POLITICAL COMMENTARY

• The making of an underdog PETER PATERSON

A new book emerges this week purporting to give us 'the authoritative, inside account . . .

factual, unbiased and brilliantly entertaining' of the general election that took place a little over two months and a million light years ago. I well remember the election—I was there, I attended meetings, went to press con- ferences, wrote about it, and I even voted. The book; moreover, is 'objective, fascinating, witty'—I am quoting from an authoritative note on the dust-jacket—an 'in- dispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand the realities of politics as Britain enters the Seventies.'

It would be tiresome to reopen the con- troversy over whether the 'seventies have or have not yet begun, and irrelevant. Some of the other claims made for this book* by its publishers, however, are much more worthy of examination. Excluding two chapters writ- ten by my friend Mr Alan Watkins—and I do not regard him as being free from censure on that ground alone—this book contains hardly anything which we did not have thrust down our throats by the press and television during the election itself, and, even worse, it is so sloppily written and badly revised that it is obvious that much of it was prepared before the event and based on an entirely erroneous forecast of the outcome.

Nor is that all. Not only is it like a dish prepared by an indifferent chef in a poor restaurant, to be reheated when a customer is unfortunate enough to order it, but it is even a dish different from the one that ap- pears on the menu anyway. Indeed, that is the book's only real attraction. It is so revealing of the character and political instincts of one of its authors, Andrew Alex- ander, that it amounts to something of a testament.

Mr Alexander, of course, is the brilliant Parliamentary sketch writer of the Daily Telegraph. The snap, crackle and pop of the breakfast cereal provides a descant to the snap, crackle and pop of Mr Alexander's daily comments on the antics of our legislators. Few escape his withering scorn, his sarcasm almost curdles the milk on the breakfast table. As a columnist he is all the things he is claimed by his publishers to be as an author—except, perhaps, objective; and that we forgive in any fascinating, witty, brilliantly entertaining sketch writer.

And so, for the long chunks of history Mr Alexander provides us with in this book, one can only regret that he did not draw more on his daily column and less on more pedestrian accounts of events. For be has managed in a deft hundred pages or so to make nearly all the disasters and catastrophes that overtook the Labour governments of 1964 and 1966, as well as the occasional triumphs, appear about as interesting as the Post Office's old- style telephone directories. Perhaps that is why—and I can think of no other ex- planation—Mr Alexander chose such an uncharacteristically modest quotation from Churchill to lead off his chapter on Labour's long hard slog : 'His actions speak much stronger than my pen'.

But in one respect, Mr Alexander's pen * The Making of the Prime Minister 1970 Andrew Alexander and Alan Watkins (Mac- donald 30s) speaks very loudly indeed, so loudly that it tends to obscure his narrative account of Labour's period in government, the Tories in opposition and the conduct of the general election campaign itself. For Mr Alexander, in a strictly political sense, is in love, and like any young man in love his mind is filled with thoughts of his beloved. The object of his ad- miration is Mr Enoch Powell, and Mr Powell pops up throughout the book, its hero and its focal point.

Quite plainly Mr Alexander would have much preferred to have been asked to write a book about Mr Powell. He did the next best thing when he was commissioned to write an account of the making of the Prime Minister and wrote about Mr Powell instead. He starts on this road quite suddenly on p.25, in the middle of what had been a review of the government's economic and foreign policy difficulties. Quite irrelevantly he mentions the Tory party conference and the ovation accorded to Mr Heath, adding : 'It was noticeable of course that Powell, the maverick Shadow Defence Minister, got a particularly warm ovation. He was then, as he had been for years, one of the favourites of the rank and file.' Not to mention, of Mr Alexander too.

On pp.47, 48 and 49, still ostensibly dealing with the Labour government, we have an extended account of the famous River Tiber speech, and a defence of the hero against the charge of hypocrisy: . . they ignored a very striking trait in Powell's character. If he had concluded, after a rigorous analysis, that his own views had been wrong in the past, he put his new case with greater vigour than ever.' That is surely the highest kind of political worship : my favourite politician, right or wrong. There is no index to this book, presumably because of the speed with which it was produced, but by my own count, Mr Powell features on at least forty pages of Mr Alexander's con- tribution, nearly always being explained and excused and patted and praised. Page 88, for example, refers to Powell's 'remarkable leadership qualities. As well as being good at handling men he was indefatigable . . . Unlike Heath he had the sort of natural con- sideration for lieutenants which inspires regard.'

