Political Commentary
Attack and counter-attack
Patrick Cosgravel
The personal attack, like the argument ad hominem, is one of the most difficult weapons to use in British politics. True, harsh exchanges are part of the common coin of debate between rivals of different parties; and, crude satirists brought down Mr Henry rooke, just as irresponsible reporting brought down Mr Maudling. But the general Point remains: probably not since Ernest Revin accused George Lansbury of hawking 11;is Pacifist conscience around the Labour arty has an attack on a party colleague actuallY worked; and even then it could be arg,ned that Bevin merely administered the coup , ,srace to an already stricken Leader. All of 'vnich makes it more difficult to understand r Barber's waspish assault on Mr Enoch °well at the Conservative conference last week.
Of course Mr Barber, and those colleagues
including the Prime Minister — whom he consulted, felt that the attack was justified, without considering tactical grounds, any conference representatives who were Puzzled to account for the Chancellor's venom in terms of Mr Powell's gnomic and Mild conference speech would have been enlightened if they, like Mr Barber, had been able to see the far more scathing and 'ainaging attack he was to deliver at Lytham ater in the day. And perhaps only a handful of representatives have understood how deep the Personal resentment of Mr Powell is fllorig his old front bench colleagues, and ,,nw fast its growth has been during the last k'evy Months. Then again, though the terms he "as used have never been as direct as those e0113l0yed by Mr Barber, Mr Powell is mot unnself above the personal slash: since he treferred, during the last general election, to he leaders of the two parties as "a-man with Pipe and a man with a boat," he has ,..r?quently employed the cutting edge of his on members of the government — on Sir Alec Douglas-Home before the last .°11ference, and on Mr Heath anent the onrho affair, since then. One minister's inemorY went far back enough for him to tell rsne that Mr Powell had actually drafted in Cabinet the reasoned amendment to `h e Second Reading of the second Labour Re Relations Bill before, once he was disillleissed from the front bench, doing everything , Could to undermine the policy behind that 'esoned amendment. "The chaps," my 141,isterial friend said, "have had enough. neY've had it up to here." ,Pair enough — and there is no doubt that wtr Powell is an exceptionally irritating opent for anybody to have. Mr Barber's t!ioponsrge may have been all the more ready to e of at a sight of the Lytham speech because -..e unending one-sentence sniping at himself th and his Treasury ministers indulged in by Mr io
, owell in the House of Commons. It is also
:311e to say that it has increasingly appeared t'ini Ministers that both personal ambition and tbe Policies he now espouses leave Mr Powell ;;Ith no option but to try to ensure the _uyerthrow of the Government at the next e_lection. But, even if all this were true, what waS gained by the attack? e Like his last speech to a conference on pc°nomic matters — at Brighton in 1969 — Mr Brvell's remarks on "honest money" at l'ackpool fell rather flat. Even the speech at him am would not have succeeded in putting very prominently on the front pages, had „` not been for Mr Barber. The unease of vandidates in some marginal seats, created by the attempt to crush Mr Powell, was made clear to the Prime Minister later in the conference. There have already been some protests in his favour from various Conservative quarters. And the latest Daily Mail poll, showing as it does a continued erosion of Labour support, should (since it almost certainly merely confirmed the ORC polls undertaken for Central Office) merely have confirmed the belief of ministers that they are going to win the next election, and have little cause to fear Mr Powell. Finally, the attack is bound to cause annoyance if not bitter resentment among the many Tory voters outside the conference, who admire and even revere Mr Powell. Thus, nothing whatever was gained by Mr Barber's attack, or by the codicils added subsequently by Lord Hailsham and Mr Heath. However justified it was, it represented bad tactics.
