The Burial of Orpington Man

LIBERALS

By GEORGE K1LOH

'TN a radical party there are no sacred cows,' 1Mr Jeremy Thorpe remarked prophetically before this year's Liberal Assembly. Delegates returning from Brighton last week found his words only too true. The last species of the herd—NATO and sterling—had been ritually slaughtered, and party chiefs were wondering what quite had happened.

What happened, simply, was that the Liberals showed that they were still alive and kicking, even if many of the kicks were directed at them- selves. The stalemate of three years' electoral discipline had ended, and if the party's national executive was willing to wait for another Tor- rington or Orpington to turn up, the delegates clearly were not. Brighton underlined the point that Liberal Assemblies are more democratic— and hence less predictable--than those of other parties. A certain youthful irreverence charac- terised it: in the very first hour Lord Henley faced catcalls for his remarks on Vietnam and in the private session Lord Byers, hitherto one of the party's tutelary gods, was nearly pulled from his plinth.

There has always been a clash between belief and strategy in the Liberal party. One wing feels that since the vast majority of Liberal votes comes from middle-class disaffection, Liberal policy must reflect these particular attitudes and take especial care not to say anything too radi- cal. The result of the dominance of this wing, complete since 1962, has been a clouding of Liberal policies in the interests of capturing suburbia. Fear of chasing Orpington man back into his Conservative cave has been a major inhibiting factor in Liberal thought. In their favour, the suburbanites can say that they have given the party a few MPs—but- there is no evi- dence that a different attitude would have pro- duced worse results.

The other wing feels that the Liberal party has a tradition of Liberal progress being stifled by the search for Conservative dissidents. What, they ask, does radical mean? If it means a pro- found research into problems, then why is the Liberal party not more radical? The 'left' see little point in working for a party that cannot escape from its suburban fixation: one can sym- pathise with their plight over the last few years. Certainly party strategy at the moment gives them hope: the adoption of a slogan Which Twin is the Tory? implies inexorably that the Liberals must take a positively radical stand. But while party chiefs declare that Liberals are the 'non-socialist left' opposition to the Labour/ Conservative consensus, they are sometimes sur- prisingly afraid to accept the implications.

This division is a basic conflict, but the 'lefts' George Kiloh is chairman of the Young. Liberals. appear to have been handed victory by the Government's behaviour. Their hold was consoli- dated at Brighton by the obvious corollary of declared strategy, which meant throwing out the over-cautious proposals of the executive. It will be further consolidated by rumours of ructions on the executive itself. 'The national executive has abdicated; it's shown that it can't run the party at all,' said a senior Liberal after Mr Grimond's scarcely veiled attack on it in the pri- vate session. Certainly the reddest faces of all last week were the Assembly organisers (not the professional staff) and the national executive itself. There is now a proposal to send resolu- tions to the Assembly direct from the various policy committees to by-pass executive emascu- lation; and the party's constitutional review is taking a hard look at the command structure.

The weakness of the executive is crucial. Last December a recent recruit to the party's advisory staff asked, 'Where does initiative lie in the Liberal party?' The answer was that there was no particular source but the half-dozen men at the top. and that the initiative was there for the taking. To a large extent there has been no discussion of issues within the party at all, largely because no one but the leader has taken the initiative. Discussion has ranged over minor topics such as site-value rating and the admission of press to local councils. But the Liberals must take note of Mr Grimond's own statement at Carmarthen in July: 'No radical party can sur- vive without a clear vision of the sort of society it wants to create.' The leader has had precious little help from his supporters in welding sporadic but worthy Liberal thoughts into a coherent pro- gramme based on an agreed vision of society.

In the new situation, Liberals need more than just the appropriate policies; the policies must add up to something really worth fighting for. Perhaps at Brighton the overall impression was one of hope for the party as a radical force.

Many Liberals—and not least the delegates at Brighton—are careless about the future role of the party. Liberals want to soldier on, but all too often in ignorance of the final objective. Mr Grimond has tried hard to define the party's role over the last ten years; but many of the impli- cations of his arguments have not yet been accepted. It is not simply a question of the Liberal party becoming merely a pressure group like the ILP or the SPGB if it takes a genuinely radical course, for that is all it will ever be with caution as its password. Many delegates at Brighton evidently felt that the Liberals must exploit to the full the strains and divisions within the Labour party, and that until they did so the party would remain on the fringe. There was a feeling that policies needed to be blunter; that they must add up to something more than just an image of brightness and moderation; and that tactics must be far more sophisticated than

the shuffling in and out of other people's division lobbies might indicate.

The realignment on the left is the major object of the Young Liberals, %%ho, according to most

commentators, provided the only interest at all in the Brighton Assembly. The two halves of the youth movement—YLs and Liberal Students

—have suddenly realised that there is little future for them in pursuing the suburban strategy, and that it is neither honest nor particularly attrac- tive to young people. Denounced as Red Guards, as 'Trotskyite Communists'—whatever the Daily Telegraph meant by that classic remark—and mini-minded, the YLs virtually ran the Brighton Assembly. Not without some right-wing Irre-

dentist sniping from within their own ranks throughout the summer, both organisations have taken steps that in the Labour party would have meant instant disciplinary action—forming a co

ordinating committee on Vietnam, including (of all horrors!) the Young Communists; carping publicly, at the organisation of Liberal MPs; backing the seamen's strike; swiping at NATO; pushing for employee control in nationalised in- dustries.

At Brighton the YL electoral machine was, tactfully, used only once to full advantage.

Mustering between 200 and 250 votes in a total

of about 700 (where were the rest of the 1,353 delegates?), the YLs led the drive to throw back

an unimaginative executive resolution on NATO.

Worker control was not so heavily pushed, and failed by one vote; and devaluation no doubt benefited from the general feeling of revolt.

These actions, despite the words of the popular press, were hardly those of disloyalty. They were

inspired by a desire to see the party get moving again, and to bring back idealism to conven- tional politics. Mr Grimond praised the YLs in his closing speech. It is extremely unlikely that the Liberals will fall into the same error as Labour in using the big stick against their young; indeed, every sign indicates that the YLs have won the confidence of the seniors rather than lost it.

The Brighton Assembly was politically badly organised, confused and often angry. But against all expectations, what promised to be a doleful party rally sent delegates away thinking that once again they were part of a live movement.

Round one of the conference season is over; the others may be immediately more important, but scarcely less predictable or less heady for their participants.