ANOTHER VOICE

They really believe it — these death cultists. Not San Diego's — I mean the Tory party's

MATTHEW PARRIS

Those unafraid to die for their faith are always, in their way, admirable. There was something moving about the calm confi- dence with which 39 members of the Heav- en's Gate cult prepared themselves for death. 'We couldn't be happier about what we plan to do,' said one of the cult's mem- bers, on a specially prepared video, filmed in the gracious surroundings of their estate.

These were not wild men and women the human wreckage amongst whom reli- gious movements often proselytise. They were intelligent people with something to lose. Their behaviour was neither despair- ing nor hasty. They had thought things through, examined the evidence and become convinced that their bodies were only containers for their souls, and that a spacecraft concealed behind the Hale- Bopp comet was waiting to take them home.

If I doubt this, that is not to say the cult was either stupid or mad. Far from it. These were people just like us: ordinary men and women imbued with a human capacity for belief (or delusion) — and a talent to persuade and a propensity to be persuaded which are available to leaders and the led in our own country as much as in the United States.

This is why, as the British news media relayed details of the last days of those 39 convinced but deluded souls, I could not help thinking about John Redwood, Michael Portillo, Teddy Taylor, Sir James Goldsmith and the Tory Right. 1997 could be quite a year for suicide cults.

What first alerted me to the possible con- nection between right-wing isolationism and a San Diego death cult was an election video sent to me and many other voters in West Derbyshire by the Referendum party. I watched this at once, then watched it again.

It was creepily compelling. In an eerie half-light, an actor told us about a vast international conspiracy to mislead the British people. Selective evidence and quo- tation were adduced in support of this hypothesis: that we were being lulled into a false sense of security by people who would, if we let them, be masters of our destiny; and that we must arise now, before it was too late, and shake them off. Near the end, Sir James Goldsmith, looking won- derfully tanned, was seen addressing a cheering crowd of the already convinced. We were invited, urgently, to join them. I waited. How would the video end? Would John Redwood, lit by an indigo spotlight and flanked by Mrs Gorman and Mr Cash in tinfoil toga, now appear and advise us to swallow a large quantity of pills, then lie very still in our bunks, waiting to join the souls of everyone in England who has seen the truth and be gathered up and beamed to a celestial warship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, preparing for the pre-emptive strike on Germany?

In the event, the finale was a little less exciting. We were advised to vote for the Referendum party.

How I hope Mr Redwood, Mr Cash, Mrs Gorman and the rest will not write to protest that they have nothing whatsoever to do with the Referendum party. I realise that. I also realise that the Heaven's Gate 39 had nothing to do with the assembly of 900 who died in Jonestown in 1978, or with those in the Solar Temple sect who have killed themselves in Switzerland and Cana- da over the past three years. But, just as these religious death-cults share a propen- sity to believe in apocalyptic revelation of such overwhelming truth that it must ulti- mately prevail, so do the British Europho- bic Right — of whatever party — share a susceptibility to a paranoid political delu- sion of such blinding intensity that they become convinced their cause must prevail.

No amount of evidence that the cause will not catch on can dismay them. A char- acteristic trait of those prey to psychopathic delusion — be it of the religious or political `Well skip the firewater this time. Could you just make that two cokes?' kind — is a tendency to interpret every event, however uncongenial to the hypoth- esis which grips them, as serving only to confirm the hypothesis. My friend Ahmed who became a paranoid schizophrenic in our first year at university told me he had identified a death ray shining into his bed- room. I explained it was someone's porch light shining through a hedge and through his curtains. 'Nor he said, grabbing my arm. 'Don't you see? If you wanted to kill someone with a death ray, would you make it look like a death ray? Of course not! You would disguise it as a porch light.' Ahmed's logic was hard to deny. When I denied it he concluded that I was in league with his would-be assassins.

As it was with Ahmed, so it is with Mr Redwood. After unprecedented displays of disunity, mostly caused by the antics of the Tory Right, the Conservative party is sink- ing to historic lows in the polls. Do Mr Redwood and his pals accept any blame? `No!' they cry, grabbing our arm. 'Don't you see? We have not caused trouble; we have simply stated our position, and the rest have caused trouble by disagreeing with it.'

Soon the Tories may go down to a resounding defeat on 1 May. Will the Right then accept that the voters have not liked what they saw? 'No!' they will cry. 'It was because we were not right-wing enough.' And what will they say if an apparently cen- trist 'new' Labour party wins a huge victo- ry? Is this not a sign that the British public want a moderate government? 'No! They just think they do. They were never shown a convincing alternative.'

And what when the single currency comes to nothing? Will the Right accept that their nightmare was only a nightmare? `No! It shows we were right all along. It would have been a disaster.'

Men in white coats took Ahmed away. He harmed only himself. In San Diego and at Jonestown, the cultists destroyed nobody's prospects but their own. But I fear that before the white coats come for the Tory Right, as they will, these cultists will have lost the Conservatives two elec- tions, not one, and transported a whole great party, against its will, to the political equivalent of an imagined spacecraft behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.