A 'SPECTATOR' SYMPOSIUM

Reflections on a general election

BY SIX INDEPENDENT CONTRIBUTORS

Kingsley Amis

'SLIGHTLY MORE OF A PLAGUE . . . on one of your houses.' Thus the heading of a piece I wrote for the sPEcrivrott just before the 1959 election. Then, the house I considered marginally more plagueworthy was that of the Conservatives; now, not much less mar- ginally, it is Labour's.

I had better tell you unequivocally that I voted Labour in 1964. In 1966 I voted for the Anti-Common Market character who put up in my constituency (thereby percept- ibly increasing his share of the poll). I told myself that I was waiting and seeing, but nearly all I was really doing was feeling how awful it would be to admit to myself, in my mid-forties, that all those votes I had cast for Labour over the years were adverse reflections upon my good sense and open- ness of mind.

Now, however, people with my sort of political record, and I suspect there are quite a few round the place, must grit their teeth, harden their heads and vote Labour out. To me, there are three fields in particu- lar in which it has shown itself incompetent or worse: defence, education, and what has become known as law and order—not the ideal label, for it suggests something to do with discipline rather than what it is, some- thing to do with freedom. (Labour's most disgraceful single act, denying entry to the East African Asians, presumably derives from a decision about priorities: more im- portant to break the British government's word than follow declared liberal principles.) Defence is by so much the most impor- tant national question that its tiny share of national attention still baffles me, even after I have made allowances for its unpopularity as a topic in a democracy at peace and under no obvious immediate threat, its con- sequent unsuitability as an electoral issue, and its denigration by leftist 'communica- tors' into a laughable dead letter. Anyway, Labour has run down our defences (typi- cally, without reducing expenditure) and, if returned to power, will continue to do so at an increasing rate.

On education, I will content myself for now with saying that the sheer savagery of Labour's assault on our school system, and its openly doctrinaire non-educational motive, also baffle me. If allowed to con- tinue, it will leave us with less education less fairly distributed. In the universities, there seems to be spreading agreement— among educators, not of course education- ists—that continued expansion must lead to a lowering of standards.

As regards law and order, the squeals of simulated indignation and real alarm from the left at the Opposition 't raising of the question are some sign of its justice and relevance. In particular, the Home Secre- tary's truckling to the forces of disorder by vetoing the South African cricket tour heralds the day in 1984—or 1974—when I, engaged to address some fascist body like

the Central Loamshire Conservative Asso- ciation, shall be `advised' to stay at home in the interests of maintaining the peace.

The only effective anti-Labour vote is one for the Tories, and here I cannot help turn- ing marginal. Mr Heath himself now looks and sounds quite like a future Prime Minister; my difficulty is that of being sure that he would lead the country in a recog- nisably Conservative direction. A wetly me- tooing Tory government would be worse than another Labour one. Indeed, I am far from sure that those in a position to bet on another twenty-plus years of life should not vote and campaign for Labour, on the reasoning that another spell or two in opposition might well shove the Tories away from the left for ever. But that is a long and desperate shot.

Lord Beeching

This election is not so much about differ- ences between the declared aims of the main parties as it is about competence to govern, and the outcome will be decided by the extent to which the electorate can overcome incredulity in favour of one or other of the contenders. In this respect, both of them start with a severe handicap, because, in relation to what they have both declared to be the foundation for all else—the achieve- ment of more rapid sustained growth of the economy—both have a record of failure. The inability of the Labour party to solve this problem has been demonstrated with such convincing thoroughness over the last six years that, although it is possible to think that they could not do worse if returned to office, it is impossible to believe that they would do well. In the case of the Conserva- tives there is more room for hope, because their failure over a thirteen year period in office was less consistently damaging and depressing, and is now more remote in time. Even so, they also have to bridge a large credibility gap which, political memory being selectively imperfect, is misleadingly large, because they went out of office in one of the recurrent balance of payments troughs while the Socialists have contrived to go to the country after first emerging from the longest and deariest slough of them all, to produce a temporary illusion of prosperity while their next disaster is still in the making.

