Playing soft and hard

Ferdinand Mount

If Nehru or Jinnah walked into this room, he would turn on his heel and walk straight out again. There is no sea of faces here, no dust or heat or passion, only a handful of smartly dressed members of the AngloAsian Conservative Association standing about in a low-ceilinged hotel room off the Bayswater Road. Instead of a thousand punhahs waving, there is only the threatening hum of the air conditioning— is this what Mrs Thatcher sounds like when she does her celebrated humming exercises prescribed by Dr Gordon Reece to keep her voice husky?

But we have no sub-continental prima donnas here, we have only Mr William Whitelaw, old oyster-eyes himself, who would not dream of leaving so long as there was even one untouchable left to be boomed at and have his hand shaken. Mr Whitelaw irrupts into the room, filling it with warmth and hot air, huge as a stove in his double-breasted suit. 'Some of you will know my very strong feelings. All of you who come to this country are (f) equal British citizens, (if) EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW. We welcome your magnificent contribution. We are determined (cresc) to remove this unfortunate phrase "immigrant" from our vocabulary. We in the Conservative party honour our obligations.'

This is wonderful stuff. I feel a tickle in my tear-ducts. There is something about Mr Whitelaw's booming which always makes me want to cry. He reminds you of an imaginary past — a time of hot muffins and kindly squires. It is poignant but also aggravating, this reminder. In the House of Commons, they laugh when Mr Whitelaw embarks on one of his celebrated roars. Some write him off as a buffoon who can be pushed in any direction you like. But he also has a conflicting reputation for not being quite what he seems: 'old Willie's not even a squire, he's a Glasgow tenement landlord.'

One cannot help wondering whether Mr Whitelaw would be making exactly the same speech to a ladies' lunch in Wolverhampton. Is he indeed emphasising quite the same points as he emphasised in his Leicester speech last year which set out Tory policy on immigration? The Anglo-Asian Conservatives venture, in the most tactful possible voices, to enquire whether the Tories did not envisage certain strict controls on the entry of parents and dependents. Somehow, here in Bayswater, Mr Whitelaw manages to make these controls sound like the most trifling incommodations. And as for the register of dependents, why that will be the Immigrants' Friend: 'when someone from the National Front gets up and complains about the unending queue of immigrants waiting to come in, you can point to the register.' So handy on a dark night in Whitechapel.

No, Mr Whitelaw isn't a buffoon just as Hubert Humphrey was not a buffoon. He may emote and blather; his sleeve may have had a heart transplant, yet his heart remains somehow intact. There is a guarantee of goodwill, an assurance that, whatever may go wrong, there is a genial spirit in the air. Mr Whitelaw is still the liberal conscience of his party just as Humphrey was of his; it is merely that his conscience is portable. His gift for political reasoning is small, as was tragically evident in Northern Ireland; his gift for electioneering remains formidable -and just as formidable among Asians as among Cumbrians. And it could prove crucial in the election.

Many of the seats, perhaps half of the seats that the Tories must capture to win a majority are in areas of high immigrant population like Birmingham, Leicester, the West Riding, Wandsworth and the other inner suburbs and twilight zones of London and the West Midlands. Where the immigrants are a substantial minority, the Tories can no more afford to offend them than they can afford to offend the potential National Fronters. So Mr Whitelaw and Keith Speed woo the Asians and the West Indians while Mrs Thatcher is 'swamped' all over again. This old soft-hard technique is on show here in Bayswater too. For after Willie has sat down, up gets Mr John Wheeler who is the Tories' choice to unseat the appalling Arthur Latham, the extreme Left-wing MP for this constituency in the last parliament. Mr Wheeler is a former prison governor of the hard sort, a tough screw. While Willie would be letting Bunny girls in for conjugal visits, Mr Wheeler would be packing the punishment block.

But as Mr Whitelaw reminds us, 'we must not forget the big position.' Down in Smith Square, the big position is that each morning the two main parties hold a press conference — in this election, at the same time, 9.30 a.m. Inconvenient this, for those of us whose business it is to turn out our daily quota of Jim-lashes-Maggies. For Jim can only lash yesterday's Maggie — probably already well lashed by others. So, on the whole, the notables who get lashed in this General Election are those who said something which appears fresh in this morning's papers. 'Prime Minister, what do you think of Sir Robert Mark's remarks?' Mr Cal laghan pauses: think Sir Robert was a very good Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.' Pause. 'I think we should think very carefully before we allow policemen, however eminent, to dictate our laws.' Text-book put-down. Mr Callaghan continues to pursue with undiminished good humour the only strategy open to him, viz. low-key, Baldwinian, solitary. He cannot preach policy because he has none to speak of. He cannot mention his colleagues because they are mostly unmentionable. Michael Foot is on a walkabout in Rochdale. And Tony Benn is down in Bristol complaining that 'the Conservatives have abandoned the policies of Churchill and Macmillan, who both tried to rally the nation to a common purpose'. Macmillan? But wasn't he the never-hadit-so-good, candy-floss-society chap? Still, if Mrs Thatcher can appeal to the memory of Clem Attlee — who, you remember, once intended to introduce the Gestapo — why not? The other man's past is always greener.

