Taking the machine apart

Patrick Cosgrave

In any party there is, after an election defeat, a strong tendency to denounce inadequacies in the organisation and structure of the party machine. This tendency is so strong in the Conservative Party that its very recurrence has armoured the organisation against it. Nonetheless, the criticism has been particularly strong since the election in February, and for two reasons. First, many Conservative members and candidates missed, this time, several of the amenities with which a rich and powerfully efficient Central Office had always previously supplied them. Second, there has been at various levels of the Party for some time considerable criticism both of a growing tendency to over-centralisation, and an increasingly marked desire on the part of the Leader to surround himself less with politicians and party members than with outside advisers connected with the advertising and film worlds. The latter point is, of course, particularly important because of the unique and unchallenged power of the Leader of the Conservative Party: the Central Office is his private office; the National Union of Conservative Associations has no authority it can assert against his; only he and the Treasurer or Treasurers of the Party appointed by him have access to the Party's bank accounts.

Because of this any criticism of organisation may very rapidly become a criticism of the Leader, and is likely to be resisted for that reason — especially if, as at present, there is increasing annoyance on the part of Tory backbenchers with the calibre of leadership they are being offered in the House of Commons. Finally, and as regards the present juncture in the Party's fortunes, there is considerable concern about the nature and content of party policy, and much division on the subject: under Mr Heath's leadership an intricate network of policy groups was established which first devised the content of what was offered to the country in 1970; these groups were organised and serviced by a hyper-efficient party organisation. That organisation thus became deeply involved in policy, and suffers attack when policy has been changed, or seems uncertain.

In my opinion there is substantial malaise at almost every level which I have described above, and at the point of intersection between these levels. Because of the intricacy of Conservative bureaucracy, because certain organisational decisions have been fudged or not taken at all, and because certain ideas held firmly by the Leader and his closest advisers about how the party should be run seem to me to be both out of tune with the needs of the party in the country and with what people running the party in the country feel those needs to be, I believe that the Conservative Party is far more seriously disarrayed than appears on the surface, and far more than its political position in the country would seem to warrant. On the other hand, I am far less convinced than Mr George Hutchinson, a former Director of Publicity at Central Office, and now a columnist in the Times, that the great part of the blame is to be laid at the door of long-standing party professionals at Smith Square. Let us look first at the surface criticisms of the machine in the last election. Several members and candidates have written to the nines, in the main expressing angry disappointment. The most trenchant letter came from Miss Joan Quennell, the experienced member for Petersfield who "never received a

single scrap of paper from Central Office which I expected, and on which I depended. I drafted my election address without having a copy of the Manifesto; when I did get one, it had no index. [Actually, Miss Quennell here confused two different documents, as I will explain in a moment.] A telephone call to Smith Square during the campaign took six hours because the only number I had was always engaged . . . none of the literature I ordered through my agent was received, and no one bothered to send me the Leader's personal message to candidates. He says the party's message did not get through to the country during the last campaign. It certainly did not get through to this candidate."

"Consequently," Miss Quennell concluded, "I view with dismay, and some surprise, the instant reappointment of all those at the top of the Conservative Party's organisation who directed its last election campaign."

Miss Quennell's indictment was thus, as I said, trenchant; and it is of particular interest in coming, as it does, from the experienced representative of one of the most well-organised local associations in the country, one which possesses, incidentally, in the flamboyant Mr Norman Slipper, one of the Conservative Party's most skilled agents: one can safely say, therefore, that Mr Slipper shares his member's concern and, indeed, most of the many complaining candidates are backed by their agents, in spite of moves made in recent years by Sir Richard Webster, formerly Director of the Party Organisation, Honorary Secretary of the agents' association, and himself a former agent, centrally to organise the hiring, training and firing of agents, thus directing their loyalty towards the centre rather than their associations and candidates, which had been the traditional pattern. This movement, incidentally, was particularly useful when the Smith Square headquarters of the party were trying to bring pressure to bear on anti-EEC Tory members, and showed up particularly in Holland & Boston, where Mr Richard Body's agent played a prominent part in the pro-Market battle (which was unsuccessful) against Mr Body. Anyway, Miss

Quennell's criticisms are supported by manY other Tories inside and outside the House, and perhaps most interestingly by Mr Robert Redmond, the member for Bolton West, him. self a former Conservative agent. How mach , is there in the detailed criticism?

