Westminster Commentary

The 'Potamus Takes Wing

By BERNARD LEVIN

The instinctive repugnance felt for the Con- servative Party by people like myself (I have often said that my right hand would •fly up and strike me in the face if 1 voted Tory) was always based, in so far as it has been based on anything more sensible than starting to read the New Statesman too young and not giving it up suffi- ciently early, on a vague feeling that the Tory Party's heart was in the wrong place, while the Labour Party's—despite the repellent nature of the body in which it was all too frequently en- cased—beat in the proper rhythm. Mr. Alan Brien not long ago, in these very pages, talked of Us and Them, and it is this form of sheep-and- goatery that has unconsciously, if not explicitly, possessed many of our generation for a long time.

What is more, there were good grounds for it. Before the war, the Tory Party was, broadly speaking, both immoral and incompetent. Many of its members are so still, but they are not the ones who run it; in those dreadful days it was those who exercised effective power in the party's council who made it difficult for a decent man with a little imagination to vote for them.. The brutal, unforgivable, awful truth was that too many of them did not care about unemployment.

Whereas the Labour Party obviously did, and not merely for political reasons. The Labour Party stood for those who believed that morality and politics could go well together; the Tories were those who held that they were forever separate. So our instincts settled our political views for decades to come; as far as we were con- cerned, the Tories were Mr. Eliot's hippopotamus, the Labour Party his Church.

The broad-backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us He is merely flesh and blood.

Flesh and blood is weak and frail Susceptible to nervous shock; While the True Church can never fail For it is based upon a rock. And this attitude went with us far into the post-, war period. Now, of course, sensible men aban- doned it, as far as unemployment—the crucial domestic issue until not so very long ago— was concerned, just as soon as it had become clear that the new generation of Tories were no longer indillerent to the sufferings of the poor. Mr. Macmillan really does mean it when he says that his memories of Stockton in the Depression have made him determined never to let such things happen again, and the fact that he says it far too often is neither here nor there, except to those who have not yet learnt that when Mr Mac- millan gets on to a good thing, he stays on it, whatever modesty may demand.

But all this happened a long time ago; even the New Staten= gave up years ago believing that the Tory Party was run by hard-faced businessmen whose only desire was to provoke a slump so that they could teach the workers a lesson (though Tribune still clings firmly to it). The clue, of course, is still, as it always was, who effectively runs the Tory Party; and since a point shortly after the 1945 defeat effective con- trol has passed firmly and irrevocably into the hands of those who want prosperity for all for reasons over and above the political advantage it may bring.

This is embarrassingly elementary stuff, and I apologise for inflicting it on my more sophisticated readers. But it leads to the nub of my argument; which is that not long after the Tory Party ceased to be unsupportable because of its views on economics, it became intolerable because of its views on Africa. In a sense, of course, it had been for years, but quiescently; it was when the wind of change began to blow that the sleeping conscience, or lack of it, awoke and began to behave badly. And so once again we were back in the old position of having an instinctive repugnance for the Tories, which was nevertheless based on reality. The Tory record on Africa—wherever there had been a genuine clash between white and black—was, from 1950 to the last election, disgraceful, and we were quite right to be revolted by it. Suez was not an accident; it was part of the pattern whose pin- nacle was reached with the staggering dishonesty of the Government's behaviour over the Devlin Report.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party, though its own African record was very far from clean, as Seretse Khama could no doubt testify, clearly spoke on this matter with the tongues, if not of angels, at any rate of decent men.

The 'potamus can never reach The mango on the mango-tree; But fruits of pomegranate and peach Refresh the Church from over sea.

At mating time the hippo's voice Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd But every week we hear rejoice The Church, at being one with God.

But the point of a pinnacle, even such a pinnacle as the Tory record on Africa, is that when you have reached it, there is nowhere to go but down the other side. And he would be a bold Tribune reader who could maintain that the Government's record over Africa, since the election and the welcome and refreshing exit of Mr. Lennox- Boyd, has been seriously open to criticism on

anything but matters of detail and emphasis; the fundamental assumptions they have begun to make on the subject are the right ones.

And again, what counts is not what opinions may be heard expressed in the Tory Party but what opinions arc the ruling ones. Mr. Macleod is not an accident, and the fact that Mr. Mac- millan would throw him to the wolves if his own position became seriously threatened does not alter the fact that Mr. Macmillan is in agree- ment with him, and he with Mr. Macmillan, and both with the spirit of the times, And it is this that makes Lord Salisbury, that bent hope of the stern and unrising Tories, so angry. For whatever sense he may or may not make, he realises that what has happened is that' the Tory Party is now run by men whom he, with his ancient, foolish and dangerous views, cannot hope to move. The little group around him will gradually shrink and fall off, and he himself decline still further into total political impotence. And high time too.

Meanwhile, what of the other lot? The parallel is uncanny, but the lines are moving in opposite directions. While the Tory Party goes kicking and screaming into the twentieth century, the Labour Party just spends its time kicking and screaming. The latest row, over the de-whipping of Mr. Foot and his four colleagues, is not significant in itself; it is just another sign that complete disintegration is imminent—though it is true that complete disintegration has been imminent for a long time. But whereas Lord Salisbury and those he speaks for are powerless any longer to affect the course of the Tory Party, Mr. Foot (though I must pause to point out that this is the only point of comparison that great, good, misguided man has with the noble Marquis) and his men are only too easily able to complete the ruin of theirs.

But where does this leave our instinctive repugnance for the Tories, and our instinctive sympathy for the Labour Party? Badly dented. I think. Indeed, 1 would go so far as to say that if there were a General Election tomorrow, as the polls say, I would be hard put to it to find reasons for not voting for the Government. (Ah, I have just thought of a clincher; Sir Wavell Wakefield is my MP.) The fact is, there are three more verses of Mr. Eliot's poem.

I saw the 'potamus take wing

Ascending from the damp savannahs. And glaring angels round him sing The praise of God, in loud hosannas.

Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean And him shall heavenly arms enfold. Among the saints he shall be seen Performing on a harp of gold.

He shall be washed as white as snow, By alt the martyr'd virgins kist While the True Church remains below Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.