The Election

Smears and scares

Cohn Welch

Mr Healey describes Mrs Thatcher's regime as 'a personal dictatorship'. The last personal dictator's press con- ference I attended was in Papa Doc's terri- fying weapon-infested palace at Port-au- Prince. So it was with some trepidation that I ventured into the Tory central office or Brown House as it is called. There sat the Fuehrerin, charming, beaming, `dominating but not domineering' (Willie Whitelaw's mot). On her right Geoffrey Howe, a rather unconvincing Schacht or Himmler, on her left Patrick Jenkin — Todt, or Speer? With suave effrontery she `amplified' — shall we say? — some of Francis Pym's remarks and corrected others, while reinterpreting James Prior's habitual carpings as expressions of a shared purpose, if somewhat clumsily expressed. I fancy old Hitler would have had a long knife or two for these unregenerate Roehms and Schleichers.

As we left the sinister portals, a friend reminded me that Wilson had had the 1970 election all buttoned up till in the last fort- night he suddenly got folie de grandeur, stopped campaigning and behaved like a sort of co-op royalty or Norman the Good. Did I think that Mrs Thatcher would suc- cumb to a like folie? I thought not. Her in- nate grandeur of manner is checked by a philosophy essentially modest and humble. Note well what she continually says. She creates opportunities, chances, conditions. Beyond this she can do nothing herself. She cannot 'create' jobs, prosperity, new enter- prises. That is up to us. She is as famous for what she has not done as for what she has. Wilson's philosophy was by contrast dirigiste and meddling, issuing in con- tinuous futile and counter-productive per- sonal initiatives. No novelty could be laun- ched, no 'crisis' or problem solved, without his urgent intervention. Not an exchange rate or oil tanker sank, nor a sparrow broke wind, but he was on the spot or the telly, coping. reassuring, making an ass of himself. The one philosophy guards against excessive conceit, the other positively in- vites and nourishes it.

My friend drifted on to the smears and scares without which no election is com- plete. Nissan won't invest here if Labour takes us out of the EEC. If Labour cuts defence spending as it promises, 400,000 jobs will be lost. CND, and thus Labour in- directly, benefits from Soviet organisation and money. All these canards have been in- dignantly denied. All emanate from sources highly suspect and offensive to the Left respectively the Daily capitalist Mail, the vulgarian Heseltine and various sabre- rattling generals as well as the authoritarian

religious maniac Solzhenitsyn. Disgraceful! We should debate on a higher level. Yet I cannot help suspecting that all these smears and scares, however elusive their sources, however shaky the details and sources, however strong the denials, are in essence true enough.

It is wrong to write or publish stories which, though not exactly true, may il- lustrate some general truth. General truths

are better illustrated by relevant facts, like the Economist's 263 American electronics

companies operating here, of which three quarters, when asked, thought Britain less suitable as a base if we left the EEC.

Perhaps Nissan isn't going to invest here anyway — I haven't the foggiest. But surely it isn't more likely to put its own money in- to a Foot-plagued Britain than into a That- cher one? Are its directors mad? (My son points out that, far from being mad, Nissan might think it advantageous to invest here not its own money but ours, conning the gullible Foot to set up a Japanese co- prosperity De Lorean on a grand scale. What cynicism past decades have inculcated in the young!) Again, if not 400,000 jobs, then surely many jobs must be lost by defence cuts? It takes more than a week to switch a highly specialised work force and plant from mak- ing sophisticated weaponry to little pump- ing engines for the third world or whatever it is Labour now approves of. Again, is it possible that the Russians, seeing a move- ment like CND so exactly tailored to their requirements, have denied it encourage- ment and funds, here as in West Germany?

It would not be like them. The peace people

may deny it, perhaps in good faith. I should remind them that Encounter magazine

never knew it was banknoted by the CIA till long after that support had ended. Money can flow through innumerable creeks and inlets, especially into a body which publishes no formal accounts.

For Labour to get into a frightful stew about these smears and scares is as ill- advised as Oscar Wilde's disastrous libel ac- tion, which only drew attention to matters best left concealed. Kick away the details, and the awful truth emerges more starkly investment frightened off, jobs in danger, the Russians backing Labour all the way.

If Labour is a bit rattled, the polls are doubtless partly to blame. But, like the Russians in 1914, it has also been caught on the wrong foot, its plans rash and unready, its mobilisation incomplete, its battle order in disarray, its second in command openly disloyal, his CND badge hanging off, of- ficers who should have been cashiered still unabashed at their posts, to be kissed and

embraced with whatever distaste by the reluctant C-in-C. (With whatever distaste: I have never understood what Foot found so horrible about the Militants except that, as Trots, they are unsound about CND.) Doubtless the Left expected (and hoped?) that the election would be fought and lost on a manifesto judiciously diluted and ton- ed down. The moderates could then be blamed for defeat and the way cleared for full socialism at the next election. Instead the Left won a total and surely unexpected victory. The moderates caved in utterly. They haven't even got their precious in- comes policy. Against the tornado of infla- tion which the Left proposes to unleash, it would have been about as much use as a canvas beach windbreak. All the same it was all they had: without it they feel naked.

The manifesto is full socialism now. The Left is thus compelled to throw away its traditional opposition-mindedness and to fight like mad for victory in an election which is for them one too soon. In defeat the moderates will say 'I told you so', and the way will be cleared not for full socialism but for a return to some sort of sanity.

After the Thatcher press conference I tot- tered off to Putney, where I lived happilY for 20-odd years. Vast parachute drops of' council tenants from inner London had turned it from a Tory into a Labour seat. Some of these tenants presumably became unprogrammed after their translation, as Putney is now a Tory marginal. Marginality confers importance but not, it seems, digni- ty. It has helped to reduce two personable and intelligent candidates, David Mellor, the Tory incumbent, and Peter Hain the socialist challenger, famous for bowling out the cricketing Springboks, to little more than assiduous social and welfare workers, experts in every sort of entitlement and rebate, plumbers, heating engineers, universal aunts and problem solvers. You. r drains are blocked? Mellor and Hain Will vie for the privilege of acting Dyno-Rod. `You've got to do it all the time,' Hain ex- plained as we canvassed, 'not just at elec dons. Not easy without a secretary., I'll

say.

Nor is the effect on dependent consti- tuents ennobling. I heard much diffused bitterness, much untargetted resentment, the sour fruit of politicisation. Why were the flats so shoddy and awful? Be ca use Labour built them so badly (`they ought to be shot,' one old lady cried to Hain: 'When my downstairs neighbour pours himself oar whisky, I can hear it and smell it')? because the Tories have since neglected them? Why are cupboard doors broken? Why is all the washing pinched? Why is there human faeces on the balconies? That they should do something about it all agree, candidates and constituents alike. Dependency corrupts, Irving Kristol recent- lysaiudb;suablustoelluyte dependency tends to cor- rupt the marginals our nation's future dbepceknedds.dAranidust.he marginals may dep

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