YES, WE HAVE NO CONVICTIONS . . .
. . . we have no convictions today. Anne McElvoy finds Harriet Harman is just
like the rest of us
SPARE HARRIET Harman your censure, you opinion-mongers of the Right who view the Battle of St Olave's as yet one more proof that educational selection should start at the age of one. Have mercy on her, you doughty constituency activists in South- wark who hallucinate about the social bene- fits of mixed-ability teaching. By sending her academically-gifted son to a selective grammar school while announcing that she `fully supports Labour's opposition to selec- tive schools', the shadow Health Secretary has performed a public service. One of the great guilty secrets in Britain today has been aired.
Miss Harman has effectively told us that she has no convictions, or none such as might interfere with her own life. This is no longer something to be ashamed about. The rest of the country does not seem to have any either, so she is contributing to the rise in New Labour's appeal by making perfectly clear that the Party will not embarrass us with a show of moral superiority.
All of the quality newspapers, irrespec- tive of their editorial line on education, supported Miss Harman in their leaders. Their logic was that it would be unfair to penalise her for acting in the best interests of young Joe. Whoever said the British did not like children? We now appear ready to forgive even the most glaring inconsistency in our politicians on the grounds that whatever nasty ideology they are forced to embrace by their career ambitions, their little darlings must come first. If I were Miss Harman's best friend or sister, I would of course say to her in a col- luding whisper, 'Well of course dear, you must do as you think and not worry about what the Party thinks.' But I am not. As a voter, I think that her action is reprehensible.
Whatever happened to convictions? The news of Miss Harman's decision to say one thing and do the opposite was accompanied M the Observer by a story headlined: 'Con- victions plummet under Tories'. Quite right, I thought. New Labour might be vague about the relationship between its beliefs and the personal conduct of its vanguard, but when you subtract the handful of yeo- man Euro-sceptics and some hangers and floggers, hardly any Tories seem to have views they are prepared to fight for either.
Actually, the piece turned out to be about the Crown Prosecution Services' fail- ure to secure guilty verdicts for serious crimes in the courts. Our lack of personal rather than criminal convictions is now so widespread as to pass without notice. It has become a rarity for anyone to make person- al sacrifices for the sake of something he or she believes in. Wrong-headed as Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins were about com- prehensive schools, at least they gritted their teeth and sent their own children to them. As recently as the 1987 election cam- paign, Denis Healey was forced to squirm when it was revealed that his wife Edna had vaulted the NHS waiting list to have her hip operation done privately. Nowadays, I doubt that we would turn a hair if Miss Harman kicked a pensioner out of the last NHS bed in the country so that she could have her tonsils out before Parliament reconvened.
We should not forget of course that both Michael Foot's Labour Party and Mrs Thatcher's Conservatives were ghast- ly, precisely because they rammed convic- tions down our throats the whole time. I went up to Oxford during the miners' strike, the most divisive period in modern British politics. At the first Junior Com- mon Room meeting, the Left moved a motion suggesting that we give the bulk of our recreation funds (illegally) to a min- ers' support group. The rowers, boozers and the handful of college Tories squealed in protest. 'Fascist bastards,' shrieked the woman next to me. I remember thinking in some despair, 'Oh God, is it always going to be like this?' Ten years later, I am told that hardly anyone bothers with the meetings: 'We don't have the same tooth- and-nail conflicts your generation had,' the current JCR president tells me.
A little rank disagreement would not go amiss nonetheless. One reason that dinner parties have become so tedious is that so few people have any convictions to defend. Until recently you could rely on at least one of the guests, flown with wine, to cry, 'Say what you like about Stalin, at least he turned the Sovi- et Union into a great industrial power,' or, `Whatever you think about Mrs T. she pulled this country up by its bootstraps.' These statements would cause powerful backlashes and the conversation would roar into life.
These days it is extremely hard to spark an impassioned response from anyone about anything. The end of the Cold War and the advent of New Labour have imposed the dead hand of consensus on our lives. That little puddle of clear blue water evaporated long ago. John Major does not want a Federal Europe but thinks it is not in our interests to say he does not want it. Tony Blair wants a Stakeholder society but concentrates on telling us what Stakeholding is not.
There is, in short, a market-gap in convic- tions. And like all such vacuums, an enter- prising soul is endeavouring to fill it. Professor Peter Wilson, former psychology lecturer at Oxford, has defined our problem as 'opinion impotence'. According to the Pro- fessor, 64 per cent of Britons feel that they do not hold enough beliefs. At his home in Acton Town, he runs courses for people who feel that they ought to acquire some convic- tions but don't know where to get them.
This is laudable. But strong views, like fortified wines, are out of fashion at the moment and I wonder how many 'graduates' of his courses prosper when they go forth on their new hobby-horses. They should avoid going in to politics at all cost. Someone asked me recently if I had ever thought of being a Tory candidate in the next election. `I'm not a natural Tory,' I objected. 'In fact, I'm more drawn to the Labour Party when it comes to fundamentals.'
`Don't worry about that,' said my Central Office interlocutor, 'there are lots of us who have the sort of views that could pass for either. We can make perfectly good careers.'
Not until I considered the generous reac- tion to Miss Harman did I fully realise how easy it has become to talk on the Left and live on the Right. I am now thinking of standing as a candidate on both Tory and Labour tickets at the same time. No one will much mind. They may not even notice.
The only problem is that this culture of non-conviction is strangely reminiscent of the early terminal phase of communism in the early 1980s. The Party elite, to use a saying commonly used throughout Eastern Europe `preached water and drank wine'. They had long stopped believing in what they claimed to represent. That was accepted. It seemed to be the normal state of affairs. The people put up with it — for a while.
Previous page
