Principle in Opposition

A TRACT FOR THE TORIES-3 NIGEL LA WSON

In the two preceding articles I have argued that, at a time when, for better or worse, the state of the economy dominates all other issues in the political debate, the Conservative party will not be taken seriously by the electorate until it discovers a valid and distinctive economic policy of its own. And I have sug- gested that the only policy that meets this crucial need is a commitment to set the pound free to find its own value in the foreign ex- change markets of the world, so that the pursuit of economic growth may for the first time be- come genuinely established as the overriding objective of economic policy.

The fact that the public at large may not understand a programme of this kind is irrele- vant. What matters is that the electorate senses well enough whether a party has a policy or whether it has not. If—and only if—it has, then when popular disillusionment with the party in power reaches a certain point the public will be prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt. Mr Heath's chief task is not to compete with the present Government while it is popular, but to steer the Tory party into a position from which it can seize the maximum benefit when that popularity wanes. To do this he must be seen to have an alternative economic policy, whether that policy is understood or not—just as Labour was able to benefit from disillusion- ment with the last Tory government because the then opposition appeared to have an alter- native policy known as 'planning,' even though the public had no idea what 'planning' meant for the very good reason that the Labour party (as subsequent events have demonstrated) did not know itself.

Indeed, the ever-present danger for an oppo- sition is not that its policies may not be under- stood, but that—like entry to the Common Market—they will be stolen by a pragmatic government. Fortunately for the Tories, Mr Wilson has committed himself so unequivocally to the preservation of the 1949 sterling parity, that a change in that parity is the one political option that he has not kept open—except, that is, at the cost of a humiliating personal defeat. But this danger does mean that elsewhere the Tories would be foolish—at least, at this stage —to put forward detailed constructive policies. Instead, the opposition should content itself with detailed destructive opposition based on general constructive principles.

This course offers two further advantages. First, it is only by basing itself on great prin- ciples that an opposition can escape from the charge of opposing for the sake of opposing, an activity which fair-minded Englishmen of no fixed political opinions do not find attrac- tive. And second, it would help to provide the Tories with the sine qua non of any successful 0rposition: an alternative style of politics. It Is surely evident that the alternative style to that of the juggler with his succession of instant initiatives—the quickness of the hand deceives the eye—is not a different set of initiatives but a relentless development and reiteration of weighty principles—in Sir Isaiah Berlin's ter- minology, a hedgehog to set against the fox.

Nor, for the Tories, can there be any doubt hat their first great organising principle should be: freedom. Lip-service to freedom is, of course, nothing new for the Tories; and Mr Heath scored a great oratorical triumph with this theme at the last Conservative party con- ference. But in its practical application they have been lamentably half-hearted. Partly, per- haps, this is because many of the most serious erosions of individual freedom for which the present administration has been responsible— such as the wage freeze—have been 'justified' on the grounds of economic necessity; and with no alternative economic policy of their own the Tories may have felt unable to gainsay them. No doubt they could still have argued—and rightly, too—that even if prosperity and free- dom are in conflict, freedom must come first. But it is plain that, by adopting a policy that provides a valid economic alternative to statu- tory control of incomes and similar restric- tions, it is considerably easier for the Conser- vatives to present a wholehearted opposition to those inroads into individual freedom that are alleged to be essential to economic recovery.

But if embarrassment at their lack of economic clothes may explain the dismal inade- quacy of the opposition's attacks on such diminutions of individual liberty as the f50 travel allowance—a vindictive and nationally humiliating restriction of, as it happens, negligible economic value—it can hardly excuse a similar lack of punch over such totally non- economic issues as the proposal to abolish (after 600 years) the unanimity rule for juries. Here is a basic safeguard of the liberty of the subject being abandoned in the supposed interests of administrative efficiency, and the Tories can hardly bother to stir themselves. To become a convincing opposition the Conservatives must not merely swear allegiance to the principle of freedom, but must seize every opportunity to defend it in practice—whether it be against the wage freeze or financial restrictions on travel, the arbitrary powers of the Land Commission or the Government's war of attrition against the independent schools.