But how cruel the polls are. They are like a battering in the ribs, spilling no blood but doing dreadful internal damage. The reflexes slow, the legs begin to go. Every morning, the same question. What do you think about the latest NOP, or RSL, or MORI — which is the nastiest jab of all, because MORI is run by the Prime Minister's own private pollster, Bob Worcester? 'Our canvas returns tell a very different story,' says the Prime Minister. 'No, I'm not going to give you details from our canvassers, you wouldn't expect me to, would you?' No, we wouldn't, because we have heard that one before and we have seen that smile trembling on the edge of tears before too—from Mr Heath in October, 1974. This week the polls are slightly better. Labour is only 51 per cent behind, according to Gallup. Of course, the Prime Minister doesn't place any faith in opinion polls. Not much.

He gallantly throws himself into a booming imitation of Hugh Dalton: 'Why should the millionaire's mistress's fur coat be exempt from taxation? I propose a heavY impost on it.' Bewildered foreign journalists are told what Queen Victoria said to Canon Dalton. What do foreign journalists make of Mr Callaghan's giggles as he first suppresses, then releases his impression that 'Mr Heath is getting into bed with Mrs Thatcher', then pleads with us not to use this stale simile because 'it would destroy me for ever'?

Underlying melancholy keeps on surfacing. In a dismal modern church hall m Uxbridge, Mr Callaghan kisses the candidate's daughter, cuts her birthday cake, and says a few words to a few party workers Who then stand about drinking tea, while the rain belts down on the oppressive Scandinavian-looking wooden roof. For a minute nobody is talking to the Prole Minister and he potters about, hands 111 pockets, looking miserable. Then on through a traffic jam in Southall, caused by floods and rioting Asians, to a cheerful meeting, more crowded this time, in Labour committee rooms in Chiswick High Street under a bare light bulb behind half-painted shutters. A few more words. The local Labour candidate says the mese sage on the doorstep is very different from what you read in the daily papers. Mr Callaghan mutters, it had better be. The Polls again.

The Prime Minister is presented with a red rose for St George's Day and a garland of rust-coloured chrysanths interleaved with pound notes collected by the local Asians. Somehow it looks more like a wreath. It's all nice and cosy, but it's not exactly barnstorming. The big crowd in Wandsworth Town Hall warms him up a little, but as usual he is interrupted by hoarse yells from the Irish Republican hecklers who follow him around and who are in turn shouted down by local Labour loyal ists.

Yet the interruptions are a kind of relief because the speech sounds even emptier the third and fourth time round. Once the ritual attacks on the Common Agricultural Policy and the Tory 'con trick' of promising tax cuts are delivered, there is so dreadfully little left in it. One Price Commission does not make a manifesto.

By contrast, the Liberal Party has no Shortage of policies. It's like the old rule With national anthems: the dimmer the country the longer the anthem. As soon as you enter the National Liberal Club you are handed a fistful of seven 'special manifestoes' — to add to your Main-line 'The Real Fight is for Britain' (an even sillier title than Labour's — 'The Labour Way is the Better Way' — which sounds like an ad for some intimate pharmaceutical requisite). These specials are printed on different coloured paper and have a variety of enticing titles — Ecology and the Environment, For the Young at Heart, and Rights of Gay Men and Women. The Gay manifesto is gloriously universal, culminating in the proposal that 'people, including gay people,' should be protected 'against unfair discrimination of whatever kind.' We brood upon this new dawn while Mr Steel explains his latest somewhat mysterious plan to involve Her Majesty the Queen in setting up a coalition government.

Although, or perhaps because, he is rather subdued, Mr Steel seems to be personally endearing himself more to the voters than either of his two rivals, and the Liberals' total tally of votes if not seats may well look quite respectable. I would feel more sympathetic towards the Liberals if, far from being original and open to new ideas, they were not so rigid and resistant to the lessons of experience. They stick to a statutory incomes policy when everyone else has seen its defects; they edge — or John Pardoe edges anyway — towards support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland just when almost everyone else has agreed that this would be disastrous.

'The Tory press conferences are quite different, lively, usually full (though half the audience appear to be Mrs Thatcher's speech-writers), and distinctly odd. The leader sits in the middle, looking and talking crisp, answering planted questions from Transport House and stupid questions from foreigners with equal aplomb. This forum is ideal for her, not too large or stiff so that she starts hectoring and not too small for her to be over-flirtatious. The only drawback is that she is surrounded by her Shadow Cabinet. And, admirable fellows though they may be, they do look a trifle shopworn, particitlarly when they have to apologise for the failures of the last Tory government. Sir Keith Joseph grins ruefully and covers his head in his hands when the reorganisation of the Health Service is mentioned. Mrs Thatcher herself tries to play down the disastrous reorganisation of local government. Jim Prior has to say three times: we tried this in the Industrial Relations Act and it didn't work. Instead of contemplating the brilliance of the next Conservative government, you find yourself brooding unhealthily on the errors of the last one. The ability to learn from one's mistakes is undoubtedly a virtue, as Mrs Thatcher claims, but there do seem to be an awful lot of mistakes to learn from.

Luckily, other voters do not, it seems, all share this reaction. Mr Prior tells us of an ex-miner in Berwick with whom he went through the manifesto, word by word. At the end, the ex-miner said apparently, as ex-miners will, 'well of course, this is utterly reasonable.' No doubt, he also went on to say 'while maintaining one's reservations about the viability of the renogotiated Multi-fibre Arrangement, one cannot but wholeheartedly applaud the Conservative adherence to a revised safeguard clause under GATT.' Eatanswill was never like this.