POLITICS
Another problem of frustrated middle-aged men seeking firm discipline
MATTHEW PARRIS
he Conservative Party sails onward toward the new session in passable shape. At least for the moment, the EEC has been side-lined. At least for the moment, the British economy is picking up. At least for the moment, the official Opposition pre- sents no threat. The dreaded Blackpool conference is over and John Major is still afloat. Four big problems, therefore, are for the time being removed. Only three now press. Discipline, discipline and disci- pline.
1 realise that a number of journalist col- leagues will bridle at that. Many prefer a more apocalyptic view. We who commen- tate from the sidelines did not take our degrees in history, economics or philosophy only to discover in later life that these are not the issues. Much has been invested in our intellects. We have decided opinions of our own on world affairs. We have reached principled conclusions on questions of sub- stance, like the future of Thatcherism and Britain's place in Europe. We are reluctant to conclude that a year's course in kinder- garten management at a teacher-training college would have better fitted us to assess the position of the governing party of our great nation.
But it would. Naughtiness, not good and evil, is now the issue. It is simply fatuous to think we can discern in this parliamentary Conservative Party theological divisions clear, deep and persistent enough in them- selves to threaten either its captain or its course.
The press keeps talking of the 'left' and the 'right' in the party. But if these terms are to be useful then they must permit us to see among Tory MPs (and, more impor- tant, permit them to see among them- selves) two broad camps, membership of which is a reliable predictor of attitudes across a wide range of practical policy.
Well can we? Unless I am much mistak- en, we would want to put Lady Thatcher into our notional 'rightist' category. But her two most recent pronouncements have con- sisted in an objection to spending cuts (in defence) and doubts about a shift in taxa- tion from income to expenditure (VAT on fuel). Now I hear she is to campaign for the coalminers! She'll be calling for the rena- tionalisation of the railways next.
Law and order, they say, is the litmus test for left or right. Is it? How would Nicholas Ridley have felt about identity cards? Is rolling over in the face of a threat from one of Britain's most effective trade unions, the Police Federation, right-wing? You can make the argument both ways, and differ- ent Tories make it differently. A world in which Sir Rhodes Boyson finds himself opposing spending cuts and Michael Howard throwing market efficiency out of the window and grovelling to a trade union, is not a world divided easily into right- and left-wingers.
Are Winston Churchill, or Elizabeth Pea- cock, William Cash and Nicholas Winter- ton, 'wet' because they do not want pits closed? No. Is unease about defence cuts felt only or mainly on the right? No. When did you last hear John Redwood or Michael Forsyth pleading for a doomed regiment or lobbying for a new kind of bomb? If the choice is between balancing a budget and keeping taxes down, which does a right-winger care about most? John Biff- en and John Townend will give you differ- ent answers.
Does the right want to privatise the Royal Mail? Is it mostly on the left that concern about increased VAT is felt? Does the division between those who do and do not care for farm subsidies fall upon left/right lines?
And then there's the big one: the privati- sation of British Rail. If you can usefully describe the undercurrents of support and opposition to this move in terms of the left/right 'split' in the party — or indeed in terms of the Thatcherite/post-Thatcherite 'split', or in terms of the Euro-sceptical/ Euro-enthusiast 'split', or any other split you care to mention — then trains will fly and there are porters at Waterloo station. The only split that helps us to explain Tory MPs' attitudes to privatisation is the `got-a- railway-in-my-constituency/haven't-got- a- railway-in-my-constituency' split; and even 'We're concentrating on drug crime.' then there are scores of notable exceptions. But there is one persistent Tory split that really does assist both our understanding and the whips' arithmetic, and across the widest range of issues. This is the 'I don't- give a stuff-about this-government-any- more/let's not rock-the-boat' split. And that's where the leadership's three big problems — discipline, discipline and disci- pline — come in.
Perhaps we can all of us remember schoolteachers or school prefects who sim- ply 'lost it'. Some, of course, never had it m the first place — ineffectual characters who lacked any reserve of natural authority to lose — but I am not talking about them. I mean the leaders who had respect but somehow forfeited it. Typically this was precipitated by seine single, signal, memo- rable loss of face. My Boy's Brigade NCO, for instance, who was called Oliver and enjoyed the status of demi-god among us privates, once got one of his testicles caught in his zip while on camp, and had to summon the assistance of the captain's wife. The zip was not 011ie's fault, but it did for him. There is no special significance in zips; it didn't have to be a zip; but it was. Oliver never regained his natural com- mand, never.
Mr Major got his testicles caught in the ERM. It didn't have to be the ERM, but it was. The occasion was Black Wednesday. It was unlucky that the ERM issue coincided at that time with a wider European ques- tion which a significant minority of the party really did feel deeply about. The ERM will pass, is passing; the European question will persist but will shift and mutate and inspire different divisions along different lines. What does not change, how- ever, is the memory in the minds of a large body of mostly men, of a period of intense humiliation for the chap who still claims authority over them. This is dreadfully compounded by feelings of guilt concerning their behaviour towards a woman.
There's a limit to what Mr Major can do, quickly, to repair the damage. Dogged per- sistence, which he has, and honour, which he has, will do their work in time. In the meantime, a great deal of it is down to the chief whip. Richard Ryder is a very impor- tant man, with a very important holding action on his hands.
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