Time for Jo to Go?

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

By ALAN WATKINS

A T the press party given by the Liberals

A

earlier this week Mr George Kiloh (which is pronounCed to rhyme with 'silo') was clearly enjoying himself. Mr Kiloh, it is by now hardly necessary to add—though I will do so for the benefit of those who have not yet read their newspapers—is the chairman of the Young Liberals. At the party he was the attraction of the evening. Hardly had he entered into con- versation with one seeker after truth than he was summoned to meet another. By comparison, such figures as Lord Byers, Mr Jeremy Thorpe and Mr Eric Lubbock were wallflowers. No one was interested in what they had to say. The hero of the hour was Kiloh. He is twenty-three and 'reading for the bar.'

And as things turned out, the interest in Mr Kiloh turned out to be completely justified. On Wednesday he won a notable victory over the party leadership. An executive resolution pledg- ing undying loyalty to NATO and the Atlantic Alliance was 'referred back' by the Assembly. Quite why the executive wanted the resolution debated at all is something of a mystery. Cer- tainly its wording was calculated to provoke the Young Liberals; so was the reputation as a cold warrior of its mover, Mr Richard Moore, who made the kind of speech I used to hear him deliver to great effect at the Cambridge Union thirteen years ago. The truth seems to be that the executive genuinely wanted a debate; though many of them, as a matter of fact, were them- selves worried about the terms of the resolution. The debate that followed was not, perhaps, very distinguished. But it did manage to encapsulate the theme of this assembly : to what extent is the Liberal party to become a party of protest?

Having set the scene, we can turn to a ques- tion which many Liberals ask when the lights are low and no one else, as they think, is listening: how much longer will Mr Jo Grimond carry on as leader of the party? It is as well to begin by looking at the situation through Mr Grimond's eyes. After all, when and if he goes it will be by his own decision and no one else's. Criticisms of him there may be, but no one is likely to try to dislodge him. Even an ailing Clement Davies hung on for many months before he was persuaded to do the decent thing and, as he doubtless put it at the time, hand over the tiller (Davies was a great one for nautical metaphors) to a younger man. Far be it from me to compare Mr Grimond today to Clement Davies in 1955-56: the point to note is that dislodging a party leader is always a chancy business, and Mr Grimond is as securely based as anyone.

However, contrary to the superficial impres- sion he gives, Mr Grimond is a man of moods. He is as volatile, in his way, as Mr George Brown. At one period he believes that some time, some day, he will have the opportunity of putting the country to "rights; at another he wonders whether this distasteful business of politics is really worth all the pain and grief.

the latter part of 1965 and the early pert Of this year Mr Grimond was frequently in a mood not so much of despair as of resignation.

In the middle of last year, we may recall, Mr Grimond anticipated the possibility of Labour's losing its then narrow majority in the winter months. With great lucidity and great care, he laid down the terms—and very moderate terms they were—for a Liberal guarantee of support to the Government. Not only was there no formal response from the Government; worse, his own party turned against him. There were apoplectic letters in the Liberal News and almost equally irate meetings of Liberal MPs in the House of Commons. Judging by the angry reactions he provoked, he might almost have been proposing a family reunion between the Asquiths and the Lloyd Georges.

It is true that Mr Harold Wilson's response, in private at any rate, was somewhat less hostile. For a short time he actively considered the pos- sibility of electoral reform, and the Queen's Speech of 1965 was written specifically with Liberal support in mind. But in practical terms Mr Grimond and the Liberals received very little change from what was a promising politi- cal situation; and in the Christmas recess he let it be known that he was considering giving up the leadership. Subsequently he amplified this: he would, he said, stay until after the elec- tion, but might reconsider his position if either major party obtained a working majority.

Has anything changed since then? The evi- dence is that it has. A month or so ago, in a broadcast on Southern Television, Mr Grimond made it clear that he would continue to lead the party. Assuming .that he means what he says—and, to be fair to him, he has a better record in this respect than most politicians—we can piece together some reasons for the change. First, of course, the general election was not nearly such a gloomy occasion for the Liberal party as Mr Grimond and his colleagues had expected in the early part of the year. With twelve seats, the party was back to its 1945 strength. Secondly—and more important— Labour's large majority, taken in conjunction with the deflationary measures, have made Mr Grimond's task much easier than it would other- wise have been. They have enabled him, if he wishes to take the opportunity, both to appear more radical than Labour and, at the same time, to maintain and emphasise the Liberal party's separate identity. They have, in fact, gone a long way towards solving his basic problem, alike with his active supporters and his passive voters. Let me elaborate. The conventional view of the Liberal future—certainly the view previously held by Mr Grimond—was that in some unspeci- fied and mysterious, indeed well-nigh miraculous, fashion a new radical party would come about. The left wing of the Labour party would in the meantime have been hived off as a true 'Socialist' party. For this happy state of affairs to materialise, it was assumed that it would be necessary or at least desirable (however regret- table it might be in other respects) for there to'be a prolonged period of Conservative govern- ment. Or, alternatively, the new party might be formed as a result of the Liberals holding the balance in the House of Commons. This analysis is hardly borne out by events. It is not borne out by events in the Labour party in 1959-61, when, as Mr Richard Crossman some- what gleefully noted, it looked as if the Con- servatives really would rule for a decade. Nor is it borne out by the events of 1964-66, when the Liberals very nearly did hold the balance. In neither period was there the slightest sign of the new party of Mr- Grimond's dreams being formed.

And, on the face of it, the result of the general election, even allowing for the Liberals' increased representation, seemed to make the emergence of a new party even less likely. But Mr Wilson's July measures have changed the situation. Today it is not the old Liberal right that should be opposed to collaborating with Labour. Indeed, if they are true to their dogmatic anti-inflationary principles, they should, if anything, be rather more favourably disposed towards such a course. Instead, it is the radical wing of the Liberals that should regard with abhorrence the prospect of any affiance with Labour's 'non-Socialist' wing. To put the situation in another way: Mr Gritnond should be thinking in terms, not of allying himself with Labour's right wing, but of,taking over Labour's left wing. The prize at stake is a substantial one. It is that a sizeable chunk of the urban working class might once again begin to vote Liberal. And, if this came about, Mr Grimond would be seriously in business.

I wish I could report that Mr Grimond sees things in this light. I regret that I cannot. Having recently talked to him, all I am confident of is that he has a vague, unformulated notion that the pattern of British politics is changing. He hopes that the Liberal party will in some way be a .beneficiary; that another Torrington, another Orpington will shortly enliven the scene and give encouragement to his supporters. Some of these supporters, however—they range from Mr Christopher Layton to those ferocious Young Liberals—see matters in a different way. So, it is reasonable to assume, do MPs such as Mr Eric Lubbock, who remains the most likely bet as Mr Grimond's successor.

The truth is that at this moment consensus politics have broken down. The centre of British politics has been exposed as not only soft but rotten. Mr Grimond, however, persists

in thinking in terms appropriate to the late 'fifties and early 'sixties. True, he still wants to lead a radical party, but he sees it as a radical party

of the centre, a party operating within the con-

sensus. He has, in the past ten years, done his party service which it had no right to expect.

He has accomplished most of what he set out

to do. If you like putting things in this way, he has fulfilled his historic role. Inevitably, he

was a man of his time, and he is now perhaps beginning to, look a trifle dated. Would it not be ',Ater if he handed over to someone who could now seize the Liberal opportunity?