POLITICS
The Liberals turn inwards in search of happiness
FERDINAND MOUNT
Harrogate
A
s dusk falls on the Welsh marches, in some bosky thicket or abandoned barn, small, dark, bandy-legged men gather to hear the terrible news flashed along Offa's Dyke by walkie-talkie: the Liberal Assem- bly has called for 'stringent measures' againt cock-fighting. As they shelter from the driving rain with their fighting cocks nestling in the poachers' pockets of their tattered Barbours, a few optimists may console themselves with the thought that they can always go back to baiting badgers instead. But no, comes the dread word over the CB radio, the Liberals intend to wipe out badger-baiting too, and dog- fighting, not to mention crossbows and mink-trapping and all the other innocent amusements of country life.
Suburban readers may imagine that such measures would be relegated to some obscure corner of the Liberal Assembly, perhaps to a sort of fringe meeting. On the contrary, Mr Richard Livsey, the gangling MP for Brecon and Radnor, a rural Liberal MP of the old school favouring that dungheap-green shade of tweed which predominates in small Welsh towns on market day, and his colleagues had prime time for their debate on animal welfare. It was, indeed, the first debate on any actual matter of policy, after a day and more devoted to merger matters.
But already the wonderful liberating effects of the merger were to be seen. Liberals can all be themselves again, now that the Grim Doctor is no longer there to chivvy and bully them. 'Don't let's get bogged down in detailed policy matters,' suggests Lord Tordoff gaily while prepar- ing delegates for the intricacies of the merger debate: 'The question of how many Tomahawks can be balanced on the point of a Trident has already taken up too much valuable time — time that could better be occupied with thinking how to stop cock- fighting.' Lord Tordoff dislikes the use of the word 'negotiations'. He prefers Mr Maclennan's 'creative discussions'.
Tension and precision are out. Nor is it simply out of a wish to avoid disagreement with the Social Democrats that the Liberals are reluctant to discuss knobbly topics such as defence. They tackle the central issues, the ones which preoccupy other parties, only sporadically and with little real zest. Down in the bowels of the Majestic Hotel, one of the Liberal soviets is to hammer out
a policy on the City. What, in theory, could be nearer the Liberal soul with its revulsion against the greed, corruption, materialism, etc, of `Thatcherism' — unmistakably the enemy of the mergerites (socialism scarcely gets a mention)? But nobody much seems to have turned up, apart from the 20 or 30 faces who come to everything, notably Mr Paddy Ashdown who always has the smar- test briefcase and the most incredibly attentive look. (Anyone spot the contrast with Mr David Steel who does not roll up until Tuesday morning and whose appear- ance evokes only the most tepid enthu- siasm, compared with the intensely pleasurable hatred brought out by every mention of Dr Owen?)
One of the people who also has not turned up is the chap from the London Business School who is going to tell us about merger policy. So meanwhile, Shir- ley Williams steps into the breach and tells us about what she did when she was Minister for Prices and Consumer Protec- tion. Chap from London Business School appears panting, says he is sorry he's late, and he's not really an expert on mergers, and he's not a Liberal but his wife is. Shirley beams ever more brightly. Every- one loves her because she brims with goodwill, unlike that Doctor who always seemed to be getting at them. And you can sense how glad Shirley is to be free of him too and to be among the nice people (and who knows, they might like a nice person to lead them too, now that Mr Steel is decidedly ex-nice). They are all so happy together. True, like many engaged cou- ples, they are also a little nervy and tired as well, and not entirely free from worry as to whether they have done the right thing.
Still, it is universally agreed here that Dr Owen is as irretrievably condemned to a life in the wilderness as Joe Chamberlain or the National Liberals. Adrian Slade, the party's new president, argued, in a well- turned speech, that Dr Owen has done a Captain Oates (although he did not men- tion the fate of the people who stayed in the tent). Mr Slade was for many years the only Liberal on the GLC and eternally on the verge of winning a seat in Parliament. His brother Julian wrote Salad Days, and one can imagine Mr Slade too as a some- what withered jeune premier articulating his words with the frenzied gentility of the early British musical. He has not an ounce of coarseness in him. So it was a surprise to hear him say midway through his ritual denunciation of the egotism, materialism, etc, of Thatcherite Britain, that 'we must recognise that self-interest may need to play a greater part in our appeal than it has done to date'. Even today in the party of Gladstone, Asquith, and Des Wilson the spirit of Adam Smith is not entirely exting- uished.
There were one or two speakers in the merger debates ready to recognise, like Richard Holme, another of the party's ex-presidents, that 'we're still living in this party off the intellectual capital of ten or twenty years ago', and that the party had a much clearer idea of its strategic purpose when Jo Grimmond was leading it. Yet I doubt whether their setback at the General Election was bad enough to induce a serious rethink. In any case, nine out of ten Liberals attribute it to the twin leadership and to the unresolved future of the Alliance. The general view of Liberal MPs, David Steel not least, is that they have got bags of policies and do not need to worry.
Few Liberals seem to have noticed that Labour is in the process of junking half the stuff they are still piously repeating. Mr Jack Straw, Labour's new education spokesman, has not merely approved two- thirds of Mr Kenneth Baker's forthcoming Education Bill but also claims to have thought of it all himself years ago. By contrast, the Liberals, with Paddy Ashdown at their head, seem to be com- mitting themselves to campaign against the bill in Moto and for 'a consensus approach to education policy'. For all its rhetoric about putting liberty first, the old itch to inter- vene seems to be very much alive in the new Liberal-Social-Democratic-Radical- Alliance-Shirley-and-Des Party.
No doubt the merger will go through, and Mr Steel will come through to lead it. But there is no way of pretending that it will be a very interesting sort of party. In the end, of course, the new tide of indi- vidualism and personal responsibility will wash its sleepy shores, but there is no disguising the fact that, without the Doc- tor, the atmosphere is deeply, often agree- ably, provincial. I do not mean merely countrified, since many of the rural 'green' issues which the Liberals have pioneered have leapt up the metropolitan agenda, but somehow obstinately remote from the pre- dominant concerns of the day. It will be more rewarding to see how Labour gets on.
Previous page