First, the manifesto. Members of the Press attending the Central Office daily press conferences noted with surprise that it was not possible immediately to provide full an° decently printed copies of this vital document, though both the Liberal and Labour manifestoes were available in full on the same day at the National Liberal Club and at Transport House. The composition of the manifesto Was begun at the beginning of January, when each minister was asked to provide a paragraph on his own area of responsibility. These' paragraphs were re-arranged and edited in the Conservative Research Department in Old Queen Street, re-examined in Central Office, and sent to the Leader. (Mr Heath may or may not have consulted some of his own personal aides: he certainly did not follow the, practice of Churchill or Mr Macmillan, both ol whom engaged in re-writing exercises to give a unitary stamp to the document.) It was then published without further discussion, though several ministers were intensely annoyed at the use made of material they had provided. The practice was thus entirely different from that in 1970, when the manifesto was produced after long gestation in Old Queen Street and in prolonged consultation with , Shadow Ministers and the leading figures in varous policy groups. Anyway, after its completion in 1974 it should, like all other pieces of paper, have gone out to every candidate, and there seems to be no reason whY, from the point of view of Central Office distribution under Brigadier Mellsop, it should not have reached them: nonetheless, manY complain that they never received it, and certainly something was less than perfect ill the arrangements made for its necessarily , rushed printing.

Two very important types of document

normally support the Conservative manifesto! The first of these is the Campaign Guide,I some seven or eight hundred pages of detailed] information on politics and policy since thel last election, printed in a curious 10" x format, and meticulously indexed. The Research Department has always been justly proud of this remarkable production which can best be described as both encyclopaedic and passionately objective: it is frequentlY, used as a guide to politics by journalists an° candidates of other parties, and gives the case of opponents as fully as it does the Conser• vatives' own — though the latter is, naturally. given strong editorial support. The second is a series called Daily Notes, pamphlets produced each day of the campaign and, again, an" tomatically sent out to every candidate, providing immediate analysis and reaction t° moves by the other side, general articles, hints for speeches, useful quotations and much besides. Finally, there are the products of the Questions of Policy Committee, which meets each day during the campaign in Old Queen Street to consider queries from pressure groups and/or candidates which are not covered in the general literature and which are not sufficiently substantial to merit the immediate attention of the Leader. In 1970 the , Committee was chaired by Lord Carrington, in 1974 by Lord Windlesham, Leader of the House of Lords and author of the magisterial Communication and Political Power. Ita, secretary on both occasions was Mr David Clarke, one of Lord Butler's post-1945 luminaries, a former Director of the Research Department, and a former Principal of Swill; ,

ton College. The Committee has at its disposal all the resources of the Research Department

— less well-provided, incidentally, with secretarial and ancillary staff than in 1970' and with its officers less politicallY experienced, since many had never fought a

campaign before, but still a more formidable body of political expertise than has ever been assembled by any other British party. (Some of its officers are paid more than the Director of the Labour Party Research Department). Answers to questions are drafted by the DePartment's expert, checked by the Committee, and sent out immediately, not merely to the questioner, but, again, to all candidates.