And bad tactics are not something one expects to see from the Tories. When Sir Alec Douglas-Home rose, for example, to persuade the conference once more to support the continuance of sanctions on Rhodesia, his tactics, his manners, his whole mien, were perfect. So strong was feeling throughout the early part of the debate that even seasoned judges of politics shook their heads over the possibility of the Foreign Secretary's success. Yet, within a minute of the opening of his speech, Sir Alec had the total attention of the conference, and was on his way to winning its near-total support. Nor is it enough any longer to say that Sir Alec has this effect merely because he is Sir Alec. Certainly, he knows how to use the guilt-affection Conservative audiences feel for him, but the statesmanship, the objectivity, and the utter scrupulousness of his arguments are far more potent weapons. It is an immensely subtle matter — a matter of tone — to pin down precisely how a Home speech works, but I will try to suggest it by a comparison.
One of the cruder points made in favour of the continuance of sanctions by younger and less polished speakers before Sir Alec got up was that continuance would please black African countries, our trade with whom was far more important than with the white dominated countries of Southern Africa. It
was not a popular point, since Conservative conferences don't like the idea of being pushed around by blacks. But Sir Alec, too, made it: just to set the record straight he gave, in totally deadpan fashion, and without;. feeling that he had to draw any conclusiong from them, the comparative figures for
African trade, which showed elearly how minuscule a consideration Rhodesia was. In the law and order debate Mr Mark Carlisle (who, incidentally, made an excellent speech) was trying to do something similar in handling the amendment on capital punish ment. He was trying to show that statistics did not support a return to hanging. But his tone shaded over into the hostile as he described his personal reaction to the arguments of the hangers, and he lost the amendment. Sir Alec was in no such danger.
Sir Alec, one feels, would never have felt the need to attack Mr Powell. "Unlike some of our colleagues," said one of his aides to me afterwards, " we don't feel the need to be vulgar." But then, Sir Alec was trying to persuade the conference to adopt a policy of the utmost clarity — one Conservatives are inclined emotionally to reject, but one with reason on its side. Since Bishop Musorewa and Mr Smith were talking, he said, it would be foolish to remove the goad which might bring them to agreement. Anyway, he added, only through agreement with Britain could an independent Rhodesia enter fully and properly onto the international stage. There were not a few in the conference hall who, inclined to reject Sir Alec, or at least scoff at his annual turn, were eventually persuaded by his arguments. Not so with Mr Barber; nor, indeed, with the whole presentation by the front bench of its economic case throughout the conference.
Broadly speaking, the battle between majority and minority in the Conservative Party on the subject of the management of the economy is a battle between the dashand-gamble-for-growth men and the monetary-restraint and anti-controls men. Mr Powell declined the opportunity to present his case in full to the conference; nor did he do so at Lytham. Nor, indeed, was the economic debate in the hall marked with any particular distinction on any side. However, both the Chancellor, and the Prime Minister on Saturday, argued that the essential road to economic and electoral success lay through the steadfast pursuit of such controls as Phase Three allows, the keeping of nerves steady during the period of the growth gamble, and the determined — though not to the point of destructiveness — reform of some aspects of the Common Market. This is a policy which may well make for eventual political success, at least in the short term, but it is full of logical and economic holes, holes which Mr Powell has again and again exploited and exposed. The Chancellor, when attacking Mr Powell, scarcely bothered to answer his ar
guments. Now, that Mr Barber felt It necessary to launch an attack on Mr Powell — assuming he wasn't wholly motivated by personal anger and dislike — must indicate that he considers Mr Powell to be an enemy of weight and importance. (That is, of course, the Powell explanation, and Mr Powell is suitably grateful for the fillip it has given him.) If so, it follows that he should have dealt with greater intellectual clarity with Mr Powell's arguments. Had he done so, he might have earned the right to administer a rebuke, just as the then Mr Quintin Hogg did at the conference of 1968. As it is, it looks sus'piciously as though Mr Barber was not altogether sure of his case, and tried to crush an enemy rather than undertake the more important task of justifying a policy. If it all had to be done one feels that Sir Alec would have done it better; but one is pretty sure that Sir Alec would not have needed to do it.
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