POLITICS
A battle for hearts and minds over this, that and the other
NOEL MALCOLM
But the courtesy. Oh, I can't bear it if sometimes the streets of Continental cities are cleaner than ours. I can't bear it if we have worse graffiti than they do. What one is trying to get back is a much deeper pride in Britain.
Thus Mrs Thatcher in the Sunday Express, rendered almost inarticulate by all those tidy boulevards and superior, correctly spelt, baccalaureat-trained graffi- ti. Later on in the same interview she was referring dismissively to 'Europeans talk- ing about European union and this, that and the other'. And a few days later she amplified these comments in her now famous attack on M. Delors, which must have sent fingers in Brussels riffling through the dictionaries in order to find the exact Greek, Danish and Portuguese equivalents of 'airy-fairy'.
That newspaper interview remains, however, the more revealing expression of her views. Note that (despite all the efforts of the thought police, whose evangelism on this point is matched only by the BBC's determination that we should all think in centigrade), Mrs Thatcher continues to use 'European' as a synonym for 'Continental'. And note too that her instinct, when faced with a problem which has apparently been tackled more successfully in Europe, is not to suggest the creation of a European Street-sweeping Authority, nor to demand the laying down of European standards on graffiti, but to appeal to 'a much deeper pride in Britain'.
For the last nine years, the Prime Minis- ter's attitude to Europe has been rather like her attitude to the abolition of capital punishment. Her instincts have made her hostile, or at least distrustful, in each case; but knowing that the change was here to stay, and that most of her MPs were in favour of it, she has kept her distance with an air of barely concealed disdain. Of course capital punishment is an all-or- nothing affair (from the recipient's point of view, anyway); and the equivalent black- or-white issue, namely whether to be a member of the European Community or not, is no longer on the agenda. Only in the last couple of months has the question of the nature of European membership moved once again into the foreground.
For the first time for a long time, Mrs Thatcher faces a real test of her leadership of the hearts and minds of the party — a test, that is, which cannot be passed simply by sending the whips in to push people through the division lobbies. There is no particular piece of legislation here requir- ing votes to be counted: that, indeed, is part of the problem. The arguments which matter will take place behind closed doors, between the Prime Minister and the draf- ters of the Conservative manifesto for next year's European elections. But there will also need to be much consultation and persuasion within the Tory ranks, if Mrs Thatcher is to avoid ending up with a seriously divided party.
To talk of deep divisions already existing would be premature, because deep divi- sions must normally be clear-cut ones, and at the moment nothing is clear-cut. Only a tiny number of MPs will stand up and say, like Teddy Taylor, that the whole ;•lea of European membership is a foolish error. (One pro-European described these col- leagues of his to me as creatures from the Stone Age).
Once you have accepted the inevitability of membership, you enter a fairly con- tinuous spectrum of opinion. This in itself becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of the Euro-lobbyists, who argue that if you are not against Europe you must be for it, and that if you are for it then you must be for — to borrow a Thatcherian phrase — this, that and the other.
Very roughly, the spectrum can be divided into trusting technocrats at one end and grudging nationalists at the other. The former are the spiritual heirs of Mr Heath — an inheritance which looks more and more like an embarrassing liability. (Mrs Teresa Gorman may claim that hormone therapy has put a spring back into her step and made her feel ten years younger, but this is nothing compared with the effect of a few concentrated doses of pure pique on Mr Edward Heath.) The technocrats look on Euro- membership in terms of optimisation, co- ordination, rationalisation and so on. Occasionally they talk about European culture: by this they mean that they enjoy taking holidays in Italy. When visiting their constituencies they engage the sympathies of their hostesses by pointing out how convenient it would be to have a single system of Euro-conveyancing to facilitate the purchase of cottages in the Dordogne. When critics complain about the Eurocra- cy's assaults on British sausages or biscuits, they protest that these are petty concrete details which should not be used to attack the grand idea of Europe. (The difference, of course, is that whilst a tiny minority of British citizens buy houses in France, the vast majority buy sausages and biscuits in Britain.) The grudging nationalists, on the other hand, regard the European Community as tolerable only as a treaty relationship between sovereign states, and find it desir- able only as an economic project to break down tariffs and restrictions. Contrary to popular belief, the Treaty of Rome was, with the single glaring exception of the CAP, a strongly liberal, anti-dirigLste docu- ment.
The administrative problems caused by the growth in European membership forced the grudging nationalists to put up with the Single European Act, which came into force last year; and the new impetus towards 1992 revived their faith in the EEC's liberal economic credentials. They are only beginning to realise that, in the eyes of the Commission, the single market is part of a whole package of unifying measures. And they are starting to see that administrative convenience can become an excuse for a major erosion of constitutional principles. As M. Delors put it in his 'airy-fairy' speech, 'We shall not succeed in taking all the decisions which are necessary between now and 1995 without, in some form or other, the beginnings of a Euro- pean government. There will be too many decisions, too many complications, too many delays. . .
There are some simple issues of principle here, which the Tories have almost lost the habit of arguing about. Thatcherism, as I have suggested before, is largely Powellism apres la lettre. The must visible aspect of this is the doctrine of the market: this part of the iceberg rides above the water, and has been diligently burnished by econom- ists and intellectuals.
But the whole theory of tradition, nationhood and sovereignty lies murkily below sea-level; most Conservatives are no longer sure how the arguments go, and suspect there may be something disreput- able about them. Mrs Thatcher is not much of an arguer on these topics either. For her, and perhaps for most of the electo- rate, a gut feeling is good enough. But for the Conservative Party the real argument has scarcely begun.
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