Campaign Commentary
Egg on my face?
Patrick Cosgrave
Since I am writing before the general election actually takes place, I had better get the predictions that, at a time like this, his readers expect their political correspondent to make, out of the way, so that those who buy the paper after Thursday can see either the egg or the grin on my face. Contrary to Mr Powell I do not think this is the moment of final decision, either on the EEC or on anything else (though he is perfectly correct in saying that, because of the purblind deviousness of the Prime Minister, it is the last election in which the British people can assert their power eventually to make a democratic decision about our membership of that organisation). Further, since I think neither major party has measured up to a great deal, and do not believe the Liberals to be papa bile, I believe the electorate will give an inconclusive verdict: either there will be a minority government (probably Labour), or a Labour government with a small majority and doubtful policies. In either case we can expect another election at an early date.
Duty done, there are one or two reflections about the campaign to be made. A surprising thing has been that, in spite of the fact that we are regularly (and correctly) reminding ourselves how small our politicans are, as men and personalities, compared to the giants of even the recent past, each climax of the campaign has turned on the personalities, rather than on the policies. Indeed, the Tories can scarcely be said to have presented any policies, merely a Prime Minister who taps himself on the chest practically every time he wants to tell us what the Government believes, or says, or is about to do.
The sheer aridity of the personalities of Messrs Heath, Wilson and Thorpe meant an impoverished campaign, though not one without its moments of humour and tension. There was no moment like the great return to the campaign, after a week's absence from it, of lain Macleod in 1970; nothing as soulsearingly impressive as Mr Heath's final and desperate broadcast in 1966; nothing as moving as Sir Alec Douglas-Home's shocked reaction to the violence and intimidation that greeted him on his campaign tour of 1964, and nothing as scary as Mr Wilson's triumphant rhetorical vindictiveness in that same campaign.
I need not go on. Two things appear to have happened over the years to the personalities, and to the personal resources, of Mr Heath and Mr Wilson. The Prime Minister has been able to assert the true nature of his character, unhindered, because of his complete self-confidence, by an excessive desire to appear nice, humble or gallant such as his advisers tried to force on him in 1966 and 1970. He has demonstrated again and again two different kinds of method in putting himself across. The first is to batter audiences — especially press audiences — into submission with endless statistical reiteration, provided from the capacious recesses of his remarkable memory; the second is continually to assert that what has not been demonstrated is, practically self-evidently, true. Thus, for example, on the question of the ghastly mistakes made both by the civil service and the Pay Board, not to mention the NCB and the NUM, in their calculations on miners' pay, Mr Heath stated flatly that it was, or had been made, "absolutely plain" that there was no mistake. Indeed, if I had a pound for every time he used the words "perfectly plain" or their equivalent I would buy myself an island in the West Indies. (If I had another pound for every time he said "up and down the country" I would buy that nice executive jet he has been travelling round in to fly there.)
Mr Wilson, meanwhile, has been firing on one cylinder only. The best performance I saw from him was in Bristol at the end of the second week of the campaign, when a delighted Labour audience cheered to the echo a man who had clearly regained some of the touches of the old maestro. But this was the attempt par excellence to make a personal appeal with a somewhat inadequate personality. Ttue, Mr Wilson 'provided endless lists of Labour policies, but his heart was not in recitation. You could see him on his toes waiting, hoping, for the hecklers who duly appeared, and then crushing them with joy in his heart and in his smile. One heckler — shades of '66 — he prevented stewards from removing from the hall, so he could continue to sharpen his wits on the unfortunate, thoughi Opportunate, man. He showed, however, slightly imperfect timing as he did so: his tendency was to start one joke and rapidly alter it to another; or to start to override the heckle by continuing with his
text, only to drop it as the requisite joke made its way from the back to the front of his mind.
It is perhaps unfair to be as harsh to Mr Jeremy Thorpe. He has been, after all, immured by necessity in North Devon for the whole of the campaign, and a man campaigning to the nation by closed circuit television was bound to seem rather bloodless. His too, though, was a personality campaign, designed to present Liberals as moderate, decent folk speaking softly and humanely against the shrill din created by the other two parties, but without any great range or power or vision to set up against events and need.
Now, all this was very well, but it seemed to me at least singularly inadequate as a set of political responses to the dread national crisis each of the leaders told us we were in, or about to be in, throughout the three weeks. The true cause, it seems to me, of the volatility and indecision which appeared to characterise the attitudes of the electorate throughout the period lay in an awareness that there was a crisis, and that the politicians were inadequate to handle it. That may, moreover, have been based less on any cons
ciousness of the inadequacies and failings both Mr Wilson and Mr Heath as Ministers, than of a conviction that the Pe; sonalities being placed before us hour aft.' hour and day after day were thin ones That is why the dramatic intervention of g Powell, when it came in the Bullring, °If mingham, last Saturday, was so powerful alle moving. His personality and character seer) then more clearly than ever to be deePee more complex, more powerful than in those,, any of the other three. There was one Pa'! ticular passage when he replied to quesPe,,lise about whether, the election once over, would stand as an independent, or even as, Tory candidate, to continue the fight ball; several years ago. Never a man to Ns, everything out, Mr Powell seemed to sug,geiv /that this was a bare possibility—thougn could never stand as an independent — latitve, could not conceive of it as at all likely. then went on to re-emphasise the passaged his speech which denied to his followers a hope that he would re-enter the elect,,°fr arena as an independent or at the heal' ;be new party. He repeated that the counse,' to was offering as a private citizen was onlYer. those who were ready, or who might be PO suaded to, regard the EEC as a supreme 3,„, overriding issue and he added, "The resPab'e sibility is passing from us — no, let us r,. personal — from me, to you. By next TO' day, it will have passed." d Mr Powell asserted in that speech, arlAa., the one that followed at Shipley on IV1011"fo'r that British membership of the EEC Was' op him, "supremely that kind of questioll,v which, if there is to be a conflict betweellii`o call of country and that of party, the ea" country must come first."
There was a great deal that was depress!lla, about the campaign just because of missing national dimension. But there ar'd few bouquets to be thrown. On the Coll? vative side Mr Carr, and for Labour it Shirley Williams spoke at different tiMesh'vid that unaffected passion and sincerity, simple in its nature, seemed to have adircLe appeal which transcended the heavY-f.tiog bullying of Mr Heath and the soft-facecl of Mr Wilson. Mr Denis Healey hat surprisingly good campaign, considering inadequacies of his performances to datieell' Shadow Chancellor, and he was espec'o competent in radio broadcasting• F°Ar Conservatives, both Sir Keith Joseph 0'11i, Thatcher, allowing for the fact that nelaii had any real opportunity to gain a share of the limelight, performed with e tionally encouraging elan. So, where does it all leave British P°tI• There were aspects of the campaign tod overall of television coverage, the has t of the Conservative broadcasting tactis'hict shoddiness of much Labour rhetoric — encouraged and brought out the feellugniiti the whole scope and range of British P' has contracted in recent years. Whatever result of the campaign, and vvhatevetrP r.,, prospects for the future of the cous seems that it will be necessary to take a re E new and hard look at the whole hatLiiiti British parliamentary and electoral Pbrocal for, with so little that is inspiring now at„tof there may be even more serious dangers.
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