Election Commentary
A wall: to go; the gap narrows; the generals hurl their reserves into the line with the profligacy of a Haig; the name of Jasper pasSes from lip to lip, for all the world as if the election were a Victorian melodrama; the shouting from opposite sides of Smith Square bids fair to frighten the pigeons away permanently; Mr. Patrick Maitland searches rather desperately for some limelight more favourable than the kind that shone on him when he told the electors of Lanark that the Labour Party was planning to abolish elections; Lord Hailsham calls for vigor- ous Tory blows above the belt; Mr. Morgan Phillips wonders aloud where Lord Hailsham wears his belt; Mr. Gaitskell and Mr. Macmillan address meetings at opposite ends of Sauchiehall Street, and no doubt go far towards frightening the drunks in between into permanent sobriety; an official from the Town Hall calls on Taper to ensure that he is on the register for the next elec- tion; men in white coats are to be seen frantically oiling electronic .brains; the Daily Mirror pre- pares to suggest to its readers how they should vote, the Observer toys with the idea, and the Spectator actually does so; Tory headquarters claim to have sold ten milffon leaflets; but since they were all sold to local Tory associations the figure fails to impress; Mr. John Osborne announces his support for the Labour Party, and the London dramatic critics prepare to vote Con- servative en masse; the British Broadcasting Corporation is accused of Left-wing bias, which causes many citizens to rub their eyes in astonish- ment; nominations close; mouths open; and vox populi prepares to sound koud and clear.
But the chances are that it will sound thin, con- fused and anxious. A deadlocked result is in the tea-leaves, and for all the waggings of wise grey heads over it, few will deny that a deadlock would be in one sense a fitting end to this election. After all. Parliament has been deadlocked in a largely artificial struggle for so long that the lads can hardly complain if it turns out that the electorate has touched pitch and become defiled. Nor. indeed, is this the only way in which a draw would be a proper, as well as a likely, outcome. I cannot disguise the fact that I ardently hope for a Con- servative defeat next Thursday; but with the worst will in the world I cannot feel any great ardour for a Labour victory. I have surveyed the political scene for all but three years now, and a pretty depressing scene I have on the whole found it. Caligula has been much criticised for making his horse Consul; but I have noier heard anybody suggest that there was anything Arong with the beast in that previous station to which it had pleased Jupiter to call it. There are some Con- suls in the present .Cabinet, and on the Opposition Front Bench, so stupendously incompetent that real public obloquy would justifiably attach to anybody who made one of them a horse. Yet after Thursday next we have little to hope for other than that Bu[tinkle will change places with Bultitude.
Little to hope for; but not quite nothing. It is that 'not quite' that makes me hope for a Tory
defeat, and does not allow me to think that if there is a near-tie, it will be a proper result in any but the strictest logical sense. I have been reading a book with the uncompromising title of Gan- grene (Calder, 7s. 6d.), and cannot honestly say that it was an enjoyable experience. It consists of the statements made by seven Algerians who allege, with a wealth of detail and a list of names, that they were tortured in Metropolitan France, together with notes by the publisher of the banned French edition, and a long introduction by Peter Benenson, which is not as logically or consistently argued as it might be, but -which nevertheless is a powerful plea against the excesses of the French police, army and security forces and the lies and evasions of successive French Governments (under both the Fourth and Fifth Republics) which have defended those excesses. But that is not all the book contains. It also contains the whole of the statement of 'Captain Ernest Law, who was thrown out of the Kenya Prison Service and .subsequently imprisoned for five months without any form of trial, in circumstances that make it impossible to reach any conclusion other than that he was being victimised for attempting to expose the brutalities being visited upon African prisoners in Kenya's prison camps; the book also contains a selection from the documents concerning the massacre at Hola Camp.
