Torquay Commentary
Mr. Gladstone Explains
WattWITH the TUC safely behind me, I had intended, as the Torbay Express carried me swiftly towards the golden sands of Torquay and my rendezvous with the Liberal Assembly, to look ahead and try to foresee the opportunities for a little good, clean fun at Scarborough and Blackpool, where the Labour and Conservative Parties will be meeting immediately afterwards. Indeed, before the TUC began I promised that I would do as much. But he who touches pitch will be defiled; long association with politicians will affect anyone's attitude to promises, or at any rate to his own. I beg, therefore, a week's indulgence, and this week offer instead a remarkable letter that I found on my desk on Monday morning, the postmark illegible but glowing with no earthly light. The con- tents speak for themselves; though they may perhaps speak more loudly in Torquay than elsewhere.
MY DEAR TAPER,
With that characteristic generosity of spirit which I know to be yours, you will, I am sure, forgive my presumption in directly addressing to you, whose acquaintance it has never been my good fortune to make, a few words on a matter which concerns us both, though me more nearly. You may imagine that I still follow with attention, and not infrequently with anxiety, the fortunes of the nation whose destinies 1 was on four occasions granted the honour and privilege to guide. I have often, over the years, been greatly tempted to make my views known upon some questions of the hour, but always I have put the temptation from me. I have reasoned that if the Almighty, in His wisdom, had seen fit to entrust the destinies of the nation I served with His help for so many years into the hands of men who seemed to me conspicuously ill-qualified for the task (or, indeed, for any task but the most menial) it was not for me to raise my voice in warning. I was not called upon to express any opinion, and I determined that until I was so called I would offer none, how- ever great England's peril might seem to me, and however few might be the voices raised to point out that peril.
I cannot pretend that, even now, I have been expressly called upon to make my views known. Yet. since my name has, entirely without my approval and indeed without my prior knowledge, been made use of in recent public controversy, it can hardly be maintained that I have not the right to make known my views, touching the matter in dispute. And few, I think, would begrudge to an old man, who served his Queen and his country, humbly and to the best of his poor ability, a cer- tain latitude in determining the bounds of what is proper for him to include in such comment. I choose to make my views known by communicat- ing them to you, in the earnest hope that you will think them worthy to share with the wider circle of your attentive and fortunate readers; know- ing as I do that your weekly observations are eagerly (albeit, in some cases, with apprehension) awaited, and as eagerly read, wherever men of judgment and influence, or those who would be thought men of judgment and influence, are to be found.
Some few weeks ago, Mr. Macmillan, to whom has been entrusted the leadership of the Unionist Party and, more surprisingly, the oflice of Prime Minister, paid .a visit to Hawarden, that scene of everything most dear to me. To speak frankly, I have frequently, in what I have seen of Mr. Mac- millan, detected a want of niceness, a not too close attention to those refinements of scruple which are not the least important attributes for a public man. Many indeed would, say that his action in visiting Hawarden for the purpose of making a speech in the Unionist interest, and delivering the oration in question from the shade of that very ash-tree under whose boughs I have spent I know not how many happy moments, smacked of the fairground huckster rather than the statesman, and was as lacking in dignity as would be the action of some boor who visited an historical museum, and seeing there exhibited a coat of some former century, should put it on and strut before a looking-glass.
But if the manner of his remarks caused me pain, the matter caused me real sorrow. Mr. Mac- millan, with a familiarity I am by no means disposed to accord him, asserted that if I were alive at this time I would stand, as he put it, 'on the right side'; by which vulgar phrase he meant to convey that I would be an adherent of the Unionist cause. What evidence he has to support this assertion I do not know, though it is to be assumed that his hearers on the occasion in question did, since none was forthcoming. For my part, I feel bound to give so preposterous a claim the lie direct, and adduce my reasons.
It is of course true that the early days of my political life were passed as a supporter of, and member in, more than one Conservative. Admin- istration. But all men grow wiser with the years, and not even the blindest observer of my career could maintain that long before its close I had made my permanent adherence to the Liberal Party. It may be that what Mr. Macmillan had in mind, when claiming me as an ally, was the action taken by me when Prime Minister in 1882, in ordering the bombardment of Egypt. But to compare the enterprise upon which my admin- istration then embarked with that taken by the Government of which he was a leading member in 1956 is not to compare like with like. On that occasion, I wrote to Mr. Bright (who, it will be remembered, had left my administration upon this question, but to whom, conscious of the debt I owed him, I flatter myself that I acted with greater civility and consideration than Mr. Macmillan has shown to either Mr. Nicolson or Sir Frank Medli- cott) that if force was to be employed 'it should be force armed with the highest sanction of law; that it should be the force of the sovereign, author- ised and restrained by the United Powers . . . we have not received nor heard of a word of dis- approval from any Power great or small, or from any source having the slightest authority. . . if Mr. Macmillan can show me some like declaration of his own,,preferably made at the time and not eighteen months later, I will be the more disposed to listen to his claims.
