Political Commentary

Have the Liberals any policies?

Patrick Cosgrave

In asking the question I take a stand neither for modern (one must make the qualification, since certain historical Liberal figures, who command a considerable degree of intelligent admiration, like Lord Rosebery and Lord i_ney$ look like pretty fascistic and capitalistic 'masts when viewed in the light, or through the 'eYes, of such nouveaux arrivistes as Mr Bernard Levin or Mr Peter Hain) Liberalism nor a,gainst it. Liberal by-election victories, which have celebrated as they have occurred, dictate, however, that the Liberals should be taken seriously; which means that they should be subjected to adult criticism; and that they ought not to resent it. I myself have no doubt that some Liberals now in the House of Commons — Mr Thorpe, Mr Johnson, Mr Hooson and Mr Freud (to name all I can think Of) —would make a distinguished contribution to any government of which they were members. But that is a long way from saying that the Liberal Party, or Liberalism considered as a doctrine, can make more than an electoral contribution to the country's ills. Certainly, some Liberals are nice; and they are wellMeaning but are they any more than (as Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who, however, phrased it more politely, said the other day) a catch-all of discontents?

To find the answer I took a fairly simplistic course. I asked Liberal headquarters to send 'he every important policy document currently available. Before me on my desk as I nove write have a substantial wad of Material; and I cannot find it in my mind to say that much of it is very encouraging. Some of it, indeed, is downright discouraging to anybody of a (small 1) liberal disposition. Take, for example, a leaflet entitled (or, at least, entitled in its large capitals) — POPULATION . . LIBERALS ANSWER. Three Pages of this leaflet report and comment on the findings of (I shudder to write it, and such Stylists as Mr Levin ought to shudder before they support any party which could create

a thing) the (I promise, I quote) " Opt:nium population Sub-panel" of the Liberal Party. Sub-committees I have heard of — but What is a sub-panel?

Well, I think I can answer that question. It Is something which concludes that "The asPeet of the whole environment problem Which the Party should concentrate on was

birth control." Forget all that industrial pol

!ution, you chaps, just get down to a bit of Intelligent family planning: it's babies that cause the trouble. Neither that conclusion, however, nor the sub-English of the leaflet, Was what really gave me a chill: that came

th the two paragraphs headed "Implications for Liberal Party Policy."

The evidence which has now accumulated is so Overwhelming that little needs to be spelt out. It "ens irrefutable that the Liberal Party has left the Other parties standing at the post and performed a great service to the nation and the wider society what the hell is that?— in setting up its Environment Panel with a strong .TPPhasis on population problems. he Liberal Party must surely redouble its efforts to Persuade the other parties and the Government '0 set an example to the world by being the first tilaclustrialised country to stabilise its population nmariely and deliberately as a prelude to getting back into a wholesome and long-term balance with the natural and man-made environment.

Dwell, dear reader, on those words — humanely and deliberately — because they are of great importance: when governments (and the Liberals invite the Government to join them) deliberate and are humane, the rest of us should look, not just to our spoons, but to our freedom. (I should perhaps add that the view was derived from a poll of Liberal members, not of the populace at large.)

There is another Liberal document which caused me a different kind of concern. (It is a little out of date, written as it was when the Labour Party were in power, but I asked for every document.) It is on education, and it has a rather curious heading — 'Choose for your child,' implying (I think I am not too fanciful in saying this) the kind of populist collaboration for happiness which has characterised most recent Liberal by-election campaigns. 'Your' child can refer only to the child of a parent, and thus to the parent's choice, or so you would have thought. Actually, there is nothing whatever in the document about (putting it simply), a parent's choice of his or her child's school. "The Liberal Party, we are told, "is in favour of reorganising secondary education on nonselective lines." And, afterwards, this curious passage:

Many misconceptions are abroad about non-selective education, which arouse strong emotions. Perhaps it is best to list some of the things it does not mean

In my own simple way I would have preferred a policy document which listed some at least of the things it does mean. So far as I can judge the Liberals are in favour of comprehensivisation at all costs. They prefer to bury, under that misleading headline' Choose for your child,' this again chilling conclusion (all the more so for a party whose success has been built on participation):

Excessive deliberation, allowing all adults an unlimited opportunity to procrastinate, may deprive whole generations of children from the benefits of reorganisation.

So far as I know there is no evidence whatever to suggest that parents (not, please, Liberals," all adults ") procrastinate for the fun of it: they occasionally do so to stop the state or local authorities stopping them from choosing the education they think bg,511,611a,„1.6 cffildeen. The only meaning oft e—ElVeral message is that — the state decides. I don't mind that too much when it is said honestly and openly by the Labour Party, but it is, I think, dishonest to call the document announcing support for such a policy 'Choose for your child.'

Raymond Asquith, the brilliant son of the last Liberal Prime Minister, once offered a definition of the distinction between the two great parties of his day, Liberals and Tories. "Tories," he said, "believe they are better born. Liberals believe they are born better," A political philosophy based on that social distinction is still alive today. It is more than alive: it is kicking. And while the objective commentator might think himself reasonably happy to live in a Britain governed by the born better and thinking better Mr Thorpe, he could not imagine himself so happy in a Britain run by some of Mr Thorpe's born better colleagues, like Mr Hain. For the truth of the matter is that the Liberal Party has attracted to itself in recent years seme of the most energetic, most intolerant, most authoritarian, mostruthiess of youngsters. They have been able to do so because the on the whole healthy, but on the whole fashionably despised, machines of either of the major parties would have crushed such as Mr Hain out of existence 'ang ago. When some tiresome bunch of young Conservatives advocated state brothels as a solution to the kind of urge felt by Mr Lambton, Conservative Central Office dismissed the matter with considerably less than a flick of the wrist, and rightly. When Mr HaM suggests —and I am not quite sure which he did suggest — the legal or illegal immobilising of lorries trundling their perfectly legal way through England, a senior Liberal spokesman, Mr Pardoe, is obliged to make public statements disavowing him, and give public interviews saying that the last time he supported Mr Hain it was different. In other words, Mr Pardoe, looking back on Sutton, and Ely and all the others, feels he can do without Mr Hain, But Mr Hain responds with perfect propriety that he has been elected to his position on the Liberal executive, and has every right to speak authoritatively for his party.

To say the best that can be said for them — the modern Liberals are a party built almost solely, in terms of their electoral, success, on opposition to modern manifestations of planning, especially those manifestations which yield great profits to developers; and that building is justly represented by a very brilliant paper, lying among my pile, by Mr Paul Tyler, on 'Public participation in planning ': Here is a sensible catch-all of discontent. So vital, so felt is this issue, and so marked the failure of the two major parties to assuage the general, inflation-induced, community-induced, discontent of the nation that they are being given a run. But I look in vain through every document sent my by Liberal headquarters for a generral consideration of national economic policy. (There are one or two starry-eyed pieces about working together with the workers.) And I find behind an empty visage the Asquith ian, better born, authoritarian face of Liberalism,