In 1974, no Guide was produced, but a rough, unbound, unindexed and less than full imitation was rushed out during the camPaign. The Notes were universally agreed to be well below standard, and were frequently late. And many of the QPC products never reached their destinations. Delays in printing and distribution may well be blamed partly on Central Office (where publications are under the care of Mr Gerald O'Brien, the experienced Deputy Director in Charge of Publications) and partly on the Research Department, possibly on one or the other. Roth the Guide and the Notes are initially Research Department responsibilities. The separate sections of the Guide are written by the relevant officers, put together by a separate Publications Officer, and generally edited by the Director of the Research ,Department — in 1970 Mr Brendon Sewill, later political adviser to the Chancellor, and in 1974 Mr James Douglas. During the campaign, and for the purpose Of preparing the Notes, to which each CRD Officer contributes, the Publications Director (In 1970 Mr Oliver Stebbings, now retired, and in 1974 Mr Anthony Greenland) is assisted by a young CRD Officer. In 1970 Mr Stebbings Was lucky enough to have, doing this job, Mr Christopher Patten, one of the CRD's then Most brilliant young men, already at that sntage experienced in briefing Mr Heath for Prime Minister's questions, author of an outstanding research pamphlet on local government reform, and former guide and mentor to Mr Desmond Plummer in the GLC elections. Mr Patten later assisted Lord Jellicoe in government on voluntary social welfare reform (he was the secretary of the policy group on this subject) and then became political assistant to Lord Carrington at Central (*ice. During the 1974 campaign — when Mr Greenland, at Old Queen Street had much less expert assistance on the Daily Notes — Mr Patten was a parliamentary candidate, and his absence may have been one of the reasons for Lord Carrington's curiously ineffective organisational role during the campaign. As in the case of the national distribution of the Manifesto, there seems to be no reason why some candidates should have received copies of the QPC briefs, while others did not. The unindexed and incomplete Guide was 01' Practically no use to busy candidates who could not spare the time to hunt through a bulky work of reference. (When Miss Quennell said the manifesto was unindexed, she Meant the Guide.) It is normally a continuous and running job, going through many stages Of typescript and galley proof. Between 1964 and 1966 it was obviously felt unnecessary to Produce a completely new Guide so, with an early election clearly likely, a supplement was Prepared which was printed, bound and distributed as soon as the 1966 election was called. Yet, despite three and a half years of Power, during which an enormous amount of Party and government activity was undertaken, nothing substantial and sophisticated could be prepared in time for a 1974 campaign Which was clearly on the cards from the beginning of the year. The relevant chain of command in Old Queen Street runs from the desk officers up to the Publications Director, the other Deptuy Director — Mr Tony Newton, formerly head of the Economics Section and an outstanding political economist, but another who was a candidate (successful) in the general election — to the Assistant Director, Mr David Dear, essentially an ad-• rninistrator, to the Director, Mr James

Douglas, and then to the Chairman of the Department since 1970, Sir Michael (now Lord) Fraser, who is also Vice Chairman of the Party and, until the election, the overall administrative head of Central Office.

So far I have mentioned two particularly able servants of the party organisation who were candidates in the election. This is something which happens more and more frequently nowadays, and it certainly weakens the central organisation during its most testing period. For example, once an election begins to be mooted, heads of various departments must begin to make their dispositions and arrange for replacements for those departing: an on-off election situation is administratively intensely confusing. If, however, there was laxity in the preparation of a new Guide between 1970 and 1974, then the responsibility must be that of the Old Queen Street administration. If, on the other. hand there was a lack of political thrust or motivation from above, such as is required to energise an institution like the CRD, then the responsibility would in the first instance be that of Sir Michael Fraser and those above him. I shall argue that part of the difficulty arose from a decision taken early in the life of the Government, and at a much higher level, to pay less attention than was the case in 1970 and earlier to the traditional work of CRD and the Central Office, and thus to the party organisation.in the country which they serve. This constituted a fundamental alteration of the traditional strategy of the Conservative Party, and that it took place at all thus justifies the criticism of perhaps a majority of candidates and agents that the grass roots were deliberately neglected by the Heath leadership.

But there is another point that should be made here. Any political organisation as elaborate as Central Office tends to have a collective view about the political situation; but it tends to be a view dominated by administrative requirements. After 1970, with commendable self-criticism, Central Office briefed the Opinion Research Centre to carry out a survey on the party's image. In spite of the victory of 1970 this survey produced the astonishing result that, of six undoubtedly popular and six undoubtedly unpopular political policies or actions in the social sector, respondents in a vast majority associated the unpopular with the Tories and the popular with Labour.

What the party organisation could do about that was obviously greatly influenced by what the Government did in office but, in the event, they were greatly helped in the social welfare field by the performance of Sir Keith Joseph at the Department of Health and Social Services. A major effort, through party political broadcasts, general publicity and poster advertising was undertaken to correct the image, and this culminated in the "Conservatives — doing something for everyone" poster campaign showing, inter cilia: a pensioner and information about Tory pension increases, and derelict land with information about what the government had done about clearance.

By the beginning of this year Mr Don Harker, the Director of Publicity at Central Office, and a former Granada executive of great skill and experience, was satisfied by ORC that the image of the party had been reversed. It was probably awareness of the success of the party in this activity, achieved at this particular time, that gave rise to the rumour that Central Office wanted an early election. In fact, although the chairman, Lord Carrington, was a leading hayit: the organisation as such had, despite' newspaper stories in January last, no such view.

In next week's issue, Partick Cosgra ye goes further into the errors and omissions of the Conservative Party organisation and dy.'scksses some of the other personalities involved