Disturbing as it is to see theinstability of electoral opinion revealed by the polls, it is easy to understand how difficult it is for any voter to decide between degrees of scepticism, especially when no party has the confidence to focus attention on the main issue by declaring that it has a solution. Indeed, the very scepticism about the ability of our governmental system to produce effective government which gives rise to diffi- culty of choice is itself a highly dangerous feature which ought to weigh heavily in the making of a choice. Important as, it is to choose the party most likely to succeed, it

is also necessary to consider what degree of legislative frenzy will result if success proves elusive, and how permanent, the damage it may do.

Like others, I find the choice an unsatis- factory one to have to make, but I make it in favour of the Conservatives because I think that, whereas both parties may, by now, have learned to use controls over the level of the economy with more skill than either has displayed in the past, I think the Conservatives will make a better approach to the much more difficult task of stimu- lating increase in the real strength of the productive machine, by producing more broadly spread incentive conditions, by being less prone to impose an ever grdwing mesh of controls to enable them to interfere with .industry in detail, and by introducing a sensible framework of legislature within which effective, free negotiations can be re- stored. In particular, I favour them because of the way the Socialists have abdicated as a government on a number of important issues, their scuttling of their own Labour Relations Bill being only the most recent and blatant example.

Anthony Burgess

These are home thoughts from abroad. As one of the expatriate disfranchised I have no business to think them, but the Gil- bertian habit of regarding myself as tattooed into British politics persists. Living as I do in Malta, paying frequent visits to Italy, I am very left wing as far as those two coun- tries are concerned: who but a fascist swine could support the political pretensions of the clergy and their unwillingness to allow civil marriage or divorce? But, as a sort of Englishman, I remain a sort of Tory. I have never voted on the record of any of the British political parties; I am an ideologue or metaphysical man. As a Lancashire Catholic Jacobite I have to be a Tory.

So, were I at home now, I would be pre- paring to cast my vote for Mr Heath's party. Frankly, the only virtue I find in this party lies in the rags of the tradition they rather apologetically flaunt—less govern- ment in a society which, through apathy, is crying out for more. Of the Tory leaders I have met I like very few. I have far more friends among left wing writers than among the Tory ones, who are too old-fashioned and Powellian in their approach to lan- guage. Though a musician like Mr Heath, I find Mr Heath the most unsympathetic man in all politics—with the possible ex- ception of Mr Powell.

If the British electorate returns the Tories on the strength of Mr Heath's personifica- tion of the virtues of Tory Man, I think the British electorate will be wrong. The Tories are foolish in having a bachelor choir- master giggler as their leader—not perhaps in any intrinsic sense, but because they ought to know how the ordinary voter re- acts to such a personality, especially when it expresses itself through so inept an ora- torical instrument. I shall never forget one of Mr Heath's denunciations of the Social- ists: 'They promised to keep food prices down, but what in fact happens? Up gneg butter, up go sausages . . .9 No, that won't do at all.

I spent three days in London last month on the way back from San Francisco. Prices were well up on what I left behind in the autumn of 1968; there was no sense that anybody was in love with Harold Wilson or his pseudo-achievements; there was a cynic- ism around that I found distasteful and was glad to fly away from, even to Malta, where cynicism is needed. What seemed, and seems, clear is that Labour is going to get in again, and that Harold Wilson's own cynicism about his being the lesser of two evils is a fair reflection of the general atti- tude of the electorate.

With Heath as a leader, and Powell as his only alternative, Conservatism will never stand a chance.

Trevor Grove

Those of us who are voting for the first time are urged to take our responsibilities seriously. Yet unlike other momentous turning points in one's life (first com- munion, loss of virginity etc.), which offer the certain promise—if less cer- tain fulfilment—of instant progress along the road to adulthood, one's political coming-of- age appears to be an occasion expressly designed to damp youthful ardours: to drive home the message that (legal) political activity—in--this country at any rate—is a means less to the promotion of great changes than to their prevention. This state of affairs is perfectly acceptable: but it does mean that the exercise of one's democratic privi- lege becomes not so much a matter of waving banners or supporting grand designs as of settling down, ice-pack at the ready, to discern the infinitely subtle distinctions between two infinitely boring and largely indistinguishable alternatives. (The other alternatives available are of even less rele- vance in my own constituency than they are in most, though there is clearly a strong case for voting Liberal in areas with a well- established Liberal tradition.) Both the main parties. however they may wish it otherwise, operate according to the law of supply and demand: they demand. we supply. Both, faced with the spate of union truculence and wage inflation, the accelerating radicalisation of the middle classes (nurses, teachers. civil servants. doctors), the growing_ confidence of the street politicians, will almost inevitably come down with restrictive measures against some of our traditional freedoms. Despite the Tory efforts to make issues out of these questions (dangerous ploy!), Labour has been doitn its best, and largely succeeding, in defusing them before they have any impact on the elector- ate.

