Political commentary
Inflation of rights
Colin Welch
Looking back over the conferences, one thing stands out like Jo Grimond among the Liberals. This is that the Tories are now unarguably the only party fit to be left in charge of the pound. They alone are for sound money. Here they stand and here, if they are wise, they will stick, no dead sheep at the Treasury but an Iron Chancellor under the wool. If they are wiser still, they will take Tim Congdon's advice, offered in the Times, and campaign on and for a balanced Budget — an aim desirable and practicable, within reach, more popular, measurable and comprehensible than monetarism and its sophisticated off- spring. This alone should, and with luck will, win them the next election, say the polls what they may.
Some gullible souls might have been deceived by the Social Democrats' incomes policy. They might have hoped that this single sandbag would be enough to hold back the wild inflationary tide the Social Democrats otherwise propose to unleash. But even this pathetic precaution is now, by their own act, denied to the Social Democrats. Poor Roy Jenkins, confronted by Paul Johnson and Peter Kellner on the box, looked shamefaced, like a man who has lost his trousers. No matter that they were no thick durable pair of corduroys, but rather a miserable paper dhoti or figleaf, bereft of which in fact he looked hardly more naked than before. It was he himself and his colleagues who had attach- ed such disproportionate importance to this pitiful cache-sexe. It is not for him to pro- nounce its loss of no consequence. Open options are nice to have; but you can't cam- paign on them.
He looked a little tired too, as if he were enjoying his politics less. And no wonder, after that dreadful rolling conference. It surely is a bad idea, like playing Wagner's Ring not only on four separate nights but also in four widely separated cities. All con- tinuity is lost, all possibility of development and of Social Democrats really getting to know each other, all feeling of movement towards a great climax. To expect one fine speech from the leader is reasonable. To ex- pect three is like asking Brunnhilde to im- molate herself three times over in the course of three different music-dramas.
One rum thing — it may have been pure chance, but I doubt it — was the number of distinguished-looking and notably civil Social Democrats I met who had spent a lot of their working lives abroad. They were not heart-of-darkness horror-horror men, nor settlers, plantation or mine managers, replete with cynical worldly wisdom, nor anything of that sort. No, they had been diplomats or Commonwealth servants, or `educationists' or servants of one of those high-minded, open-handed, air-conditioned international soup-kitchens. Across my mind flashed yarns of how all the well- balanced smoothies at our Washington em- bassy had put it about — in the most suave and persuasive tones, of course — that Mrs Thatcher, then in opposition, was a shrill, hysterical no-hoper, a bit off her head, a sort of suburban English Goldwaterette. They were Callaghan men then, and I bet they're Social Democrats now.
From abroad our politics here must look vexatiously, incomprehensibly and madly partisan, with rival hordes of raucous ex- tremists slanging each other for no obvious good reason, as silly as a domestic row looks when you don't know what it's about. High time, it must seem, for reasonable people in the centre to stop all this nonsense and pull the nation together.
Idle to point out that the mess we are in is a middle-of-the-road mess, or that the sensible-seeming middle-of-the-road solu- tions to all our problems have all been tried before and failed, are indeed the disease itself rather than the cure. Idle-to point out that sense and salvation must therefore logically reside somewhere to the left or right of where we now are. Idle to point to Mrs Thatcher's extreme immoderate moderation, judged by any standards recently prevailing here or anywhere else. All this is hidden from the benevolent but remote observer from abroad, accustomed as he is to find wisdom always in the mid- dle.
A letter in these columns recently pointed out that all or nearly all civil servants are now Social Democrats. An ORC poll reveals that, among the clergy, Social Democrats outnumber Tories by 23 per cent and Labour by 41 per cent. Without being too dogmatic, may we suggest that all these people are to some extent protected from British reality, whether by long sojourns overseas, or by state-dispensed affluence and pensions indexed or for some other reason substantial (not the poor clergy, of course!); by a common distaste for Mam- mon and his needs; or by a mild and op- timistic secular theology, more unworldly than other-worldly, not too clear about either God or Ceasar, mindful more of social conscience than of conscience unadorned. For all such, Social Democracy offers a happy and respectable escape into
may I say? — imaginationism. (I adapt the word from David Steel, who bade us throw away Marxists and monetarists alike. and run our affairs by the light of our own imagination — or perhaps rather his own.) ' Apart from monetary inflation, another sort of inflation pervaded and dominated, like a nasty smell from the drains, all the conferences but one. I mean the reckless in' flation of rights. Almost the first thing I heard at the Liberals' was Mr Wainwright expounding the basic right of everyone ta earn a living. If this means no more than the right to offer one's services, balanced by the potential employer's right to accept or refuse, fair enough. If it means more, as surely it must to Mr Wainwright, it Must rest' on someone else's duty to provide, employment, presumably regardless of need or suitability. Relevant duties are what backs the currency of rights; without such backing, declared rights are just Weimar °r Monopoly money. The right to this, the right to that: I cant list them all. The homosexuals were Par- ticularly aggressive, demanding among hundreds of other things the right tc), `positive representation in education an the media of homosexuality and the lives di Gay people' and 'the right to have, raise and care for children' — both rights which' insofar as they are not already spectaculanYf conceded, involve duties: the duty I( teachers and journalists to speak favourably about homosexuals; the dutY sis children to be cared for by homosexuals and of their parents (if other than the homosexuals themselves) to acquiesce; the duty perhaps of moral censors w ensure that all this is done. The relative discretion and modesty of numerous Tory hotnusegt: uals were particularly welcoine by contrale By taking 'a worldwide view of rights tle:4 Liberal Councillor Meadowcroft reduc,if this sort of inflation ad absurdurn. , he nursery education is a right in London: cried, 'is it not a right also in Calcutta? u if a free health service is a right in Britain, r should it not also be a right in Bangladesh lt, Why should nursery schools be a `rig,110 anywhere? And, if we can't fund our °Co health service properly, what real dut_Y,„ in we assume to fund one in Bangladesh? here Bangladesh, moreover, why not everywn,"0 else? And precisely who is to suffer art_d!,0 short here, to ease suffering there? 1).1;51 Councillor Meadowcroft tells us, he is
issuing dud cheques.
The two sorts of inflation are close1Y °fon; netted. Together they spell death out Liberal England — nothing strange 8°_,,ch it, either, just tragic. Perhaps some '1.1`"crs thought passed through Jo Grir3°Iiced mind as, like the last sad squire, he ata'here out of David Steel's ovation. For n°w 00e in his own party now will he find allfi,ht apart from himself determined tO ,rse, these two cancerous growths. Where
indeed, but among the Tories?
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