The defence of individual liberty should also largely colour the Tories' attitude to another basic principle: that of equality. A hard and fast line between the parties is never easy to draw: Labour does not stand for unadulterated equality without any exception whatever; nor do the Tories oppose any move to reduce any inequality of any kind. But for the Conserva- tive party, in contradistinction to the instinct and practice of Labour, when liberty and equality conflict, it must be liberty that is put first. If this guideline appears abstract and re- mote, a moment's reflection will indicate that it lies at the heart of such down-to-earth politi- cal issues as the debate on education policy and the differing party attitudes to personal taxation.

But if the Tories want their opposition to the negative and unnatural philosophy of egali- tarianism to be acceptable — let alone attractive—to a majority of the electorate, they must put the principle of inequality—and, in particular, the creation of new inequalities in response to new achievement—above the ossifi- cation of existing inequalities. In the long run, too, this is probably the only way of preventing existing inequalities from falling victim to poli- tical extremism. We have a great deal to learn from the Americans in this respect. Free-

dom, once again, is intimately concerned in this; for if the negative aspect of freedom is absence of restrictions, the positive aspect is the possession of sufficient private means to allow of a modicum of independence. Once again, it is only through a reform of taxation that this vital source of independence can be more widely distributed among the people.

And if the Tories' opposition to egalitarianism —which may be defined as the erection of envy into a philosophical system—is seen as a recog- nition of success, it must equally extend to the recognition (in a different sense) of failure. Both aspects of the essential inequality of man must have their place in a Conservative philosophy. The second implies a jettisoning of indis- criminate paternalist subsidies in favour of a lavish financial scheme for the relief of poverty, based on manifest need. Once this approach is adopted, it becomes, too, for the first time possible to see the outlines of a res- ponsible Tory housing policy, in which the philosophy of the queue (that bastard off- spring of shortage and subsidy) so beloved of local authorities would be replaced by the re- cognition that, provided poverty is genuinely dealt with first, there is no more reason for shelter to be considered a social service than there is for food to be.

In their rejection of Labour's egalitarianism, the Tories can, in fact, justly present them- selves as the defenders of the victims of modern democracy. While freedom is a cause to die for, there is no reason to be starry-eyed about de- mocracy. The true political justification for uni- versal franchise is, in fact, the same as the argument that historically led to its adoption, by successive stages, in Britain: the recognition that the alternative is either revolution which would destroy the fabric of the nation or the intolerable oppression needed to prevent popu- lar discontent from becoming effective. Demo- cracy was never intended to bring better or

wiser government—nor has it; any more than democratic election a tantericaine would bring better judges, if popular opinion were to de- mand this extension of universal suffrage.

But it has, of course, brought about other changes. It has replaced the oppression of the majority by the oppression—whether by com- mission or omission—of the minority. And the two minorities which suffer most from this are the minority of the successful on whom the nation's achievement so largely depends, and the minority of the really poor and unfortunate whom it is so convenient to overlook. The Conservatives should seek to appeal simul- taneously to both these minorities.

The conduct of an opposition must be deter- mined to a considerable extent by the policies and actions of the government it is opposing, and for this reason, above all, the Conservative party needs to make the defence of individual liberty its guiding principle. But at the same time it must be aware that a philosophy that sees the electorate solely in terms of a collection of individuals, each seeking to lead his own life in freedom and privacy, will never appeal to more than a minority of the electorate. Nor, indeed, has this ever historically been the philo- sophy of the Tory party. But there is a danger that it might appear so today. There can be little doubt that the Labour party, with its strong if nowadays usually unstated appeal to class solidarity, and its articulate invocation of 'the community' in contrast to the individual (who is invariably assumed to be 'selfish' in a way that communities, although made up of individuals, apparently are not), has succeeded in striking a note that is particularly beguiling in a complex and bewildering world in which the individual, as such, feels more and more lost and inadequate.

