Political commentary
Tories home and dry?
Charles Moore
The pigheadedness of General Galtieri has saved the Conservative Party. Only a little more flexibility and the professional negotiators would have persuaded Mr Pym, who would in turn have pulled round the Cabinet, that the 'peace process' must be given its full time (unspecified, of course) to work. As it was, the Peruvian proposals came close enough to succeeding to give the back benches a nasty shock. All along the Opposition hoped that Argentina would of- fer enough to show a clear gap between the Government and its 'raucous' War Party, better still, between Mrs Thatcher and Mr Pym. The Falklands would then have been lost, bloodshed avoided, and the Tory Par- ty divided and discredited.
It is probably due to Mr Pym more than anyone else that things did not come to this pass. It would also have been his fault if they had. When he became Foreign Secretary, Mr Pyrn had few preconceptions about the Falklands (there are ruder ways of putting this). He turned for advice to his professional advisers, and they told him what they had said all along, that the Falklands were not worth it, and that a deal could be struck with Argentina.
Mr Pym's preference for diplomacy over policies and his belief in what he no doubt calls 'common sense' put him in sympathy with the Foreign Office. He seems to have set about cobbling together the sort of decorous retreat which Lord Carrington would surely have arranged if he had still been there to do so. But whereas Lord Carr- ington always believed that only foreigners were worth conciliating, and treated the House of Commons with the contempt naturally due to a modern representative assembly, Mr Pym, after 11 years as a whip, was more cautious.
He is a 'House of Commons man', not in the sense in which Mr Foot is a House of Commons man — believing that all the great questions of human existence should be agitated interminably on the floor of the House — but as some dons are 'college men': Mr Pym prides himself on being able to feel the mood of the meeting, and understand what makes an MP tick. He soon discovered that, on the Falklands issue, Tory backbenchers were ticking like an unexploded bomb.
The profound stupidity of the Tory Right is an article of faith among Conservative party managers. Its opinions may be un- shakeable, but they are unimportant because it can be deluded by political leaders and/or isolated by whips. On hang- ing, immigration, the EEC, Rhodesia, even defence, the Right has been bamboozled and then defeated. Persistent opposition has been whittled down to a rump of harmless eccentrics. This might have been expected to happen over the Falklands. Although MPs were in a state of shock over the invasion, few knew clearly what they wanted, and therefore were probably ready to mistake a 'sell-out' for 'peace with honour'.
But on this occasion, the Right, better described as the War Party, was too large and too variously composed for comfort. It was not just the old imperialists and the 'rough right', though it included them. It was not merely the members for naval and military constituencies, though they provid- ed, in Alan Clark, a fund of indecently in- telligent arguments. It was also many of the most loyal and respected knights of the par- ty, usually covered with honour and treated as lobby fodder, and it was many other members who were simply repeating the things said in the piles of letters from their constituents. Try as you might, you could not reduce it below 60 MPs.
Mr Pym tried for the last time in the House of Commons two weeks ago, and came extraordinarily close to being shouted down. Mrs Thatcher showed no inclination to rescue him: so he rescued himself and kept the Tory Party in one piece. We invad- ed the Falklands, and it seems likely that we shall win them back, though perhaps at heavy cost.
So what seems to have been achieved is not merely a striking success for a Tory Government, but the success of what Toryism is supposed to be. The great post- war Conservative achievements — Butler and education, Macmillan and decolonisa- tion, Heath and the Common Market — have all been things that could have conic
from a Labour Government. Even Mrs Thatcher's 'harsh' financial policies are not characteristically Tory. The party of Neville Chamberlain and failure at Suez, the party that hated Churchill for as long as it dared' has been bloody, bold and resolute. This is a shock to the system. The Falklands crisis has not dissolved the distinction between 'wet' and 'dry'. Why someone who likes tight money should als° favour military firmness is quite unclear, but most politicians seem eager to accorn. modate themselves to the available caricatures. The Ted Heaths and Norman St John-Stevases talk of diplomacy aa,d 'world opinion', the Norman Tebbits George Gardiners of victory. But the balance of argument will surely now incline to dry. After the crisis, Mr Pym is the only °Ile of Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet critics whose place seems secure. Mr Whitelaw will not he disgraced, but could certainly be ennobled. Mrs Thatcher will not strive officiouslY keep Mr Prior or his Bill alive. In the view of 'wets', she will surround herself with Yet more courtiers, and confine great talent (themselves) to the back benches. There may be a chance that Mrs Thatcher will be magnanimous in victory, take on the airs of modern statesmanship and start gi:i ing even bigger hand-outs to nationalist industries and interest herself in g°„ causes. But it is unlikely. In the Falklands she has found the first really popular issue of her administration, and it is one wheAl, she believes she has acted, and succealewd on her instincts. She will surely be tentPte to make herself into England's de Gaulle'll Over the past two months, Mr Ell°°f Powell has been throwing down the sort °r personal challenges the Prime ginist„e0 loves to pick up. Mr Powell becomes "r.1 add toe agreeable with each new occasion which he is proved right, nor does he auw his chances of leading the nation, but can hope for vicarious successes. The a!0, da of political argument are changing 111 5 way he approves, and for which he ,,, agitated. We may at last be getting the true Tory populism since the age ° deference. It has long been true that the Conser- vatives are no longer the party of Ell ilf; idealists. They may go further. It would °0 be impossible at the next general election td find the position of ten years ago reverseic and the two major parties basically bostip, to the EEC. In defence, policy will sae.; look more directly to the interests of .°'n own people (none of whom has been kille„ by Russians for many years) than to the needs of any alliance. And at home, if :1',„ have more riots, I would give shorter ova' for Melford Stevenson to be called back t, head the inquiry than I would for Loll' Scarman. The Falklands have already proved niore important in politics than inflation or unemployment, a fact which may Puzzleke political scientist, but should not surPr" Tories who know their history.
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