Keeping the Troops Happy
POLITICAL COMMENTARY
By ALAN WATKINS
ETURNING to those warm Westminster cor- n.ridors after the stirring events of the past month, the most striking thing one notices is how little the mood has changed. For instance, is this, can it really be, the new model Mr Edward Heath who has been displayed before our awed gaze in the past week or so? Though Mr Heath did not by any means disgrace himself, the trans- formation was not obvious to the naked eye at question time on Tuesday. Again, we may recall that when the House rose for the recess there were two principal topics of discussion. One was the reshuffle, the other the fate of the twenty- six-odd abstainers (the precise computation varies) on the Prices and Incomes Act. Today exactly the same subjects are being discussed. Of course, the reshuffle, dressed up as a plot, was given a very thorough airing by Labour MPs at Brighton; and they cannot now find very much that is new to say about it. Littk,-however, has been heard in the recess about the abstainers, and their position provides a convenient starting- point for this article. For on Monday the Government's redeployment policy, or lack of it, is to be discussed; on the same day the parliamentary Labour party is to hold a meeting; and on Tuesday Part IV of the Prices and In- comes Act is to be debated. Clearly there are opportunities here for diversions of all kinds. Are Mr Frank Cousins, Mr Michael Foot and their friends to persist in their abstentions? Will they abstain in the redeployment debate, or in the Part IV debate, or in both? And will any stern warn- ings be issued at the meeting of the parliamentary Labour party?
Before attempting to answer these questions, it is as well to go back to the situation when the House rose. At this stage Mr John Silkin, that most untypical of Chief Whips, was in favour of doing nothing. Mr Harold Wilson agreed with him. (Mr Wilson is a great one for advocating doing nothing, and he is usually quite right.) On the other hand, Mr Emanuel Shinwell was in favour of some discipline being exercised. He was joined in this by such sturdy figures as Mr James Wellbeloved, whose chilling cries for blood made Mr Duncan Sandys sound like a convert to the Howard League for Penal Reform.
Since then three things have happened. Mr Richard Crossman has been appointed Leader of the House; the decision has been made to activate Part N; and the wage freeze has been approved by the Labour party conference. The first change suggests a lenient solution: the other two suggest something more ferocious. Mr Crossman is against making an example of anyone. If the process went far enough, who knows? someone might end up making an example of him. On the other hand (the Shinwells and Wellbeloveds argue), it is one thing to forgive an act of absten- tion in the turmoil of two months ago; quite another to allow the disaffection to be repeated brazenly. Who can tell what terrible insurrections might follow? Weakness here might lead to . . . no, the possibilities are too awful to contemplate. Moreover, when the original abstentions took place, the Labour party conference had not approved the statutory wage freeze. Now it has done so. Surely this changes matters?
At this point it is convenient to have a quick look at the law and custom of the Labour party ;constitution. For. one. thing, the standing orders. of the parliamentary Labour party mention the decisions of the party meeting, not those of the party conference. And, for another thing, it is extremely doubtful whether these standing orders are currently in force. Perhaps this is just as well, as few Labour MPs have actually bothered to read them. And perhaps it does not very much matter anyway, as the Labour party is perfectly capable of enforcing a kind of rough justice, or lynch law (you can take your choice), when the mood takes it, standing orders or no standing orders.
However, the argument from the party con- ference is a very difficult one for Mr Wilson cur- rently to deploy. He is, as the lawyers say, estopped. As we all know, when he was asked what he would do in the face of unfriendly con- ference decisions, he replied 'govern.' Mr Wilson can hardly argue that conference decisions must be accepted by back-benchers but not by the Government; more, that the Government has the right to select those decisions that do have to be accepted, such as the one on the wage freeze, but not, presumably, those on redeployment, military expenditure and Vietnam.
Certainly if Mr Wilson uses the party con- ference argument there are those, such as Mr Foot, who are prepared to turn it against him. Indeed one hears that Mr Foot deplores all those burial services for the party conference. He argues that in the whole period 1945-51 the con- ference went only once against the wishes of the Attlee government : that was on the question of tied cottages. Today, after only one conference, the Government has been defeated on three im- portant subjects. This may not matter at all to the Government. Surely, however, it matters to the individual Labour back-bencher? He cannot very well be expelled from the party (though the whip may be withdrawn, which is another matter entirely) for supporting conference decisions.
Next week, nevertheless, I do not expect to see any Labour abstentions in the redeployment de- bate, despite the logical attractions of such a course. The party meeting is unlikely to reimpose standing orders: probably, however, it will come to a decision collectively to support the activation of Part IV. And the result will be that the absten- d4ions on Tuesday will be rather fewer than they were last time.
It would, of course, be unwise to make too much of the reaction of the left to the activation of Part IV and to the so-called redeployment policies. Those battles have been fought and won by the Government.
All is safely gathered in, Ere the winter storms begin as Lord Soper would doubtless put it. But will there be any winter storms? Probably not. Rhodesia apart, it looks at the moment as if we are in for a quiet six months. It is true that the programme managers hope to get twelve Bills through by Christmas, but they are all fairly non- contentious : they include. the Companies Bill (which will deal with political contributions), the Leasehold Enfranchisement Bill and the Criminal Justice Bill. There is a sense in which a quiet session of this description presents problems to. Mr Crossman and Mr Silkin. It is easier to keep the boys happy when there is a struggle on. In more relaxed times they tend to become bored.
And here we come to the question whose answer must precede any meaningful measures of parliamentary reform: to what extent, if at all, is the Government prepared to allow itself to be influenced by the House of Commons? On this subject Mr Wilson behaves rather like the man doing the trick with three thimbles and a pea. At the party conference he ,says that the Government's responsibility is not to the con- ference but to the country. At the party meet- ing he says that the Government's responsibility is not to the meeting but to the House of Com- mons as a whole.
In the past the complaint of the Labour party's libertarians was that the party meeting decided a course of action in secret (or semi- secret) and that subsequently everyone was ex- pected to conform. Today that complaint is out of date. Indeed it presupposes a degree of party democracy which, if it existed, would be the wonder of all who beheld it. What happens today is that Mr Wilson comes down to a meeting stage- managed by Mr Shinwell and packed with peers, ministers and other kept men. He then asks for a vote of confidence in himself and whatever it is that he has decided to do; which he duly gets.
Whether such a system can last for the next four years •is doubtful Certainly Mr Crossman must have his doubts. But what is the alternative? The system of specialist committees about which we have recently heard so much? The com- mittee system, in the form in which its claims are generally advanced, is based on two assump- tions : first, that back-benchers are badly in- formed and, second, that if they were better in- , formed the Government would pay more atten- tion to them. Neither assumption is necessarily valid. As Mr Enoch Powell once observed, there is very little information of any importance you cannot acquire if you really set your mind to it. And as for the Government being influenced only by the well-informed, there are illustrations in abundance of governments being influenced by the badly-informed, by the positively ignorant and even, on occasions, by the near-imbecile.
• There is, it seems, only one way in which policy can be influenced by the House of Commons as a whole. This is, very simply, for the Government to cease, regarding every vote as a vote of con- fidence in itself. I offer this thought to Mr Cross- man, who has a taste for basic solutions. Mr Wilson, unhappily, does not share this taste. In any case, he realises that the House of Commons is, in our curious state of public opinion, about as unpopular as the party conference, and that he gains credit by going'ovii the heads of both.
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