The function of politicians is, after all, to provide myths; and at a time when demo- graphic, industrial and sociological develop- ments have conspired to reduce often almost to vanishing point the individual's sense of belong- ing to a real community, it becomes essential for politicians to provide some sort of community myth to fill the gap. (It is no accident that, by contrast, the great flowering of the individua- list creed in the 19th century occurred at a time of classic social stability.) Much the same analysis, I believe, goes far to explain the remarkable appeal of regionalist (so-called `nationalist') political movements in the re- moter parts of the kingdom at the present time.

The Tory party, however, has historically always rejected, for reasons both practical and philosophical, any class or sectarian appeal, and instead has sought—often very successfully— to satisfy the people's need to 'belong' to some- thing larger than themselves and their families by encouraging them to identify themselves with the nation as a whole. Yet today 'nation- alism' is out of fashion among the opinion- formers. Thanks to a superficial mis-reading of history, it is accused of having been responsible for two world wars (a most informed verdict is that of Dr David Thomson, who has de- scribed the allied victory in 1945 as 'a triumph of democracy and nationalism') and has widely come to be regarded as a political sin of the first magnitude, fortunately found only in such anti- quated and obsolete figures as General de Gaulle. In fact the real danger comes from ideologies not nationalism; for while a nation may properly respect the nationhood of others, an ideology knows no frontiers.

Yet the Tories have become infected with this false analysis as much as anyone. Perhaps part of the trouble is the wrong turning they took when forced to abandon the cry of Empire; replacing it with the chimera of the Common- wealth instead of a Gaullist-type belief in Britain. But whatever the reason, asharrned to invoke the nation, the Tories today discreetly remove the union jack from their platforms and tuck it away in the cupboard. This is foolish enough from a narrow party political stand- point : Mr Wilson is well aware of what is at stake and can scarely wait to take the flag out of the cupboard again to wrap it round himself. But for the Tories it is doubly unwise; for once they lose their claim to be, in the fullest sense, the 'national party,' they are left, as they are in danger of being left today, either as the party of the 'individual'—a noble but to most people an austere and forbidding creed—or else as the party of the middle classes, which condemns them to a permanent minority.

Fortunately for Mr Heath and the Tories, it is not too late to reclaim the 'national' advan- tage. For Mr Wilson is, in truth, not very convincing in his patriotic role. He is uncon- vincing, not because he lacks an Etonian accent, a war record, or any of the other conventional appurtenances of the role. He is unconvincing because it is impossible to generate a sense of national pride to any political effect in a nation that is, in the Duke of Edinburgh's elegant phrase, 'on its uppers.' For most Englishmen it is intolerably humiliating to see the Prime Minister of England going cap in hand to the Germans to beg them to pay the principal foreign exchange costs of the British army. It is intolerable that our foreign indebtedness is

such that the British government, for all its in- ternational posturing, feels constrained to act as an American satellite—even though the Americans, to do them justice, have little wish for us to play this role. It is intolerable that we have to listen meekly to European homilies on our inability to work hard enough, and the difficulty of admitting our sick economy into the Common Market for fear of infecting the other members. But there is little need to mul- tiply examples.

And so, once again, the economic issue is seen to be crucial. It is only by adopting an alternative economic policy that would con- vincingly remove the balance of payments im- pediment to the country's economic strength that the Tory party will be able to become once again the national party, and so develop an appeal that embraces but goes beyond the cause of individual freedom. Even then, it will still need to develop the will to independence, which means a preparedness to cut the umbili- cal cord that has for too long tied Britain to the United States. But solve the economic conun- drum first, and all else becomes possible. In particular, it becomes possible to free national independence and individual liberty from the stranglehold of so-called economic necessity, and so provide a bewildered Tory party with the principles on which its policies and its opposition should be based.

(Concluded)