POLITICS
The slings and arrows of Mr Edward Heath
NOEL MALCOLM
Some critics, contemplating the plot, would disagree with Eliot. They would remind us that Hamlet belongs to that spe- cial category of Elizabethan drama, the `revenge tragedy'. Is not the desire for revenge one of the most powerful motives known to the human heart? Does not the Prince himself say, `I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious', in an outburst on which Ophelia is moved to comment, '0, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown'?
This may do as an explanation for Shake- speare's prince, whose entire destiny had been thwarted and blighted: he was leading a pretty dull life in Elsinore, never invited to sit on an international committee, not even asked to conduct the odd symphony orchestra or carol concert. But I do not think it explains Mr Heath's behaviour over the last ten days. Although the term `pique' crops up in most discussions of his attitude to Mrs Thatcher since 1975, one hesitates to call him the hero of a pique tragedy. Either we must give up, like Eliot, and judge his behaviour excessive and uncon- vincing; or we should search a little more deeply into the nature of his devotion to the European Ideal'. After all, his commit- ment to that ideal goes back a good deal further than 1975.
This talk of commitment, ideals, devo- tion and so on may suggest that there is a natural symmetry between him and Mrs Thatcher. She has always been described as a `conviction' politician; and on the issue of Europe Mr Heath confronts her, one might argue, with an equal and opposite set of convictions. It is a tempting piece of pat- tern-making, and more convincing than the facile symmetries of the cartoonists and the leader-writers during the last week, who have drawn Punch and Judy fights and referred to `slanging matches' between the two ex-premiers, forgetting that Mrs Thatcher has made no personal attacks on Mr Heath whatsoever.
But Mrs Thatcher's convictions are not really comparable to Mr Heath's European ideal. A `conviction' politician has a firm set of standards which he tries to apply and abide by: some of them may be moral (e.g. personal responsibility) and some may be more technical (e.g. sound finance). These standards can be used to judge between alternative policies; they can also be used to identify things that need to be reformed. But even when they are all listed together, they do not amount to a blueprint of an ideal world. They are ways of judging the real world — tools of the trade, rulers and plumb-lines, so to speak, rather than com- plete sets of architect's drawings.
The `European ideal', by contrast, is much more like a master plan. It envisages a completely new set of political arrange- ments, with the removal of control over monetary, economic, foreign and defence policy from individual states, and even the formation of a single European army; where the United Kingdom is concerned, this would involve the most radical consti- tutional change in our history.
Such things should not come naturally, one feels, to politicians whose disposition is `conservative' with a small or a large `c'. Some huge, overwhelming reason must exist for adopting this ideal and devoting all one's efforts to it. And yet when you ask idealists in politics why their ideal is so desirable, they can become strangely inar- ticulate — and not just inarticulate with rage at having their beliefs questioned. It is as if the ultimate appeal of an ideal is the sheer notion that it is ideal, that it is less contaminated with reality than anything else one might aim at.
(Any reader who thinks I am exaggerat- ing here should go and study some Euro- propaganda. From an official EEC booklet about Altiero Spinelli, one of its founding fathers, I quote: `He belonged to that race of heroes who never give up. Truly, he fought for Europe with his last breath. At this time when Europe seems to be sinking into a quagmire of false realism, when our leaders seem to be motivated solely by national egoisms, you, Altiero Spinelli, sol- dier of Europe's cause, say to us: "Stand up
and hold high the flame of the European ideal. Carry on the fight!"' There are ten pages like this for every one sentence that tries to explain why the fight must be fought.)
Over the years, Mr Heath has offered three reasons for pursuing the European ideal. One is that economic necessity dic- tates it: Europe must be unified to compete against Japan or the United States. This may or may not be a true proposition, though if progress in the Gatt talks is blocked by Europe it will certainly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But talking about economic necessity does not explain what is so wonderful about the 'ideal% it eliminates the need to talk about ideals at all.
The second reason is that the grand pur- pose of European integration is to prevent another European war. This sounds much more idealistic; but, by the same token, it is further removed from reality. When one looks round Europe with its present set of arrangements, the possibility of a German blitzkrieg on Belgium or a nuclear war between Britain and France does seem rather remote. The idea that we must make huge further changes to those arrange- ments in order to render that possibility even remoter suggests an odd sense of pri- orities. Lewis Carroll's White Knight, who had encumbered his horse with metal spikes to prevent it from being eaten by sharks, must also have been an idealist.
And the third reason is the most elusive of all: it is that we, the people of Europe, share a common culture, and must there- fore share a common political structure. `Idealism' is an odd term to use for some- thing based on an argument so inconse- quential: for the consequence simply does not follow. `Beethoven was a European', thundered Mr Heath last week. Yes, we all know that he wrote the EEC song, didn't he? But if we prefer Mahler or Grieg, does that mean we should join Efta instead? For centuries, cultivated Englishmen have known that their culture was European without feeling any consequent need to federate.
So let us not be too harsh on Mr Heath. He is under the strain of holding aloft an ideal (a very dubious activity in a politician) with no visible means of supporting it. It is not just his emotion, as Eliot would have it, but the ideal itself which is `in excess of the facts as they appear'.
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