaking world has the twin advantages of being emotionally very familiar and actually extremely important.

Mr Reginald Maudling is in the useful position of having remained loyal to his colleagues while never having shown any serious interest in European union, if he chose to, he could undoubtedly take a con- vincing stand for national independence. But one cannot imagine him taking a stand. The most likely role for him (as for a sceptic like Lord Carrington) would be to lead an orderly retreat once it is seen that the romantic imagination of Mr Heath has taken the party and the country into an untenable position.

On the Labour side, there is a powerful group of people who have remained faithful to Gaitskell through the period in which Mr Wilson delivered the party into the hands of the Foreign Office and the Americans. Mr Jay, Mrs Castle, Mr Crossman, Mr Shore, Mr Peart: but in spite of the warlike qualities of Mr Jay and the remarkably distinguished

argumentation of Mr Shore, -none of these would appear to have the stature to emerge

as the spokesman for the nation.

We are left with Mr Callaghan and Mr Wilson. All the forces of politics are push- ing each of these men into the role. But it is precisely because of this that they will have to make it, look good if they are to be believed.

Mr Callaghan has the liability of having played a tactical game on the Industrial Re- lations Bill but the asset of a rough com- monsense personality of a type which is seldom suspected of insincerity. To these contradictory features must be added a failure to give any impression at any time that the larger issues of international politics have any meaning to him.

The logical man is, of course, Mr Wilson, as it was Mr Gaitskell. Yet one wonders if he could ever be fitted into the role. It is one which demands perspective and a sense of history: his particular contribution to political debate has been to narrow every issue and to miss the significant for the insignificant. If his speeches did not provide conclusive proof of the smallness of his mind and the limits of his grasp, his memoirs certainly do.

Further, he has already given far more hostages to European fortune than anyone else. For more than three years he has been repeating the half-baked formulas of the Europeanists which anyone with a care for his reputation would have handled selectively (as Mr Heath always has).

In the context of these negotiations, he has accepted the Government's short list of issues: the original minimal batch of New Zealand, sugar and financing (transition only). Gaitskell regarded Britain's relations with India and Australia as great issues, which they are. Had they been conceded before the negotiation (as this time) they would have had even rougher treatment from him than they had on being conceded during the negotiation. But Mr Wilson agreed to judge Mr Rippon's success by those few issues which Mr Heath really thought the EEC must concede.

Mr Wilson's main contribution to the debate so far has been to bring up a supreme non-issue: nuclear cooperation with West Germany. By certain processes of associa- tion, some Tories have convinced themselves that entry into the EEC has something to do with nuclear cooperation with France. But the Germans are neither- seeking anything that would fall under this definition nor showing any signs that they attach con- ditions to ratification of British membership.

The extraordinary thing is that this same Harold Wilson's government embarked jointly with the West Germans and Dutch on the gas centrifuge method of uranium enrichment, a technique which (if it fulfils the dreams of Mr Wedgwood Berm) will dismantle the main industrial and financial barrier to the building of hydrogen bombs.

It is an open question what difference West German nuclear weapons would make to the peace of the world. But if Mr Wilson has worked it out that German nuclear weapons are dangerous, and that the Ger- man government either will not ratify or will not keep to the non-proliferation treaty, he has done much more towards the develop- ment of these weapons than anything Mr Heath could do.

In politics, of course, there is a moment when the opposition leader can clear the decks and start over. That moment will be the Government's White Paper from which time there are no 'terms' to await. It will be the signal for the old stager to make his comeback. But they'd better be new jokes.