Political commentary
Where the vultures fly
Ferdinand Mount
Noises off. Voices. Knock, knock, knock, like at the start of a French play. A small man scurries on to the platform, whispers something to David Steel, goes off, on again, whispers to Clement Freud. Steel off, Freud off. More knockings, more chatter Offstage, the clink of cups. Tea, at a time like this. At the rostrum, Mr Roger Pincham, Liberal candidate for Leominster, gamely ploughs on: 'what we're up against is not apathy but lethargy.' An interesting distinction, but what they are up against at this moment is waiting off-stage, having been released from a sealed red AlfaRomeo outside the Southport Theatre ten Minutes earlier. Knock, knock, knock. The gangways fill with hacks and voyeurs. Mr Pincham subsides. A vote is taken. The Liberal Party has voted, triumphantly, overwhelmingly, 'to change the political and social system rather than to become an acquiescent partner in it' AND/OR 'in the Short term, to enter a Parliamentary agreement.'
A rustle in the wings and here comes. . Mr Pincham again, on stage this time to be chairman for the next debate. Liberals are always popping up in different parts of the hall, sharing with provincial rep the difficulty of suggesting huge armies, viz, shortage of personnel. Mr Pincham has a salmon-pink tie and a salmon-pink face and looks like a well-breeched Herefordshire cider-farmer (he is a London stockbroker). Off he goes. Emergency debate on oil and Rhodesia. Stirring stuff. Nobody is above the law. Remember what happened to King Charles the First.
And now, quite quietly, from the back, Mr Steel and Mr Freud bring on a bent, pale man with hollow eyes. Bring on? Drag on, hold up, hold back. Are they hospital orderlies or warders? Eugene Aram walked between with gyves upon his wrist? Not a fair parallel at all, except for the dismal, awful character of the proceedings. This is the theatre of embarrassment in spades. But first Mr Pincham has a request from the Police to announce. The laughter dries in the throat.
The hall rises, well, forty per cent of the hall rises, uneasily, more like people looking for their coats than fans exploding into a demonstration of loyalty. The cheers are muted. Home-made banners are waved, all two of them: Welcome Jeremy — Jeremy is Magic, In Liberal terms, for one in Mr. Thorpe's position, this seems about the right degree of standing ovation. For a former leader charged with armed robbery, no doubt more would be standing; for one charged with genocide, fewer. It is a poignant display, all the same, not straight forwardly poignant like the figure of Red Rum silhouetted in succulents in the cactus garden in Hesketh Park, Southport, but poignant in its confusion of motives, its jumble of affection and misery and bitterness.
Mr Thorpe sits down next to Lord Gladwyn who has written a thoughtful letter to The Times suggesting that Thorpe should stand as an independent Liberal to avoid embarrassment all round. The distinguished moralist, B. Levin, calls this 'possibly the most dishonourable suggestion ever made by an honourable man.' Oh, I don't know about that. The competition's strong. Gladwyn is made of stern stuff, has not stood his ground against Gromyko for nothing. Now he courteously shakes hands with Thorpe who puts his name-card firmly in position to avoid any possibility of mistaken identification.
Mr Pincham repeats the request from the police. Thorpe manages deathly smile. Dr Ian Blair of Abingdon continues his speech about King Charles I. Dangers of melodramatic historical parallels. Loud' demands for the media to sit down. Ringing cry of 'Clear off, vultures.' Vultures take evasive action. Further agonised cry of 'Excuse me, is there a doctor in the house?' Mind boggles. It seems a girl has hurt her arm or ankle — pecked by vultures, probably. Dr Blair apologises; he is not that sort of doctor. Nobody is what he seems, Mr Pincham not cider-farmer, Dr Blair not proper doctor. And Mr Thorpe? What a melancholy wreck he looks, sunken eyes, sunken face. Who would have thought he had so much impudence in him? All round him Liberal MPs are bristling with indignation at his presence, except Mr Richard Wainwright who has gone outside to bristle. You have to get up early in the morning to bristle more self-righteously than Mr Wainwright. In fact, there seems to be a competition to see which leading Liberal can get up earliest in the morning to tell BBC listeners how betrayed and deceived he feels. Every day one or other of them is on the Today programme sounding off about how Mr Thorpe has broken his undertakings to them. Said he would resign if allegations became public. Didn't resign. Said he would not stand for re-election if charged. Is standing. Said he wouldn't come to Southport. Comes. And, what's more, will stay if not forcibly prevented. After ringing Mr Steel up every five minutes all week, he now bounces all over the conference, holding a dinner party, addressing startled foreigners, pinning a Do Not Disturb notice on the lapel of Mr Kenneth Rose, one of my eminent fellow-vultures, before disappearing in a cloud of smoke off down the M6 and leaving a trail of devastation behind. There are detectives from the Serious Crimes Squad in the coffee room interviewing more vultures. Questions are asked about secret funds.
What happened to the £49,000? And the £20,000? Most Liberals never knew the party had so much money. And what are these tales of rumpus and mayhem at the National Liberal Club? Even Mr Steel's speech on Saturday was finished off by a middle-aged National Front man grabbing the microphone and accusing Mr Steel of keeping the Red Flag flying at Westminster. Mr Steel wrested the mike away from the fascist loony with a vigour which has not received sufficient credit. But by now the vultures seem too glutted to raise their pens. Of course Mr Thorpe ought to have kept out of the public eye until the charges against him were disposed of, but it was not for his Liberal colleagues to say so — although Mr Steel was quite entitled to take the foreign affairs spokesmanship away from him pro tern. Yet those of us who criticise the Liberals for cant and disloyalty and pre-judging the case ought to take full account of the scale of the embarrassment with which Mr Thorpe has deluged the party. Easy to say that Labour or the Tories would have moved in some unspecified heavy way to contain the damage; not quite so easy to see how.
Naturally the Liberals believe that the Thorpe imbroglio has deprived the public of a golden opportunity to view Liberal policy and strategy displayed in all their glory. But ideas do not make sense or add up to a coherent policy merely because there are lots of them. Liberal ideas tend to be bitty, multifarious, not worked through and not as fresh as they might be. The housing resolution, for example, was three pages long and was supposed to reduce the burden of housing subsidies; yet it not only proposed higher government grants and easier mortgages but also suggested that local authorities might be able to write off their entire housing debt (at an extra cost of £1,500 million a year). The resolutions on inflation and taxation make no mention of the money supply or of the preservation of the value of the currency. Indeed, the economic spokesman, Mr Pardoe, boasts that the Liberals have never endorsed or voted for any cuts in public spending. 'We have always said that in a time of rising unemployment it is even more important to keep up public spending. At this time we should be increasing our borrowing requirement rather than reducing it.' Far from representing the voice of moderation, Mr Pardoe is the most inflationary politician now at work — and in his manic devotion to a statutory incomes policy, the most illiberal. As an afterthought, he is now the only leading British politician to advocate withdrawal from Northern Ireland largely, it seems, because he was being interviewed on Irish radio at the time. The Thorpe business is not the only reason for not voting Liberal.
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