PERSONAL COLUMN

A reply to Peregrine Worsthorne

EDWARD BOYLE

to Perry,

.er since I read your open letter to me last week's SPECTATOR, I have been ndering about that curious episode which recall from our schooldays at Abinger , and trying to imagine what on earth uld have caused me to tell our excellent ector of studies, Henry Brereton, that his ice would fill the Albert Hall. I think it ust have been a visit to Paris with my ther, when he described to me the carry- -power of Danton's voice at his trial dur- the French Revolution; there was some- ng a shade Dantonesque about in.B.

I think, Perry, you are unfair about Abin- r. Looking back, I feel specially grateful the gifted music teacher who lent me her lenberg miniature score of the Brahms °lin Concerto when I went with my rents to hear a performance by Huberman ompanied by Beecham and the pre-war ndon Philharmonic; the combination of gramophone and the miniature score s ever since, been one of the chief plea- es of my life. She also taught your nted brother Simon, and I can never hear first movement or the minuet of Beet- en's Op. 10 No. 3 without thinking of , and of the music room at Abinger with upright Steinway. For me, though I never ed leaving home, those were happy days.' I had forgotten I ever said to you that I tterly regretted' having been to Eton. I nk this was an exaggerated remark, and air to many first-rate teachers from om I learnt much—though no more ex- erated than your own suggestion that it positively easier for Etonians than for r people to communicate with 'all walks life; I can't take this seriously, any more n your belief that it is more intelligent to at to remain the stupid party.

ow let me come on to the main point of r letter. 'Your trouble', you tell me, 'has ays been a failure to understand the true ce of the Tory party's strength, the ret of its classless appeal. It is precisely use it is not the "civilised" party, be- e it understands the places of prejudice passion, instinct and greed ... It has al- 's seemed to me a profound mistake on r part to want to turn the Tories into a lised party.'

know, Perry, that ybu feel strongly ut this. The main difficulty I find in ng with you is that I differ from you at very first step, which is the definition of t one means by the words 'civilisation' 'civilised'. For you, those, words are iated with 'intimations of truth and uty which are apparent only to the highly cated'. But what concerns me, much e than any intimations of truth and uty, is the way our society treats people. en I speak of society, or our legal system, ming more 'civilised', I mean, first and most, that it is doing away with un- sary cruelty, removing avoidable causes nhappiness, and—more positively—try- to narrow the gap between the value and women place on their own per- lilies and the value placed on them in community within which they live. You self, following Bagehot, favour 'an in- for pleasure'; so do I. But I think a iced state is one which also fosters an nct for kindness, and is resolved never

to deprive any citizen of an ultimate mess- age of hope.

Some of your illustrations did rather sur- prise me. For instance, you say that 'It is civilised to be against capital punishment, in spite of the fact that the idea of retribution . . . corresponds to a human instinct that is deeply rooted in popular mythology'. But the ethic that is opposed to retribution has also fairly deep roots in our civilisation— and you must agree, Perry, that the author of the Sermon on the Mount had no spe- cial regard for what you call the 'cognos- centi'. I could not help recalling, as I read your letter, a remark by Harold Macmil- lan after his 'wind of change' visit to South Africa: 'What a pity, with all their great knowledge of the Old Testament, that they have never been interested enough to read on to the New'.

As for coloured immigration, what you call the 'civilised' reaction has nothing to do with immigrants being 'exotic and interest- ing'; these are people, not things. Most of us do fully recognise the anxieties, and the social tensions, caused by a rapid change in the character of a district; that is why we have voted for immigration control. But I should have thought it was an essential mark of a civilised society—and incidentally wholly in line with what Conservatives, since the time of Disraeli, have said about One Nation—that men and women should not be debarred by reason of their colour (or re- ligion) from the jobs for which they are qualified, or the housing for which they are prepared to pay.