For it seems to me that in claiming me as one of his adherents, he makes a fundamental error as to the nature of my party, and another as to the nature of his. In brief, the 'difference between Liberal and Tory is that the former stands upon principle, the latter upon expedience. This was true in my day, and it is abundantly true in his. Consider for a moment the record of his party in office during the seven years immediately past. At one moment, they have been for expansion; at the next, for restriction. No sooner have they declared their passionate belief in the freedom of the individual citizen under the law, than they are convicted of the grossest malpractices in interfering with the citizens' rights of private com- munication. Abroad, they have not hesitated to seek alliances with the most cruel and corrupt regimes, either pretending that their chosen favourites are in truth models of Christian honour and tolerance (the while they practised atrocities beside which those perpetrated in Bulgaria seemed pale and gentle by comparison) or more cynically declaring that allies must be sought where they can be found; nor has either the former or the latter view been suffered to stand in the way of their betrayal of an erstwhile ally whenever a better seemed to present himself. At home, they have stood firm against the weak and run before the strong, challenging the abuses of power prac- tised by the Trade Unions, for example, only when such a challenge presented no risk to them- selves. In party warfare, Mr. Macmillan himself has not hesitated to use weapons that even the most extreme follower of Mr. Parnell would have rejected as beneath him; is it really to be supposed, for example, that Mr. Gaitskell is a man so dis- honourable that he would vote against his own country though not against another? It is not; yet such an accusation Mr. Macmillan hurled against his opponent and basked long in his own party's approval for the gibe.
I need hardly remind you, my dear Taper, of the Unionists' sorry record in the Cyprus question, a record wholly similar to that of the Unionists of my day in relation to the Irish question, and even more vacillatory and erratic. One moment, their cry is 'Never!'; the next, it is 'Some day!'; the next, 'Soon !'; the next, 'Now!'; and none of these opal- like changes in public attitude has at any time corresponded to actual policy, which has con- tinued to be dictated by a combination of obstinacy, bad judgment, cowardice, dishonesty and Turks. More; at this very moment, there is an entire want of certainty or clarity in the Government's attitude to the Chinese question; contradiction, confusion and evasion seem to be the three legs on which Mr. Macmillan's policy so shakily stands, and not even the excuse that he is plagued to distraction by the activities of Mr. Randolph Churchill (how well I remember his grandfather!) will hold water, for Mr. Macmil- lan's policy in this matter seems to me to have been to a great extent contemptible even before Mr. Churchill took a hand.
- Can it really be supposed that if I were still an active participant in the political struggle I would ally myself with a party so devoid of everything I, as a Liberal, held and hold dear? And can it really be supposed that if the Liberal Party of today, weak and tempted though it be, should heed the siren voice that spoke from the terrace at Hawar- den Castle, it would long survive, or would deserve to? No; let Mr. Grimond and his small but stal- wart band take such heart as they can from the sympathy and encouragement of one whose day of toiling in the field for his beliefs is long since gone by, and enter upon their collective delibera- tions confident that if he were alive today a most earnest prayer for their success would be the con- stant preoccupation of Your obedient and humble servant, • W. E. GLADSTONE. Post Scriptum. Mr. Asquith tells me that a claim, similar to that made by Mr. Macmillan on my behalf, has been made on his behalf by the second Lord Hailsham, whose grandfather did much, I am told, to further the education of the poor (more, it seems, might have been done for that of his grandson). Mr. Asquith informs me, of what I did not doubt, that he rejects the claim with scorn. I took the liberty of showing him the few words I had penned to you'on my own behalf, and he desires me to tell you that he is fully in accord with my sentiments. I may perhaps add that it is in the company of Mr. Asquith, whom you will remember 1 had the honour of appointing to the office of Home Secretary, that I now pass many of my happiest hours. Sometimes we converse, at others walk together. And under his tuition I have been introduced to the simple pleasures of a game with cards, called 'bridge.' We frequently spend art agreeable hour together at this diversion, though should some important visitor be an- nounced we frequently postpone the completion of the game until his departure.
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