Education, Europe, the environment,' which should have been electoral issues, have been largely ignored by both the prin- cipal contenders. The only real battles that have been fought have been over Powellism and over the delicate question of which party can best be described as having the monopoly of mendacity. So far the laurels have been evenly divided. It is a sad comment on democracy (and a curious anthropological observation) that its elders habitually make their appeals for re-election to office by refer- ence to the worst qualities of their opponents and the least considerable of their own.

Fortunately, the British public has long since learnt not to take a politician at his word, though there is a consequent danger that they might take him at his face value instead. This would. and almost certainly will, spell doom for Mr Heath. In such an event, I personally couldn't care less. What I do care about is that politics should be imaginative, lively, efficient but also conser- vative-with-a-small-c, and above all repre- sentative.

Short of campaigning for a totally dif- ferent voting system, such as proportional representation or one of its near cousins, shorter still of spoiling one's ballot paper or staying away from the polls altogether, my advice to other first-time voters—those at any rate who haven't already taken a sink- or-swim chance and are still bobbing about with their heads above the scum—would be to vote not for a party leader, still less for a party, but for a local candidate, whatever his affiliation. The old lady who said she'd rather not vote for the Government as it would only encourage them has my pro- found sympathy, and, meantime, the only check we have on politics running wild is that much depreciated but potentially in- valuable figure, our man in Westminster.

Stuart Hood

What I find difficult to explain to myself is why the announcement of the election left me so unmoved, why the campaign itself has failed to excite me and why the pros- pect of voting assumes the proportions of a civic chore rather than of an act prompted by political enthusiasm. I shall go to the polls and vote for a set of political prin- ciples, not with any great hopes of seeing them realised; but at least I shall vote, which is more than I. did at the municipal elections. The paradox of the situation in which I find myself is that I am confessing to this degree of electoral, apathy at the very time, when within the narrowed bounds of my various professional organisations and trade unions (I have to belong to no less than three in order to function as a free- lance writer) I find myself increasingly active. and active in a political sense.

The key to the paradox (if paradoxes have keys) is no doubt that I have a feeling that within a limited sphere, where one has particular knowledge of the facts and where some of the issues can be practically re- solved, it makes sense to be politically in- terested and active. The problems of our economy, the problems of our international relationships in the fields of finance, of trade, of armaments, appear to be com- 'Well then, what about a coalition govern-

pletely intractable. Neither party is likely to be able to influence the great powers whose decisions govern our destinies, directly or indirectly. Whichever party comes to power may make a shot at resolv- ing the balance of payments problems, may pay off some of our international debts. may finally make up its mind about Europe. But if there should be a major recession in the United State, neither of them will be able to do mucn to protect us from the effects.

1 shall, as 1 say, vote for one set of political principles because they seem to correspond more closely to my general view of how life and relationships between citizens and states should be ordered than do the other party's. But when I look behind the election slogans at the gritty realities of politics I find no immense differences. The Labour and Conservative parties are no longer two distinct and sharply defined bodies. There arc Labour sirs who are well to the right of some Conservatives. Some Conservatives could slip almost unnoticed into the right wing of the Labour party. I dislike the blurring at the edges.

I dislike, too, the fact that the election is being fought in terms of tactics, of skir- mishing and the scoring of points. There is no clear statement on either side of political principles conceived in terms of the quality of life—not just in terms of taxes or pay packets, of SET or allowances, important as these are. Politicians are busy men with large problems before them, whether they sit in the Cabinet or the shadow one; how much time have they to think about the shape of our society, the kind of world our children will live in and the patterns (they must be designed very quickly) on which they will, with luck, be able to build a reasonable, civilised existence?