I have never tried to make the whole Tory party a reflection of my own tastes and preferences. As a Tory MP, feeling the wa} I do, I have consistently over twenty years voted against capital punishment. and for most measures of libertarian reform. But this does not imply any 'contemptuous dismissal' of those who hold different views. I happen to feel rather strongly that it is, in general, not the proper function of the criminal law to try to enforce morality as such. But I do not stigmatise all those perfectly normal citizens who hold the opposite view as 'extremists' or 'fascists' —I simply vote in the opposite lobby to them. Of course all this is made much easier, both for me and for others, by the firmness with which Ted Heath has maintained the position that matters like hanging, divorce, and abortion must be left to each Conserva- tive member to decide for himself, without the imposition of the party Whips.

In my experience one does not neces- sarily have to hold majority views on these controversial questions in order to be able to get on with ordinary voters. Like all MPs, I attend my annual quota of meetings, fetes, bazaars, club nights and so on. I do not maintain that I am particularly good at these occasions, but neither am I all that bad—and it is certainly news to me that any- one should consider me notably deficient in a 'feeling for the buoyant life' or an 'instinct for pleasure'. I know that I have encoun- tered criticism within the Conservative party —sometimes sharp criticism—for my atti- tudes on race and education. With the first of these matters! have already dealt, and my reception at this year's party conference made me feel that any gap between my audience and myself on educational policy was rapidly narrowing.

There are just two other points, Perry, on which I should like to take you up. First, do not allow yourself to be taken in by the familiar claptrap about 'the pressures of impersonal technology taking the flavour and spice out of life'. I have yet to meet a citizen of Birmingham who doesn't wel- come the development of faster communica- tions with London. a housewife who doesn't welcome the general availability of con- sumer durables. or a music enthusiast who doesn't rejoice in the technical advances of 'hi-fi'. Secondly, you are honestly wrong if you suppose that a concern for civilised values is still limited only to a 'relatively small and select section of the population'. Certainly there are some nasty undercurrents of thoroughly uncivilised opinion in Britain today. But ask any good English teacher in a secondary school, or better still get yourself invited to a sixth form conference, on an occasion which leaves plenty of time for questions and discussion. You will prob- ably be surprised to find how many children of what you call 'working people' really are thinking—not just vaguely feeling—about issues like world peace, world hunger and justice in race relations. You would certainly be surprised if you knew the scale of the impact made by a contemporary work like Benjamin Britten's War Requiem.

Sixth formers, and students—voters of the near future—want a society for people. Inci- dentally, I can't help recalling that The Right Road for Britain, the statement of Conservative policy issued twenty years ago when I was first a prospective candidate, included these words: 'An individual is an end in himself, and the final justification of government is that it makes possible the fullest development of personality and en- ables all men and women to lead their own lives in their own way within the limits of law and social justice.'

This leads me, finally, to the sharp break I am about to make in my life. I am sorry, Perry, that I have disappointed you. When I entered the House of Commons nineteen years ago, I think I was as ambitious as most people—Disraeli's commendation of 'the love of fame' has always made sense to me—though I never set my sights as high as Downing Street, 'an overrated job', as William Rees-Mogg once wrote. But I should have been disappointed never to be- come a Minister; as it is I shall leave the House of Commons, where I have been exceptionally happy, with no feelings what- ever of grievance or frustration.

You consider Leeds an anti-climax. I do not, and I think I can best explain my feel- ings by quoting from a lecture by Lord Bridges; his subject was the Civil Service, but his words were just as applicable to a university. He spoke of

'a strong corporate life which knows no barriers based on social upbringing or educa- tional background, and which accepts with- out question as a passport for the higher appointments anyone whose work and approach to problems show that .he has learnt how these things should be done'.

These words seem to me a measure of the confidence which a major British university has decided to place in me. I hope they will prove justified—anyway they help to explain why words like 'sigh' and 'whimper' are very far from my mind at the present time.

Let us meet soon. Yours ever, Edward