How true! On p.94 we have an ap- proving (and rather surprising, in view of events) quotation from an unnamed admirer and staunch senior colleague of Mr Heath's: 'Ted never really recovered from sacking Enoch.' Again, while the then Quin- tin Hogg is berated as 'absurd' for insisting during the debate on the Race Relations Bill that he was entitled to be heard, having served the party for thirty years, Mr Powell's reply to Mr Anthony Wedgwood Bean's taunt about the Belsen flag, pointing out that he had served in the war against Nazism, is ecstatically praised by Mr Alexander as 'brilliant . . . dignified . . . may even have reminded the audience of Powell's brilliant' (again that overworked adjective) 'military career.' May even have reminded? What else was a reference to his having joined up as a private soldier in 1939 supposed to do?

But Mr Alexander's real hang-up is that his apparently intense dislike of Mr Heath,

which seems to item from `Mr Heath's pathological hatred of Powell', has gra‘ely affected his judgment of the issues he was supposed to be describing. If he had not been at such pains to pour scorn on Mr Heath's record as an opposition leader and election campaigner because of his attitude to Mr Powell, he might have been able to tell us why the press, the television, the opinion polls and Mr Harold Wilson got it all so wrong.. After all, in spite of the hurry in- volved in getting the book out, he did at least have the benefit of hindsight: why on earth did he throw it away?

Only three pages from the end of his book Mr Alexander is still nagging away in defence of his hero. 'The leadership had made the absurd mistake of overreacting to Powell and themselves doing precisely what they accused him of—diverting attention from the economic issues. It had all been un- necessary. Going out of their way to attack the people's darling [sic] especially when he was one of their colleagues was an odd manoeuvre to say the least. It was explicable only by the fierce personal animosity which Heath and several of his closest colleagues felt towards the man himself. Those few days in which the Tory attacks seemed con- centrated on Powell rather than the Labour party were undoubtedly the moment at which the party came closest to losing the election.' Undoubtedly? Not without a good deal more evidence than Mr Alexander is able to provide.

And it still goes on, page by page, line by line, as the book draws towards its denouement—for such is Mr Alexander's treatment of the Tory campaign, the Tory leadership, and the Tory record that the reader really feels a certain amount of shock when, eight lines from the end of the book (excluding some pages of extremely trun- cated results), we are astonishingly told, 'And Heath was home and dry.' By that time, I felt distinctly cheated, almost as if the author had written, 'Trapped in the evil-smelling dungeon, chained to the wall, the flood water rising inexorably towards his chin, a hidden mechanism lowering the spiked ceiling and a man-eating shark released through a flood- door into his cell swimming hungrily towards him, Ted Heath seemed in .deadly peril. But with one mighty bound he was free!

No one begrudges Mr Alexander his hero- worship. It is good to know that young peo- ple still believe in political leaders at all without attempting to censor their choice. But he forces us to rely on Mr Watkins's brief analysis of what happened in this ex- traordinary general election to explain why the underdog won against all the odds. Mr Watkins carefully goes into the effects of the newspaper strike and the catastrophic trade deficit published on the Monday before poll- ing day, concluding in a qualified way that it was perhaps not so much the emphasis of Conservative propaganda that an economic crisis was on its way that convinced people to vote for them as the reminder this style of campaign gave them of past Labour economic crises.

It may well be so, and as one who got it wrong anyway I naturally find it rather bor- ing to disinter my own mistakes. I am just left with the abiding impression after read- ing The Making of the Prime Minister 1970 that Mr Heath will remain forever an under- dog in Mr Alexander's eyes and that he is looking forward to writing The Making of the Prime Minister when and if Mr Powell ever achieves that glory.