X Marks the Spot
Slightly More of a Plague on One of Your Houses
By KINGSLEY AMIS
SWANSEA WEST, the constituency in which I live, is a marginal seat. It was held by Labour in 1955 by only 1,021 votes. The Tory candidate is a local man and apparently well liked, an improvement in both respects over the carpet- bagger in 1951. All in all, neighbourhood anti- Tories like myself have the duty of getting to the polls even at the cost of personal inconvenience.
Apart from my natural aversion to the spectacle of any Conservative success, I have reasons for voting Labour. These are all national, not local. To opt for 'the man, not the party' on the score of 'what he will do for his constituents' is foolish as well as selfish; foolish, because unless both candidates have been in Parliament before—an unlikely contingency—we have only their prom- ises to go on. And we know all about those.
1 shall vote Labour, then, because I would just about rather see a Labour Government in office than another Conservative one. There is very little in it. I like to think that nobody, in Swansea West at any rate, hates the Labour Party as much as I do, and my hatred is not much assuaged by the fact that in Mr. Bevan it boasts the only man in current British politics of whom it can be said that at least he used to be a substantial figure. Moreover, Labour is sinister as well as fatuous and revolting: for one thing. I reckon it has a slightly higher proportion than the Tory Party of smooth persons who know what is good for me better than I do. But, as I said, my vote will be anti-Tory, not pro-Labour. .
I shall never forgive the Tories for the grubby bravado of their Suez venture and I do not think anybody else would. Not forgiving includes recog- nising the fact that they are capable of doing the same sort of thing again, quite possibly with far worse consequences. Their neurotic anti-Ameri- canism (so important a factor in the motivation of Suez) is of a more dangerous kind than Labour's, because more sudden and irreversible in its onsets. To do a Labour Suez by breaking up the Western alliance would at best be a 'slow process. And Whatever their faults Mr. Gaiiskell and his friends will not be afflicted by poor man's imperialism.
The other decisive anti-Tory point is equally uncomplicated and obvious. I shall never forgive any of them, except Lord Hemingford, for their behaviour over the Devlin Report, though I may in time moderate my awe at their effrontery. In a way the Devlin business was worse than Suez. because it involved the abandonment of a principle no earlier government would have questioned:
when things go as badly as that, someone resigns. The Tory quality of bland stick-together-and- pretend-nothing-happened hypocrisy is, again, more vicious than Labour's speciality of emotional evangelical exhibitionistic hypocrisy. The same pharisaism which made the Opposition attack on the Devlin cover-up so odious would, I think, turn a good handful of Labour MPs against a government of their own which was trying to whitewash itself in such a situation.
What else? Labour had an idea in its head once, even though it is now almost forgotten; Con- servatism never had an idea at all, except to hold on to its wallet. On a less loftily philosophical plane, I remember the small boy in 1955 who jeered at my car because it had an election poster on it, then cheered when it turned out, incredibly, to be a car with a Labour election poster on it. (The Tory campaign headquarters, appealing for funds, say heartrendingly that they depend on individual generosity, 'whereas the Labour Party receive massive support from their candidate's Trade Union.') So, on the day, Labour will get my car as well as my vote. It will not get a financial contribution, except in the sense that I have had to bribe my wife, who does our driving, with a new sweater and skirt. I hope it will not have to be a mink coat next time.
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