Can Heath stop the rot?
Lord Lambton's resignation and subsequent statement provide a textbook example of how such things should be done. He becomes tangled Up with a call-girl; surreptitious photographs are taken; a prima facie security risk therefore arises; the press gets hold of the story; rumours begin alarmingly to proliferate; the press prints accounts of his resignation alongside other accounts of vice in high places: then, suddenly, like lancing a hectic and purulent inflammation, a swift and dignified confession of guilt reduces at once the fever. Or does it? Will this be the end of the matter? The scandal ought to be of little political significance provided it is an isolated case, although if it is the symptom of an administration which is becoming accident-prone, then the Lambton affair could occupy a similar climacteric position in the history of the Heath administration to that occupied by the Profumo affair in that of Mr Macmillan. The remarkable resemblances between the two affairs already cause tremors within the Conservative Party. Lord Lambton appears to have avoided Mr Profumo's chief offence, which was to dissemble in the Commons, but can Mr Heath stop a rot from setting in?
Once the British public has got over congratulating itself on how honourably its politicians resign when found out, unlike President Nixon (whose continuing efforts to exculpate himself are becoming more scandalous and distasteful than his original offences of commission and omission), it could do worse than ask itself how uncorrupt British local and national politics really are. Lord Lambton's, like Mr Profumo's, sexual peccadilloes are interesting in a titillating kind of way; but the corruption represented by such activities, if corruption it be, is of no political concern, although the scandal may of course be turned to political effect. The trouble with sensations like the Lambton affair is that they draw attention away from the main area of corruption which is where money and politics deliberately meet and mix, not where sex and politics accidentally coincide.
The ramifications of the Poulson affair indicate far more insidious and corrupt practices than do Lord Lambton's carryings-on with a call-girl and her friends; the public has more legitimate cause for concern in the public relations activities of members of parliament than in their night-clubbing antics; the connections between ministers and ex-ministers and big business is altogether more disturbing than disclosures about 'vicerings'. Indeed, the allegations by Mr Robert Hughes, Labour MP for Aberdeen North, that Lord Polwarth, Minister of State at the Scottish Office recently appointed 'oil supremo' for Scotland, has a "deep and personal financial stake in the oil business" and has shareholdings in three investment trusts involved in oil and onshore development firms, are potentially of far greater legitimate public concern than is the question Mr James Wellbeloved, Labour MP for Erith and Crayford, is to ask the Prime Minister on June 19, "if he is satisfied with security arrangements now obtaining at the Ministry of Defence?" There is more than one kind of rot going on, and it is by no means clear that the worst rot is getting the most scrupulous attention.
