A Spectator's Notebook

Secret treaty

Can there be any other possible rational explanation for the Government's decision to go on with the Channel Tunnel than the existence of a secret treaty or concordat between Mr Heath and President Pompidou in Which Britain guaranteed not to scrap the project? I can think of no other explanation. Plenty of people are convinced such a treaty — or possibly a less formal agreement — exists, and that it formed part of the deal under which France agreed to allow Britain to Join the Common Market. The Concorde Project can be defended on the grounds that it has cost so much so far, we might as well end up with a few planes (even if we have to lend them to foreign airlines); and anyway the Concorde treaties between Britain and France were drawn up long before Mr Heath met President Pompidou. But the tunnel is a stupid project at the best of times, an environmental disaster and a boon only to France. Given the present economic difficulties — and reading between the lines of the Chunnel white paper earlier this year — I conclude that the Chunnel has not been cancelled because we are bound by secret. diplomacy to let it go ahead.

Genteel Southport

Southport, a place I had not visited before, surprised me by its gentility, the many evidences of its present prosperity and earlier affluence: very much the resort of rich Liverpudlians who preferred to remain in the north rather than transplant themselves in Surrey. The Liberal Party conference scarcely ruffled the place. It will, however, most decidedly ruffle the Labour Party and the Conservative Party: their two conferences, at Blackpool next week and the week after, will take place in the light of last week's Liberal Party conference, and this is, in itself, a most astonishing change of affairs. The Conservative and Labour parties are accustomed to seeing eye-to-eye on one matter at least: the insignificance of the Liberal Party. No doubt at their conferences, they will endeavour to continue to play down Mr Thorpe's merry band. But their antics in this direction will be unconvincing,

Cause for alarm

I found general agreement among the more mature liberals of The Spectator's thesis that the principal cause of the Liberal revival is Mr Heath and the chief secondary cause is Mr Wilson, Among the same people it is also generally agreed that the effect of the Liberal revival, if it is sustained, can only be to replace Mr Heath by Mr Wilson at Downing Street, a point powerfully argued by Mr Derek Marks in the Sunday Express. It would, of course, be a terrible criticism of the two-party .system if a Liberal revival chiefly caused by the unpopularity of a Tory Prime Minister and his vacillating policies had the effect of keeping that prime minister in office. Under different circumstances this could happen — were the Liberal Party to maintain its impetus and were the disillusioned Tories who have deserted their party for the liberals to be Joined in even greater numbers by traditional Labour supporters who felt inclined to give the Liberal Party a chance. However, I do not

see this happening and I have no doubt at all that it is the chiefs of the Conservative Party who have greatest cause for alarm at a Liberal revival which their leader himself has caused and which looks like being itself the cause of his and his party's downfall.

Albatross

Why is the Labour Party, comparatively speaking, less vulnerable? Three words are sufficient answer: the Common Market.

Mr Heath's total failure to reduce the rise of prices "at a stroke" is, no doubt, the chief cause of his unpopularity; but Mr Wilson also failed to deal with prices, and indeed it was Mr Heath's exploitation of this which as much as anything brought him victory. Although there is no evidence that a protectionist Liberal Party would be any better at dealing with prices than Mr Heath or Mr Wilson, the knowledge that both the Labour and the Conservative parties had failure behind them could be expected to produce a Liberal revival based upon equal dissatisfaction with both parties. Underlying the concern with prices there is, I am quite certain, a deep sourness which has to do with Europe.

Touching the nerve

It is odd, of course, that the Liberal Party, whose proudest boast used to be that it was the first to advocate British adherence to the Treaty of Rome, should benefit from the public's profound hostility to the EEC. The party managers contrived to avoid debating the subject at Southport. It was very significant, however, that Mr Emlyn Hooson, MP for Montgomery, the-chief anti-marketeer in their ranks, when he slipped in some uncomplimentary remarks about the Market in the debate on food, agriculture and land use, suddenly touched the assembly's nerve and evoked a response no other delegate achieved during the entire week. There is a strong groundswell within the Liberal Party against its European policy. The party establishment is well aware of this. Ask their MPs abbut Europe and they immediately say "Oh, well, we are against the Common Agricultural Policy. We've been against the CAP for ages." They also say that the Common Market we've got isn't the Common Market they dreamed of; and they say that what they want is an elected European parliament which will produce a degree of responsibility among the bureaucrats. But the noises they make are thin and defensive, and I do not think it will be long before several of them stop making them at all.

Innocence of ignorance

The fact is that the European policy is very much elitist, and runs entirely against the grain of the 'community politics' we hear so much about. I had not heard Trevor Jones, the leading exponent of the new-style electioneering technique, before. His manner of public speaking is poor: he reads his speech haltingly; his delivery is flat and without vigour. But this seemed to bother neither him nor the people — predominantly young — to whom he addressed himself. His language is old and tired, full of stale cliches. Much of the substance of what he says is potentially very offensive and dangerous stuff indeed. He does not conceal his contempt for Parliament and what he calls the system.' Virtually his entire presidential speech could have been delivered by a communist to a communist party conference or by a fascist to a fascist conference. He did not seem to realise this, nor did many of his followers. He, and they, enjoy the innocence of ignorance.

Around the edge. •

There were some enjoyable moments around the edge of the conference.

I saw a very respectable-looking latemiddle-aged man tentatively offer a shaggy Young Liberal a florin for a copy of Liberator, the sheet with the references to Edward Short and Geoffrey Rippon in it. The man darted away, then seconds later returned, embarrassed. and shyly thrust a pound note into the startled hands of the Young Liberal.

A reputable reporter was disturbed at two in the morning by some very loud banging on his bedroom door. He stumbled out of bed and opened the door, so I was informed, to be told by the hotel manager to leave the room immediately because it was needed for Lord and Lady Avebury. Instead, he was offered a bed in the manager's flat.

Des Wilson, late of Shelter, now prospective candidate for Hove and one of the conference's star turns, told me that he had read Trevor Jones's presidential address and had been horrified to see in it some rude remarks about the Times. He persuaded Jones, so he said, to cut them out. This was doubly interesting since when Des Wilson came to deliver his party piece he dropped one passage from his own draft -a passage about "the Liberal policy of bringing power back to the people — the dream so magnificently spelt out by my friend Trevor Jones on Wednesday."

I wondered, too, what the founding fathers of Liberalism would have made of some of the remarks of Ruth Addison, rather dishy chairman of the Young Liberals, who declared "I am not bothered by the disappearance of competition from our markets."

She, and most of her kind, found nothing odd in Mr Peter Hain's brash assertions, "We have got to recognise the fact that free enterprise as we have known it is dead Monopolies and oligopolies are the rule, not the exception."

Clement Freud was duly funny, and quite successful, too, arguing that the police should continue to be responsible for traffic offences. I used to fancy otherwise, but he made me think about it, and I'm sure he's right. It grates a bit to have to say so, but there it is.