SIR,—The article by Mr. Angus Maude will create surprise in
many directions. Nowhere will it be read with more interest than in his own constitu- ency, where erstwhile loyal supporters of the Con- servative party are awaiting with equal interest the next general election to see whether Mr. Maude's hold upon the Conservative vote is as tenuous as many believe it to be.
It is believed that as things stand at the moment Mr. Maude will not be the only candidate in this • constituency offering himself for election on a Con- servative platform, the argument of the Independent being that in a situation where it is difficult to 'differentiate between Tory policy and that of Labour' (Mr. Maude's own words) there is room for a candidate who stands for true Conservative principles.
The fascination of Mr. Maude's article lies in trying to decide the extent to which it was written for purely parochial purposes. For somebody, some- where, may have taken note of the feeling in the Stratford-on-Avon and South Warwickshire constituency, both inside and outside the Conserva-
tive Association, and recognised that whatever may be the whole truth about the 'Winter of Tory Dis- content' in the country as a whole, it is certainly a fact in these parts. 'So,' it may have been argued, 'in -'that Tory stronghold of Stratford they want full-blooded old-fashioned Toryism, and they are likely to want it badly enough to support a rebel candidate. Let them have their "rebel," but in the interests of the convenience of everybody, let us see that it is the Member himself who rebels.' Mr. Maude contends that the stern political moralist would be wrong to regard this sort of behaviour as political pimping, preferring himself to regard it as part of the Tory instinct for survival which 'has shown itself in the past in an ability to discern in doubtful situations what the people of this country really want.' In any event it would' surely be worthy of Tory Central Office itself, and would at least indicate that however far the party as a whole has slipped leftwards, it has lost none of its campaigning ability.
One could be forgiven for reading Mr. Maude's article as having been written by a member of the .-party's right wing, and yet as I read Mr. Maude himself he is anything but that. We are considering a man who, after emigrating to Australia, returns again to this country and is immediately taken back into the party and admitted to its inner councils; in return for this he votes with the Socialist govern- ment in support of the imposition of oil sanctions on Rhodesia, not to mention support of the Social- ist pet theory of abolition of capital punishment. Such a man can hardly be regarded as a rabid right- winger.
The real test of what is behind all this will be the 'official' attitude adopted by the party towards this apparent rebel. After all, this is not back-bench stuff. This is the chief Opposition spokesman on colonial affairs committing this heinous breach of discipline. A man who must surely be one of those intimately concerned with the formulation of Opposition policy is dissociating himself from that policy by criticising it publicly. If Mr. Maude gets away with it, and his head does not roll, then it may be fair to deduce from this that he wrote his article primarily for consumption by the Stratford- upon-Avon Conservatives, and furthermore that he did so with the full approval of his party col- leagues. On the other hand, if he is disowned we shall have to accept that the task of 'differentiating Tory policy sharply from that of Labour' is not going to be undertaken, because electoral success is more important than political principles. In which case one can only hope that the most popular cry of supporters of the 'late' Conservative party at the next election will be 'Up the Rebels'!
G. H. CLAYTON-WRIGHT
7 Benson Road, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
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