Notebook
On returning to London from abroad, my first sight of the election was Mrs Thatcher on television, looking a little too 'wellgroomed and perfumed'. She seemed shy and nervous and my heart sank; but the day was saved by the sheer unpleasantness of her interviewer, a certain Mr Tuohy a disagreeable saturnine-looking man who looked as if he had failed for the Foreign Office and never got over it. In style and mannerisms he appeared to copy Mr Robert Kee, but again without success, and his embittered questions brought out the very best in Mrs Thatcher, showing how wise was Mr Callaghan's neglected dictum not to insult her. This was followed by the Labour Party broadcast, a most extraordinary affair, apparently aiming to prove the Conservatives would immediately put about two million men out of work. The scenario was a pile of paper with figures of hundreds of thousands of men to be sacked on each sheet. These were briefly shown and quickly snatched away by the horny hand of an unseen artisan, giving the unfortunate impression he was suffering from acute diarrhoea. We were then treated to a commentary by 'Dandy David' Owen, looking glum about the good news from Rhodesia, who lectured us in his own inimitable, superior way on the horrors of unemployment he has never experienced. He was followed by an exquisite film-starry girl who talked through thin lips about the wicked Tories. Of the two programmes, Mrs Thatcher's was clearly the better.
To the marginal seat of Battersea South to hear my old friend Norman St John-Stevas speak. The meeting of 150 people was held in an enormous concrete-lined room with a ceiling about 40 feet high cluttered with air-conditioning machines which made the hall hum like the inside of an aeroplane. As the busy Tooting Bec-Balham line lay just outside the window, hearing was no easy matter, the speaker's words losing themselves amidst the air conditioning, acres of concrete and rumbling trains. Mr St JohnStevas, who never tries to be anything except himself, is one of the most witty and delightful speakers I have ever heard. Subdued by the noise and concrete he was not at his best, but by comparison with the next two speakers he sounded like Demosthenes. The chairman gave the evening its only comic turn, as from the back of the hall his speech of thanks and introduction appeared to be an essay in comic miming, since all that could be seen was deferential gestures and his mouth opening and closing, not a whisper reaching the back of the audience. The candidate's name, Theo Wal lace, suggesting an association of the Mediterranean with a Scottish hero, promised excitement; there was none. Looking like a Cox's orange pippin with spectacles he made a dreary speech for half an hour, punishing such phrases as let us cast our minds back', 'I ask you to imagine' and 'the Socialist juggernaut.' Questions followed, but as it was never possible to hear them, the answers were hardly illuminating. On leaving, I spoke to the agent (obviously a very intelligent girl, as she told me she had arranged only three meetings for the candidate), advising her that if she could also stop him from canvassing he might win.
I have always doubted the accuracy of opinion polls and never more than in this election where separate polls on identical dates have differed by as much as 15 per cent. So I thought I would have my own poll, and with an extrovert friend drove to Clapham High Street. There, I took my constituency manner out of cold storage and we questioned 44 voters, I saying politely I was a representative of LOP (Lam bton Opinion Poll) and asking for whom were they voting. The answers we had were with two exceptions polite, and of the 44 people asked, 8 said they would vote for Labour, 6 Tory, 10 said they had not made up their minds, and 20 declined to disclose their intentions. Now this last figure of well over 40 per cent illustrates the large section of the public who believe in minding their own business, and remain untouched by the pollster.
I have never yet seen a poll which stated in its statistics the percentage of those who declined to comment as opposed to 'don't knows' and so there must always remain a large section of the community whose intentions are mysterious, as there is no reason to think that they can be parcelled into a convenient figure among the parties. In future I think opinion polls should disclose the number of people actually asked and not merely those who answer the question. Psychologically, I think the tedium of polling must make for inaccuracy. The classic method of polling is to ask one out of ten passers-by; but if the pollster is a young girl, which is frequently the case, she is unlikely to ask a West Indian in a bellicose mood, or a man who has had too much to drink. And anyhow, if she asks a voter who is not prepared to answer, the whole percentage system is thrown out. There must also be a temptation to take your choice as to whether a passer-by is Conservative Of Labour, and then to see if you are right.
To Lewisham to hear Mr Shore give a gigglY lack-lustre speech, only showing excitement when he spoke of his detestation of the Common Market. But one interesting question: a prosperous-looking Indian businessman rose waving his tax form to declare he was paying 75 per cent taxes. This caused a positive growl of rage from the English section of the audience who apparently detested the idea that he was making so much money, and conveyed in their throats their approval of taxes which caught him. Later on Mr Shore said the electorate was bonkers if they thought the Conservatives would treat minority cornmunities as well as the Labour Party has done. The very growlers who had growledi at the successful Indian growled their applause.
There is a titanic struggle going on in my old constituency of Berwick on Tweed which the Liberals hold by a minute majority. In the 1930s the same situation existed and the Conservatives believed that they were about to unseat the sitting member, Sir Hugh Seeley. Two days before the poll at a large meeting in a Corn Exchange, a leading Conservative rose and said: 'Sir Hugh, how can we consider you to be the right representative for this division when it ls known that last year you spent a month in the South of France driving round in a Lagonda, and on one occasion lost £1 ,000 at roulette.' There was silence in the hall. Sir Hugh slowly rose to his feet and said: `I would like to emphatically deny the accuracy of your story. I did not spend one month in the South of France, I spent two; I did not drive round in a Lagonda, I drove in my Rolls-Royce. I did not lose £.1,000, I lost f10,000.' The hall exploded with delight and he was at once returned to Parliament. If Mr Alan Beith is returned as a Liberal member, I am quite certain it will not be due to any comparable event.
I think the Conservatives will win (or, by the time some of you have read this, will have won) by over 60 seats as Mr Callaghan's 'Ho Ho Ho, trust me but they will ruin you campaign was started too early; the essence of scare campaigns is they must come at the last moment. Lord Lambton
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