Political Commentary
A revivalist chill down my spine Patrick cosgrave It is almost with trepidation that, even in the Week of their conference, I write again about the Liberals: I fear that that great dog which Mr Thorpe keeps as Shadow Chancellor 'night snap at me again, and I might not have InY own bulldogs with me to protect me. (For the record, Mr Pardoe, though I spent two Research happy years in the Conservative iesearch Department, I was never responsible for anything as grand as Home Policy, and never wrote a line of the 1970 Tory manifesto: Your own Mr Wintle, also a CRD graduate, should have informed you better than that However, to business; and business is the distinction between Liberal policies and Liberal politics. Pavement politics,' as Mr Enoch Powell Calls them, have undoubtedly been one of the main causes of Liberal by-election successes. At the same time, until very recently, the Liberal Party was distinguished, not for its attention to grass roots details, but for its delineation of futurism — every speech was more idealistic than the last, and stretched even more dimly into the distant future of a brotherhood of man and nations than did the most enthusiastic efforts of the Labour left. All this activity was understandable, and a great deal of it was energising and useful; though I would like to record my Own view that pavement politics have contributed a great deal more to the sum of human happiness in this country than has Parliamentary Liberal espousal of membership Of the EEC, abortion, the United Nations, and the bombing of Rhodesian trade routes. The 'eact, rernains that, while many (not all — not tor, example, those dealing with industrial relations) national Liberal policies are anathema to the average voter in his current dYsPeptic John Bull mood, most local Liberal Policies are a necessary manna for the weak, the ill, the forgotten folk buried in slums rural and urban alike.
But — in what do pavement policies consist? I have no doubt that a member of those
being who have involved themselves in Zing spokesmen for the unhappiness and down of people on every street corner, uewn every mean alley, have done good ali)ost beyond measure. To do some such good is clearly the driving inspiration of Mr Trevor Jones — Jones the Vote, who is the Liberal Grass roots architect. Yet, to what degree do rnost of these youngsters (and most of them 0,,re Youngsters) want to help, and to what uegree do they want to dominate? I made a short tour of Dulwich pubs the other night, When young Liberals were campaigning, and Conveying their enthusiasm. I have to say that a great deal of what I overheard was a con act. The young canvassers noted local discontents, and told their inter-locutors what 4,,.ational Liberal policy was in relation to those discontents. Some of the platform alanks they offered would make even Mr rardoe's ears burn, as though they had been cuffed with a newspaper by his owner because ne had sat on the Sofa. One of the youngsters told me that it was Liberal policy to do what Mr Michael Foot has always said he wants to do but has found impractical — equalise incomes across the board. Yet Mr Thorpe said recently that "we are a radical party, believing in the free enterprise system." . However, though that note of my tour is I,MPortant, it is not conclusive. The modern Liberal Party, the one that has been winning
by-elections, is a movement as much as it is a party, and nobody can exercise full control over, nor demand anything like full consistency from, a movement. The Liberals at the present moment are not at all unlike the movement of '45 or the Poujadistes, though Mr Thorpe is not in the least like Wilkes or Poujade, (As to their national policies, I see no reason to revise my view of a week or two ago about their plans for that sickly child, the national economy, as a result of their new long document: on fiscal, general economic, monetary, international and demand management policies they present merely a petty collocation of the more agreeablesounding views of the other two parties.) Out of a movement a party, even a governing party, may issue: but if the movement takes over the party, there are certain causes for worry.
Those causes exist because my hitherto distinction between those who favoured the cultivation of the grass roots (for good or ill reasons) and those who have been concocting national policies, is facile. There are three levels of Liberalism — the Thorpeites, who are a parliamentary British party; the do-gooders, who realise that the representatives of the other two parties at local and national level have been falling off in representing their constituents in ,their needs and are angry about that; and a third group who hover cleverly between the other two who want to fashion need and discontent into a power base which is authoritarian, and will be the instrument of an attempt to change the character of this country, not at all unlike (as
Mr Alastair Horne has shown in the Times) that made by the late President Allende in Chile. Mr Thorpe's anxious concern must be that, if the Liberals obtain a fairly large number of seats in the next general election, he will be swamped by pseudo-Liberals of the third type.
And yet he has the problem of teansmitting into a party. He has said:
The fact is that our readiness to interest ourselves, to involve ourselves, in local affairs has led to us being given a far readier hearing on national and international issues. The balance of our emphasis on national and local issues has been a reflection of what public opinion is concerned about, and the results of this year's elections suggest that people think the Liberals have got, tliat balance right.
That, in my view; is a pregnant passage, suggesting as it does, both that, in Mr Thorpe's view, the purpose of local activity is to gain a national hearing for other policies; and, second, that the justification of political activity is success. It is an uncommonly difficult line to walk: one must represent, and one must also lead. The sharpest criticism to be made of the Liberals at the moment is that they are anxious to represent at local level but to lead at national level, and that there is no fusion between the two. All our lampposts may be alight and we may all have indoor loos, but the nation may be organised in such a way, and doing such things abroad, as we may find repugnant. That is what I meant the other week when I talked about the arrogant face of Asquithian Liberalism: they are too willing to coddle us in our nappies, and do the adult thing themselves. As it happens, I fancy that Mr Thorpe is strong enough to resist this development: but I fear it nonetheless.
But, of course, Mr Thorpe must throw his hands up in delight about the fact that his party can win seats; and it would be churlish to knock his delight in its new capacity. However, though I have seen that the Liberals will contest Hove, I have not seen that they will contest, at least in any serious way, Wolverhampton South-West; and I note that, for all the extent of their victory in the last council elections, they failed to make any impact on Mr Eric Heffer's Liverpool empire. In both constituencies they would, of course, have to face MPs who enjoy, not merely national reputations, but outstanding load records. And these observations lead to the conclusion that the Liberal success is due more than anything else to the fact that the others haven't been doing their jobs, haven't been walking successfully that difficult line between the delineation of national endeavour and the satisfaction of local needs. I once asked Mr Heffer if he was afraid of the Liberals. "Just let them try," he said, "Just let them try." A young Tory candidate, looking to inherit a majority about 10,000, said in response to the same question: "There are no• safe seats nowadays."
Of course the Liberals have gained from the apparent failure of governments of both parties. Of course they have some good ideas. Of course they may even come through to victory. And, of course, they win only in those areas where the others have failed to balance national and local appeal. There is no discredit to them implied in that analysis: but it has to be said that they would not have got away with their adventure of the others had all — all — done their job of presenting a national ideal and, at the same time, doing justice to those who elected them. Lord Roseberry had the same problems as Mr Thorpe. He failed his party and the Young Liberals of his day: he allowed the emergence of Labour and served the nation. The fear must now be that Mr Thorpe is less than Lord Roseberry, and not enough more than Asquith, who let his country go in a series of drunken stupors. Whatever its virtues, whatever the errors of the others, the Liberal Revival sends a chill down the spine.
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