Political Commentary
The Government's forked tongue
Patrick COsgrave
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Prime . Minister is in control of the Government so absolutely that the individual political creativity of ministers is stifled, to the detriment of •the political, that is, the common, good. The reverse is the real truth: Mr Heath, by virtue of what James Margach recently called his "tireless energy, boundless enthusiasm and concentration," dominates Cabinet meetings, but not the Cabinet, let alone the Government. Indeed, the history of this Government should be written, not in terms of Prime Ministerial dominance — let alone Presidential pretensions — but in terms of the sheer incapacity of the Prime Minister to run the show.
Take as an illustration the varying responsibilities of ministers for different aspects of the fight against inflation; and take, more particularly, the extraordinary divergence of their utterances on the subject. Poor Mr Macmillan fought the counter-inflation Bill through in Committee, with the able assistance of the Treasury. He tried to make conciliatory statements about the Government's relations with trade unions. No Department of Trade and Industry minister represented the Government at meetings of the Committee, but Mr Tom Boardman — an especially able member of Mr Heath's team, who went straight from the backbenches to being Minister for Industry — was to be found making tough noises on the floor of the House in direct contrast to the impression his colleagues were creating or trying to create upstairs. The DTI are to administer the policy.
More recently the amiable Mr Robert Carr — who once mildly suggested that his Industrial Relations Act entitled him to an invitation to the TUC annual conference, like a nineteenth-century Tory ministerial predecessor — was heard to utter the dread word' confrontation' when discussing relations between Government and unions in this week of industrial strife. At the same time the whole burden and emphasis of ministerial and Conservative Party propaganda has been that no confrontation is being sought.
Most extraordinary of all was the weekend outburst of Mr Willie Whitelaw. Always to the connoisseur's taste as an expert politician of the old school — though he is known to have a violent temper if outraged — Mr Whitelaw threw the language of compromise, fair play and conciliation — as well as the last modicum of common sense — to the winds when he declared that there was a "curious comparison" between trade union militancy in Britain and terrorism in Northern Ireland. He added, for good measure, "There are those who are threatening to challenge the Government's prices and incomes laws [they were not, as I have pointed out recently, laws when he spoke] in order to satisfy their own selfish interests. The basis of the troubles in Northern Ireland is the attempt by extremists to have their own way."
Now, any one, or even two, of these contradictions could be explained away. Of Mr Whitelaw's singular speech, for example, I have heard it variously argued that he was tired; out of touch; highly strung; or anxious to say something relevant about general policy matters outside his specific province in order not to get permanently sunk in an Ulster backwater. Likewise, I have heard it suggested that all the variations of emphasis and pitch in ministerial statements on industrial matters are being carefully and callously orchestrated on behalf of the Prime Minister by anybody from Mr Geoffrey Johnson-Smith to Mr Michael Wolff. But I don't believe any of it and, in any event, it could not dispose of the fact that efforts were made in various quarters to persuade Mr Whitelaw to change the matter of, his address to the ladies and gentlemen of the Tory party in Penrith; without success.
It is necessary to go through so many examples in order to show that the Prime Minister is not, either with calculated thought or boundless energy, dominating his ministers, and their every act and utterance. Nonetheless, there has to be an explanation for the forked-tongue approach to political rhetoric in these recent days. The most important element in such an explanation — and it is a difficult concept to grasp — is, I believe, the proposition that ministers reflect the Prime Minister's own highly emotional and instinctive approach to the present economic and industrial situation, partly because he has a stronger personality than most of them have, partly because they share his own moral and intellectual uncertainty about political strategy and tactics just now. They contradict on another because of a tendency to be jumpy, and uncertain abou,t what is right. It is a short-tempered Government.
Mr Heath himself may have tried to avoid the union confrontation; yet he penned a singularly brusque letter to Lord Cooper which was certainly not without its effect on the subsequent activities of the gas workers. Similarly, hemmed in by London traffic, he caused poor Sir Desmond Plummer to be dragged to a telephone in Tokyo to tell him why he was kept late for a reception. None of this is caused by an inherent insensitivity of behaviour — though Mr Heath often tries to be a bully — or any particular boorishness. Mr Heath is, indeed, more often than not a courtly and even over-gracious man. It is caused by inner uncertainty, about policy, about how to use office and, above all, about action. And, ministers speak in discordant voices, because they do not know from day to day what they want to say, and they are not told from on high.
The best prepared government of modern times, as Mr Heath used fondly to call it, is now intellectually rudderless, for all that it is still trying to do its best. Its members deserve, not opprobrium, but sympathy, even though it is the future of the country, and the future of political as opposed to bureaucratic leadership of the country, which is in their uncertain and fumbling hands.
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