Another voice

Studies in loyalty

Auberon Waugh

'The Falklands victory notwithstanding,' 1 wrote Alan Watkins at the end of his trenchant article in the Observer this week, 'loyalty is evidently no longer the Conser- vatives' secret weapon.' He gave Mrs That- cher six months' grace in which to prance and preen and monarchise before the knives would be out again.

Of course he is right. One of the most outstanding features of this administration is the way that only the creepiest non- entities inside it even pretend to feel the slightest loyalty or affection for their col- leagues or leader. There were two reasons why the Tories used to score higher than Labour on loyalty. The first was class solidarity. They all came from the same background, had all been to public school. They knew the rules, shared the same assumptions. The good name of the school came first.

Labour, for all its rhetoric of class an tagonism, has never been able to field a socially cohesive team, or even one with a preponderant class ethos. Under Heath, the tradition of a clan-based loyalty survived, if only from force of habit, until the traumatic circumstances of his removal. Of course it is not Mrs Thatcher's fault that she is a grocer's daughter. This is the sort of thing which might have happened to any of us. It was the manner of Mrs Thatcher's acquiring the leadership — through a disputed elec- tion, and against a deeply unpopular lower- middle-class incumbent — and the manner of Mr Heath's going that destroyed both the basis of class loyalty and any element of secrecy which might have attached to it.

The other ingredient in the Conser- vatives' secret weapon was the prospect of a hereditary peerage. People will laugh at me, but it is obvious that I am right. Macmillan, on my count, made 17 viscounts, nearly every one of them a Conservative politician, and 30 hereditary barons of which, once again, nearly all were either Conservative politicians or prominent supporters of the Conservative Party. Many of his 50-odd life peerages went to Tory politicians, too, and one must remember that in those distant days many people still thought that a life peerage might be quite a jolly thing to have.

This is no longer the case. After recent depredations, there is no honour or dignity attaching to the label, and precious little money. The prospect of a hereditary peerage is something quite different, and if Mrs Thatcher wants to regain that secret weapon of loyalty she had better move fast.

But I have told her this on many occa- sions, and she has chosen to suppose she knows best. After the Falklands triumph, obstinacy is at something of a premium. We all agreed that having once embarked on

that madcap adventure, she was quite right to see it through, but the only real lesson of the Falklands is surely that our politicians have much better armed forces than they deserve. 'Clear, decisive and unbending,' was the verdict of the Sunday Times, while those who had supported the enterprise from the very beginning, like the great and good Tory thinker Peregrine Worsthorne, could scarcely contain their exultations. But then as I scanned the Birthday Honours List I could not help noticing that once again its most significant feature was the osten- tatious exclusion of Mr Worsthorne's name.

Now, I fear, he will never receive the knighthood he so richly deserves. After all the praise lavished on her obstinacy — not least by Mr Worsthorne himself — Mrs Thatcher must be quite demented with con- ceit. Magnanimity, as she observed, is not a word which features in her vocabulary. There were those who wondered whether General Galtieri's decision to invade Stanley might not have been influenced by her brutal treatment of Conservative in- tellectuals in England. Nobody seems to have inquired about the motives of the unemrployed 25-year-old called John Lawrence, stopped by a Guardsman at Buckingham Palace on Friday as he tried to force an entry with a knife. Last week's Portrait of the Week in the Spectator was to have drawn attention to this omission from the Honours List but someone cut it out. Perhaps it was just the work of a Trotskyist infiltrator or Soviet agent, but I begin to fear that a `13' notice may have been issued banning any mention of Mrs Thatcher's treatment of Mr Worsthorne. 'Clear, decisive and unbending' is the new tune, and we must all dance to it for six months.

For my own part I have decided to offer no further advice to Mrs Thatcher on any subject — at any rate until she is run over by a bus, then I shall advise her to take an aspirin. If she then chooses to take syrup of figs it will be her own affair. There are pleasanter things to write about, including Michael White's production of The Pirates of Penzance at the Drury Lane Theatre, which I earnestly advise everyone (except the demented Mrs Thatcher) to go and see.

A few people of taste and discrimination may be disturbed by it. Obviously, it is not without blemishes. Michael Praed, as Frederick, has rather an ugly voice, which is a great pity in his more lyrical songs — 'Oh is there not one maiden breast' and the duet with Mabel, `Ah must I leave thee here in endless night to dream' — although it is perfectly good enough for the dramatic ones. He also has a very pretty face. Pamela Stephenson, on the other hand, has rather an ugly face as Mabel but a pretty voice which never hits a wrong note, even in the notoriously difficult 'Poor wandering one'. Unfortunately, although she acts well and makes a striking addition to the chorus, her voice does not quite have the volume for Mabel's great moments, which should soar over the chorus, clear as a lark.

There are also three unwelcome altera- tions to the text, all of which slow down the action without adding anything of value. One is a long passage from Rud- digore which includes the 'So it really doesn't matter' sequence. This is silly and boring enough in Ruddigore; here it is disastrous. Another unnecessary addition is 'Sorry her lot who loves too well' from HMS Pinafore, here sung by Mabel in the same scene. Finally, they have restored a section to the Finale which apparently featured in the original libretto of 1879 but had certainly been dropped in my edition of 1886, which once again detracts from a supremely poignant and musical crescendo.

But these are minor blemishes in a trium- phant achievement. Tim Curry is the best Pirate King I have ever seen, George Cole outstandingly the best Major-General and all the minor parts are excellent, even if An- nie Ross's Ruth may have been bettered in a performance which I saw at Downside in about 1954 by, I think, a boy called Morris Two.

What makes the show so spectacular, above all, are the choreography of the chorus scenes, the individual excellence of Major-General Stanley's daughters (although I could have done with one or two more) and the enormous vitality of the production. Even the weaker jokes — 'Have you ever known what it is to be an orphan?' Orffee — bring the house down, while George Cole's rendering of 'Sighing softly through the river' must sure- ly mark a high point of English opera.

The reason why people of taste and discrimination may be disturbed by this production, which gave me the happiest theatrical evening I can remember, is in the comparison with D'Oyly Carte. Perhaps the Arts Council was right to close down the company, they will think. Its perfor- mance was a trifle wooden, the chorus was ageing, none of the principals was par- ticularly brilliant. But the D'Oyly Carte Company kept the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition alive, providing a norm from which amateur and professional produc- tions could depart or not at their own discretion. Its closure removes a cor- nerstone of the only operatic tradition which is distinctively English, one of the major jewels of Britain's cultural heritage. do not know or wish to know the identity of whatever pipsqueak it was in the Arts Council who decided to let the D'Oyly Carte Company die. Let him go about his miserable business in the daily knowledge of a nation's curse, just as Edward Heath will always be cursed for his refusal to honour P. G. Wodehouse on his 90th birth- day, and Mrs Thatcher for her disgusting treatment of Peregrine Worsthorne.