In Paris, Algerians had electric currents passed through their genitals, and the French puppet- Premier put out mutually contradictory denials of their statements; in Hola, eleven Africans were beaten to death and Sir Evelyn Baring's office put out a document that suggested they died of drink- ing contaminated water. I do not think that the distance between these two sets of facts is so very far, nor that the route between them is so very fanciful. This is not to say that I fear that if the Conservatives are returned to power I will be in danger of having electric currents passed through my genitals if I should express myself as not wholly convinced that, say, Mr. Christopher Soames quite justifies on merit alone his inclusion in the Government. though I suspect that I shall be in rather more 'danger of being hit in the face. even if only in mistake for a member of the League of Empire Loyalists.
I return to the theme that has haunted this column for months; the creeping tide of authori- tarian attitudes, accompanied with increasing frequency by violence, that is moving across this country like the ice-age glaciers—only a good deal faster. I think a good deal of this stems from the instinctive Tory assumption that ttley have an inalienable and permanent right, given of God. to run the country. To give him his due. I do not think Mr. Macmillan really believed what he was saying when he calmly suggested the other day that he was responsible for the success of the Khrushchev-Eisenhower talks and the conse- quently increased likelihood that there will be a summit meeting. There is no doubt, however, that many Tories up and down the land believed him. and little doubt in my mind that the belief is part of their assumption that Moses was a Tory, and that he brought. the .key to 10 Downing Street- down from Sinai with him. I have often said that one of the things that appals me most about the present Government, or at any rate its chic] leaders, is the lengths to which they are prepare to go in order to maintain themselves in office How can it be so important to anyone, consider. ing the low public repute of politicians, the appal ling conditions under which they work, thcit hours, their pay, the extreme difficulty with whicI alone they can achieve anything of value ot importance, and the speed with which they ail forgotten whether they are successful or not- how can it be so important, in those circunt stances, for them to cling to office at the cost ol their honour and Britain's good name? I do not know, and I do not suppose I ever will, now. (TN only theory I have ever put forward with any con• fidence is that Suez was for the Government the equivalent of the Mau Mau oath; after that they were willing to do literally. anything.) But the most sinister sign on the political hori. zon today is the fact that the attitude has spread throughout the ranks of the Tories in the country. For Mr. John Cordle to be selected as Majot Friend's successor as Mr. Nigel Nicolson's sue. cessor in Bournemouth East, it was necessary for him to forswear entirely any intention of ever dis. agreeing with the Government or his local associ- ation, or ever heeding the .dictates of his con. science in the unlikely event that it would urge him to do so. There is no evidence that Mr. Cordle, and the scores--perhaps hundreds.— of Tories in a like position are in the least worried about this state of affairs. Indeed, many of them are proud to declare that they would never in any circumstances venture to disagree with the leaders of their party---not at all because they fear to follow Mr. Nicolson and Sir Frank Medlicott into limbo, but because they really do regard a man who obeys his conscience rather than mt. Macmillan and Mr. Heath as a traitor.
It is because I believe the most important task facing the electorate at the moment is to call a halt to this drift towards authoritarianism that I hope the Tories arc smitten hip and thigh next Thursday. The fact that it is only the Labour Party that is at Present in a position to do the smiting does not fill -me with any joy at all. The two main parties in Britain seem to me to have divided the attributes of the Bourbons betcen them; the Tories have learned nothing and the Labour Party has forgotten nothing. But put to the final test, such ignorance is more harmful in the world today than such obsolescence.] believe. and have said so with some force, that a rebuff to both parties is essential: that the Labour Party is not guiltless in respect of the tendency I have been speaking about. That is why I hope that the Liberals poll well, and why indeed I (in a nofl. marginal constituency) shall vote for them. But, bitter though a choice faute de mieux must be. it must be made. That is why I hope, with however little enthusiasm, that it is Mr. Gaitskell who goes to the Palace next Friday. And if I read the signs aright. he will. There is .yet a week to go. and I think he has caught the tide. If it rolls him on to victory. I hope it will be at 'least in part because others share the feelings I have expressed: hut the main thing is that the tide should flow. 'It is not fit you should sit . . . any longer. You have sal long enough, unless you had done more good; depart, I say, and let us be rid of you. In the name of God, go.' The quotation is hack- neyed; but so is this Government, TAPER
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