Why they hate the Tories

POLITICAL COMMENTARY ANDREW ALEXANDER

Andrew Alexander was Conservative candidate for CoMe Valley in 1963 (by-election) and 1964.

This is the time of year when political jour- nalists start thumbing through their diaries to check on party conferences. Brighton for the Tories, Scarborough for Labour. Both pleasant towns. Blackpool for the Liberals. Ugh! That town with its endless chromium plate and awful hotels never fails to provoke a sinking feeling. But to Blackpool we must go. Anyway, the Liberals are usually fun. The Young Liberals introduce a note of pure farce; and their elders are nice people, if a little ineffectual.

Then the Socialists will gather at Scar- borough in October, all bustle and chitchat.

Trade unionists with horny hands and suits of antique cut will greet each other with hearty cries. Earnest left-wingers will mutter in corners and old comrades will slap each other on the back. The factions and the disagreements will become obvious as the conference pro- ceeds but, for all that, an outsider senses the overtones in that emotional phrase 'the move- ment.' One may joke about the term 'comrade' and some who use it, but there is undeniably a strong sense of comradeship which per- meates the Labour party. Moreover, the con- ference delegates themselves are, for the most part, kindly and likeable people.

Then will come the Tory conference. For me that ought to be the most enjoyable of the three. It is conveniently in Brighton. It will be by far the best organised.

And yet . . . and yet . . . and yet . . .

There is something about the Tory party en rnasse, in the eyes of most impartial obser-

vers, which is distinctly unattractive. Some- thing which makes the spirit rebel and which, in so many journalists I know, brings out hidden complexes and a strong chain of irri- tation and dislike. Some of this one under- stands. One may admire the Tory party, join it, vote for it, even stand for it at elections (as I have), but it is not easy to love it.

No doubt the Tories, true to form, will write off Auberon Waugh's 'Why we hate the Con-

servatives' (SPECTATOR, 28 July) as the outburst

of some 'intellectual.' Conservatives can make that sound pretty pejorative. Probably an 'airy- fairy' one to boot. There is an extensive list of immediately appendable adjectives ranging from the dismissive `pinko' to the curt 'your.' But the Waugh-game ought to be taken seriously.

In many ways, the bewilderment of the party about its electoral unpopularity resembles that of some eligible but unsuccessful wooer in a novel.

'But I have everything,' he says, 'wealth, brains, position, talent, good looks; high repute. Yet she takes up with that twerp.'

'Perhaps,' comes the devastating answer, 'the simply does not like you.' Impossible, con- cludes the wooer, who goes back to thinking of ways of impressing his heart's desire.

Some of us who fight elections for the party have had the tongue-tying, experience of being , told by surprised elderly and middle-aged voters (is there a vital clue in the age group?), 'But you're quite a .nice young man:. The com-

ment makes one sound a fearful wet but the crucial point is that the voter assumes that the Tory candidate will not be 'nice' or likeable.

Undeniably, there is something about what we can call, for convenient shorthand, the Archetypal Tory personality which is infuriat- ing and unlovable. It is not a matter of social stratification, as the class-mongers are always anxious to prove—though some ars are caricatures of the stage public-school type— but of outlook.

Auberon Waugh sees the Conservatives as the forces of Philistia. But that is hardly a characteristic which arouses popular personal dislike. Philistinism and anti-intellectualism are only certain aspects of what is generally regarded as the AT personality. The AT is usually well-heeled, moderately well-educated, unctuous towards the party leaders, patronis- ing towards voters and predictable in almost everything from his neat three-piece suit to his platitudinous speeches at party conferences or local meetings. And over the AT there hovers that sublime, unbearable self-satisfac- tion. He is one of the chosen; not quite the magic circle but certainly of the select few. His is the worst type of self-confidence—the self-confidence born of total insensitivity; AT Conservative MPS are particularly unbearable. To be talked down to by a clever man is hard. To be talked down to by a buffoon is intoler- able. Yes, there are plenty of Labour buffoons as well. But at least they do not act as if they had a divine right to rule.

To put it crudely and, perhaps, cruelly, the impression many of the voters have of the AT is one of shallowness and heartlessness. All too often one encounters an attitude of mind to the effect that, while the Tories may raise pensions when in office to satisfy the country, Labour does it because it really wants to.

'Conservatives Care' protested the slogan on Tory posters a few years ago. But why should a party with, after all, a commendable record in welfare have to proclaim its motives? Slogans, in fact, will never do the trick. Least of all will the image-makers. Their activities are just another form of the shallowness which provokes such dislike. Demos is not as easily mocked as some would think. In all this there may lie a clue to the continued success of Harold Wilson with electors. Perhaps he is full of unattractive trickery, some voters may well be reasoning, but he is doing it for `us,' and at the expense of 'them.' One of the anomalies of politics is that, at the centre, the Labour party, so dedicated to egalitarianism and all its grey uniformity, is a remarkable mixture of types and charac- ters, of conformists and eccentrics. This is nothing like as apparent among Conser- vatives, for all their dedication to ,`the individual.'

The party headquarters are a neat illustra- tion of this. One may prowl round Transport House, never quite sure who or what will appear from some office, or how; he will talk or dress. At Central Office the type is predictable down to his dress, accent, secretary and vocabulary.

Some of the Tory a pparatchiks, too, are dis- tinctly AT-ish. I am not thinking of the agents

in the field. Splendid men, they are among the most overworked, underpaid people in the land. But at Central Oflice . . . I can think of an official there who is one of the rudest, most arrogant individuals 1 have ever met, unctuous to his superiors, patronising to his equals— and not even good at his job. Yet—and this

is the tragedy—it somehow comes as no sur- prise to find him there. Hear! Hear! a thousand constituency workers up and down the land will cry to that.

A further anomaly is that the party of egali- tarianism harbours such a collection of rebels and eccentrics, while the party" of 'the indi- vidual' exhibits such a supine conformity, another AT characteristic.

'Loyalty and superstitiOn; wrote Buckle, 'are .the twin vices of the Spanish people, They are their only vices but they have sufficed to ruin them.' There are moments when that seems applicable to the Tory party. Loyalty to the leader led it to follow blindly the now openly avowed socialist plinciples of Harold: Mac- millan. With inevitable consequences,: the country deciding that if it was to have socialism, it might as well come- from those who had always believed in it. Superstition steered the party for so long towards a belief that Tory- ism was a sacrament whose mysteries should be left in the hands of a priestly caste. As for heretics, they are guilty of the most car- dinal of all crimes: disloyalty.

To all these criticisms, it can be answered, first, that the party is now changing rapidly and, second, that the actual party !cadet-S are not a-rs at all. This is quite true. The trouble is not with the generals at OM it starts at brigade and goes on down the line. Anyone who has worked in the more earthy Con- stituencies knows how much the rank-and-file party workers resent the ATS who are liable to appear on the scene and alienate more voters in one day than the candidate can win 'over in a month.

The party ignores this personal aspect of politics at its peril. One of the tragedies is that so many of the hierarchy wander around under the absurd illusions that the country is hostile to conservatism itself or in favour of socialism. Opinion polls may be taken by the party about points of policy until the gun- powder runs out of the heels of the pollsters' boots. What do you think of party policy en housing, land, regionalisation, primary schools, secondary schools, life, death, the cosmos? But so much of this misses the point.

'I have nothing against you personally,' someone said in a film I once saw, 'it's simply that I don't like you.' With so many voters, is that not the root cause of the Tories' „troubles?

Alan Watkins is on holiday