Political Commentary
Musical Chairmen
Patrick Cosgrave
Being Chairman of the Conservative Party as Mr William Whitelaw is about to discover is a singularly thankless task. The manifold responsibilities of the job and the manifold pressures to which the occupant is subjected — have perhaps only once been discharged• with near-total success by Lord WooIton, who became Chairman in 1946; and WooIton was a most unusual man. When he took over the task he was, further, in a very special position. As Messrs T. J. Lindsay and Michael Harrington remind us in a recent study of somewhat aphoristic character, but real use to the student of Conservative politics The Conservative Party, 1918-70 (Macmillan £5.95) "He accepted the position after extracting from Churchill a completely free hand in running the organisation. With his formidable experience of business methods and of Whitehall machinery, he was somewhat appalled by the loose-limbed; shambling structure that he found. His first instinct, as he tells us in his memoirs, was to scrap the whole thing and start again from scratch. However, he soon realised that organisations based on voluntary effort cannot be dealt with on the same basis as a business house or even a Whitehall Department. Changes had to be effected by persuasion and very patient persuasion at that not imposed by edict from on high. He saw, too, that the national structure of the party organisation was less important than the electoral efficiency of the constituency associations and the propaganda efficiency of Central Office. These were the ends to which he devoted his formidable energies."
All the general problems faced by Woo1ton will have to be faced by Mr Whitelaw. But he will not have anything like the unfettered authority enjoyed by his illustrious predecessor; he has not the same organisational experience and, as a party politician who would expect to enjoy high office in a future Conservative government and who might even lead the party one day he cannot concentrate so exclusively on organisation and propaganda (though it is only right to observe that Woo1ton executed his responsibilities in these directions in a highly inspirational way).
For all that, Mr Whitelaw is a very remarkable man, and perhaps the only senior Conservative who could even begin to be thought of as a Chairman of possible distinction. I find among the younger, more radical, more energetic, more valuable, more principled members of the party that he is looked upon with suspicion, because of an apparent preference for attitude and instinct over policy and programme. It is a fact that he works very largely by instinct, but it is often a very effective and sure instinct: when, for example, the morrow of the election defeat dawned he was the first member of the old Cabinet to articulate the necessity for wholehearted acceptance by the Tory Party of the people's verdict; and had he been in London immediately it is possible that the whole demeaning business of sucking up to the Liberals might have been avoided. If he were Leader of the Party he would by no means necessarily — as was suggested to me recently — be a Baldwin figure, for he is open to argument, and unshakable once he is convinced of the rightness of a course. He is not always the best-tempered of men — indeed, his temperament has more than once let him down — but he has a marvellously human touch absent in recent Conservative ministers, or too many of them, and he knows where the future of the party must lie.
So much for his qualities. The fact of the matter remains that the Chairmanship has been a bed of nails for the last fifteen years at least, and holding it has rarely done a man much good. Both Lord Hailsham and the late lain Macleod felt it did actual damage to their further prospects, and Mr du Cann has never held ministerial or front bench office since he vacated it but then, he ran foul of Mr Heath. Lord Hailsham was a splendidly vigorous and inspirational Chairman. In his bounciest period the fortunes of the party were already waxing: he merely uttered the roar. And, when his own chance of the leadership came his ebullience was remembered to his disadvantage, and it was put about that Quintin lacked judgement.
