Politics
The silent minority
youth, personable manner, pretty wife, sense of humour, smart suits, videos with pop stars, vasectomy — Mr Neil Kin- nock has been working hard to convince the world that he is a modern and likeable man. He has spent about a year doing this; for although he did not become leader of the Labour party until last October, he moved into prominence and began his campaign of persuasion almost as soon as Labour lost the election. Some of the stunts involved have irritated his party. Labour is puritanically conservative about such mat- ters, and grudging towards anyone who displays personal charm.
But that does not mean that Mr Kinnock was mistaken. When he became leader, he had two most urgent tasks — to make up for the fact that very few voters had heard of him, and to show that the party which he led was no longer the divided and disagree- able institution that most of them had failed to vote for. Mr Kinnock has done both jobs well. You and I may not feel instinctively drawn to this pipe-smoking, vasectomied wisecracker who calls people 'kid' and winks at photographers, but you and I are probably not part of his 'target area'. Many voters may still think of the Labour party rather negatively, but then the Labour party is rather intractable material, even for Mr Kinnock's presentational skills. Sweep- ing its differences under the carpet is not a labour which Hercules would necessarily have preferred to mucking out the Augean stables.
It is not that Mr Kinnock has been wasting his time (Mr Foot, after all, could not have achieved a quarter of what he has), it is whether he, or his party, can offer more than his smiles. Given the difficulties that surround Labour's defence policy, it may be that there is no one except PruneIla Scales whom the managers can put on a party political broadcast to discuss the sub- ject, but that fact does not reflect well on the party. All right, the voter may admit, you seem pleasant enough, but what do you want and what will you do?
Apart from calling for a new Britain, free from class division, unemployment, war, famine, pestilence and so on, Labour is not letting on. It is prepared to say very, very loudly that it wants Mrs Thatcher to go, and in saying so, to be amazingly intem- perate. Messrs Healey, Kinnock and Kauf- man, just as much as Mr Benn, now regularly use expressions from the vocabulary of the 1930s. There is loose talk about a police state, about the prospect of appalling suffering and civil strife, about totalitarianism; and there are jokes and jibes about the Reichstag fire and storm- troopers and similar stuff which I imagine must be offensive to people who remember that period. But even if Labour cannot manage to remove her, Mrs Thatcher will eventually leave office one way or the other, and besides, the effect of Labour's obsession with her horribleness is to make her a still more prominent figure in people's minds, dwarfing any of her opponents. What would Labour do instead of Thatcher or after Thatcher? No one will tell us.
When Labour does speak it is very softly. Take the threat by the Labour group on Liverpool city council to introduce an ille- gal budget. Mr Kinnock has made it clear that he disapproves, but not in a voice loud enough for anyone to hear. The same goes for the miners. Mr Kinnock and Mr Hat- tersley and Mr Kaufman think that there should be a ballot, but they say so in a quiet, resigned sort of way, as if they neither expected nor wanted anyone to listen. It is embarrassing, of course, for Labour to condemn members of its own party or to undermine a strike, but it would not have to confine itself to rebuking Mr Derek Hatton or Mr Arthur Scargill. It does not have to accept the logic of con- frontation. It could admit that it would be sensible to close some pits before they were physically exhausted and yet question the Coal Board's policy, perhaps even support- ing closures in exchange for a much faster opening of new and productive pits and a policy of alternative work creation for miners in the run-down areas. Mr (as he then was) Wilson's encouragement of the white heat of the technological revolution may have been rather silly, but it did help to make the Tories seem has-beens. Today Labour is the party of resistance to in- dustrial change.
On the subject of the EEC, Labour is even more reticent. It fought the last elec- tion on opposition to the Common Market, but without troubling to explain why it was opposed. The result was that people believ- ed the 'figure' of 21/2 million jobs which would be lost by EEC withdrawal and added another reason to their long list headed 'why not to vote Labour'. In the past months, just as opposition to the EEC has risen to new heights, and the condition of the whole institution has become critical, Labour has backed away. Its new unanimity is achieved by the simple device of saying nothing at all. The only difference between the Labour and Conservative parties in the campaign for the European elections is that Labour, being out of office, feels free to be slightly more irresponsible about withholding the British contribution than the Government dares to be. But it is Mrs Thatcher, not Mr Kinnock, who has sat up for so many nights shouting at 'our con- tinental partners' and for our money. She not Labour, gets the jingo vote.
By now, one would have thought, Labour should have grown out of its em- barrassment at being such a snlai. I parliamentary party. It should enjoy .its freedom. The landslide majority of which Mr Francis Pym so rightly but injudiciouslY warned is causing all the expected problems for the Conservative whips, but they ale almost unexploited by Labour. The nnlY notable triumphs for Labour have been Mr Denis Healey's attacks on Sir GenffreY Howe (now failing because of growing sYM- pathy for the underdog) and Mr John Can' ningham's shots at the sitting target of Mr Jenkin and his local government bills. Even with the help of the Tories, freely given t°: keep the Liberals and the SDP out .01 parliamentary time, Labour is not helping, itself. The priggishness of the Left has lea to a breakdown of the pairing system which means that many Labour MPs stay away altogether or make ad hoc arrangements that destroy party coordination. Sometinies it seems that Mr Tam Dalyell is the onlY occupant of the opposition benches. You may not know much about Mr Cun- ningham, Mr Jack Straw, Mr Robin Cook, Mr John Smith, Mr Bryan Gould or Mr Jeff Rooker. At first this public ignoranc! was an excuse for Labour's leaders: now It is a criticism. These men (and there are others) may not be future Bevins or Bevan,s, but they are all cabinet minister material, all capable of good performances in the Com- mons, all fairly young and fairly sane. TheY are not being used properly. They are ac)t being encouraged to take the risks that arer the special pleasure of opposition. Labour manages somehow or other to get in next time, they will be great assets, but they are not being treated as assets now:. They are being hoarded. The same is true of most of Labour's talent, for public argn- ment has now become inseparable in the. Labour mind with party splits. Talking and thinking are dangerous. Despite being the 'stupid party', the con- servatives have proved much in°re resourceful than Labour in opposition. Perhaps this is because the experience is so traumatic and so comparatively rare that 3 Tory refuses to tolerate it. After 1945, the Conservatives adjusted to defeat with gab at the Research Department and youngish bloods like Quintin Hogg writing clever books. After 1974, Sir Keith Joseph started having his wayward, interesting thoughts and got Mrs Thatcher to listen to theme with results which, for better or for worse, are visible today. Why aren't Labour politi- cians making a few serious speech.es writing pamplets and even books, making policies, questioning assumptions? WhY don't they say something to break the . embarrassing silence which has descended upon
the conversation of politics? Speak now, or forever hereafter hold your peace. ,
Charles Moore
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