Tibor Szamuely

In one respect, I imagine, I am unique among SPECTATOR contributors; 1 have be- come a British citizen only very recently, and the present general election marks the first time that I am involved in the all-important Matter of electing my government. This. some may think, puts me at a disadvantage when discussing the central event of our political life—but my drawback is more than compensated for by my invaluable ex- perience of having voted in numerous elec- tions which were not really elections at all. Under that peculiar system the sole un- certainty is whether the winning candidate achieves 99.8 or 99.9 per cent of the vote; whatever it does to one's faith in solemn constitutional guarantees, it certainly teaches one to appreciate genuine parliamen- tary elections much more than the foolish young men or their even more foolish elders who proclaim that freedom is worth sacri- ficing in the name of higher ideals such as 'equality' or 'good race relations'. Our cen- tury's sorry experiences should have taught everyone but the congenital simpletons and the deliberate wreckers that without political freedom there can be neither justice nor equality. And the supreme embodiment of freedom is a free parliamentary election- Eneland's greatest gift to the world.

Yet I would be less than candid were 1 to say that this particular election. for all its inrsortance in my life, fills me with in►oxica- tine ioy. On the surface. it has everything: a choice of parties and of candidates. a set of ponderous manifestoes, frenetic election-

eering campaigns and daily up-to-the minute polls. It has everything, that is, except for the issues.

The only thing the election is concerned with is the economy—an important sub- ject, as all would agree. But who on earth understands the economy? Is there a bigger balance of payments deficit today than in 1964? Does the world admire our economic health or not? When did we never have it so good—under Mr Harold M. or Mr Harold W? And is the pound in our pocket worth more or less, particularly if expressed in decimal coinage? The two parties give dia- metrically opposed answers to these ques-- Lions. It is all very confusing to the non- economist. As for the economist—by now everyone knows, that he understands less about the economy than anybody else.

Frankly, I don't believe that either party would be conspicuously better at managing the economy than the other. The less man- aging they do, the better. The Tories, at least, stand for private enterprise. Good. But wasn't it they who first introduced state planning? And anyway, Mr Wilson is not much of a raving Bolshevik himself.

The Tories have firmly pinned the econo- my to the mast of their electoral campaign and are ready to go down heroically, the tattered banner flapping limply in the dead calm of public unconcern. The really cru- cial questions, the issues which may deter- mine the country's whole future, have been successfully evaded by both parties.

The Common Market is the gravest con- stitutional issue to have arisen since the seventeenth century, yet the voters have, quite simply, been denied any voice in re- solving it. Referenda, we are told, are un- known to the British Constitution. (So, until very recently, was the three-line whip.)

Defence is not a vote-catching issue, yet every-responsible politician must know that today, for the first time in its history, the country is practically defenceless against attack by a major power. Our sole recourse, as Mr Healey has admitted, would be drop- ping the Bomb, i.e. committing national sui- cide. Or expecting the Americans to do the same on our behalf. War, of course, as every- one says, is unthinkable—but unthinkable things have happened before. Strange as it may sound, the state was invented to provide its people with defence, not dentures. Which party has the courage to remind the elector- ate of this?

Above all, I am deeply worried about the steady erosion of the freedom of the individual. Freedom depends upon law and order, yet the Toriei spoke up for law and order almost apologetically—thus enabling the Socialists to conjure up spine-chilling visions of Peterloo, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Botany Bay, hanging and flogging. Today, when for a few pounds' fine any seditious hooligan can beat up a policeman, when a noose is dangled over the head of the Foreign Secretary, when a cricket tour is banned on the command of a twenty year old anarchist, law and order is in full retreat. Which party will stand up for the nation's liberties in the face of the baying crowd of treasonable clerks, stupefied youths, ig- norant actors and race-crazed bishops?

On none of these vital issues, I am afraid, have the Conservatives presented much of a choice. But at least they offe, a hope: unlike the Socialists, they have not yet succumbed to the modish 'progressive' establishment. Which is why I support the Conservative party—and I can only wish that they forget about the balance of payments as soon as possible.