It is in no way offensive to say of any of the successors of Lord Hailsham and Macleod that they were not in the same class as popular politicians, nor possessed of the same potential as chairmen. Mr du Cann was appointed by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and dismissed by Mr Heath. His precise brief takes a little unravelling: under Mr Heath's influence Sir Alec decided quite rightly in my view that, after the election defeat of 1964 an essential element of Conservative reconstruction would involve a massive intellectual rethink. Mr du Cann was, however, also concerned with administrative reform. As long as Sir Alec was Leader, Mr Heath took charge of the policy groups: when he succeeded Sir Alec he was happy neither with the attention Mr du Cann devoted to them, nor with his activities in the constituencies, where, indeed, the Chairman had run into hostile criticism. (It may be added that Mr du Cann was not thought to be a devoted admirer of the new leader.) He was replaced by Mr Barber perhaps the only one of those mentioned (I exclude Lord Blakenham, who held the office for such a brief period) whose subsequent career as a party politician was in no way damaged by his tenure at Smith Square. Mr Barber had enormous tenacity, enjoyed great popularity at all levels of the party, and showed a courage equivalent to that of
Spectator June 22, 1974 Macleod in facing apparently adverse circumstances during the 1970 general election campaign.
It will be seen from the foregoing that the Party Chairman's job is most difficult when he faces a combination of crisis in the partY's thinking, and crisis in its organisation. Thus is Mr Whitelaw's task most difficult. The organisation is in a particularly sorry state: this is partly because of overmanning, part/Y because of the use of outside advisers to do the tasks which represent the summit of a party official's excitement in his job, most of all, I think as I argued some weeks ago because the present Leader and those closest to him tend to despise the things to which the organisation has been for so long dedicated. Measures have been taken, it is true, t° improve things, but they seem unlikely to he sufficiently radical to produce impact.
Then, too, the party's thinking is at a crossroads. Perhaps the most valuable thing the authors of The Conservative PartY, 1918-70, have done is to explain in a relativelY simple way the difference and continual ten' sion between the paternalist and the radical elements in the Party's make-up. (They have done that job, it must be said, infinitely better than did Lord Blake, in his superficial Ford lectures on the subject). In the long run of the history of the Conservative Party, the paternalist tradition — the search for the middle consensus, the view that the leadership al: ways knows best — has been dominant. 130' from time to time the party, viewed his' torically, has needed a radical injection, sue' as that provided by Joseph Chamberlain, or Mr Enoch Powell and Sir Keith Joseph (sur ported, in those happy and united days, by Mr Edward Heath) in the run-up to the Selsdon Park meeting. This is a fairly simplistic way °I describing the present dilemma of shock fray' which the Tories at all levels are suffering, IS the aftermath of the last general election. There are many other factors involved, but the simplistic and abstract decision lies at the heart of the matter.
Thus, a dual challenge faces Mr WhitelaW. By temperament he is no organisation mail; and by temperament he is a paternalist' Neither part of his constitution augurs Par' ticularly well for his prospects as Chairina,,t1„' But there was a time, just after the 1911 election, when connoisseurs on both sides a!, the House of Commons, and many in OA' press gallery, emphasised to people who ho" never heard of him how formidable and P°.; tential a man he was. In Ireland, for all errors, and for all of the subsequent collapse of the delicate machinery he created,11 sci enlarged himself. So it may be at 32 Srn' It had better be so. It is, of course, tirli; derstandably difficult for a party whiics reversed several of its declared principle. when last in office to turn around and 1.'". adopt them. (One distinguished former C0'1_:, servative cabinet minister told me the oth.elo day that nothing on earth could induce him' serve again on an Opposition policy grou„Pf; because the work that he had put into sn't, groups before 1970 had been so clearly vast, ed.) But if that is what needs to be done, Oleo it must be done: the pre-1970 re-think Wer clearly, to any objective mind, a much deefl„g and more consequential affair than anYth,l's frankly, than the nothing which " happened since the defeat of 1974. And the charge against Mr Whitelaw is tti:iti he is a charter propagandist, all things t° "ot men. It is not, in fact, true. Rather, it has 04 always been true. Mr Whitelaw is, for most va the time, nice to all men, which is whol/YA different matter. But he is certainly concern!0", to find out how thinking is going, even 1.1,1"le reactions are going, outside the closed of the leadership of any leadership, of Ili, organisation in which he has ever worked. imagination always goes outward, never , ward. And in that lies his chance of.succesP
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