NO LIBERAL CONSCIENCE
Richard West reports from a
by-election where the Alliance is ruthlessly in charge
Truro THE Conservatives, fighting to win a by-election here in Cornwall, were under- standably cast down by the news last Friday morning that the Alliance had won a colossal victory at Greenwich. As it happened, they had as their guest celebrity that morning, the junior minister Peter Bottomley, who came into Parliament through a by-election, as did his handsome wife. Moreover Mr Bottomley sits for the South-east London constituency of Wool- wich West, right next door to Greenwich, so he can claim some local knowledge. He was then well placed to explain why the Tory at Greenwich, won barely ten per cent of the pool, and only a fifth of those won by the Social Democrat.
Like all politicians, Mr Bottomley blamed the press for trivialising and perso- nalising politics and failing to deal with 'national issues', like housing, employment Cone million new jobs created by the Conservatives'), tax and his own speciality, transport. London journalists had been able to go down to Greenwich in 20 minutes and then publish their own pre- conceived opinions. He urged London journalists who had come to Truro to take a lead from their local colleagues, to talk to people and listen to what they thought on `national issues'.
The trouble is that in Cornwall, as everywhere in this country, only the politi- cians take an interest in these 'national issues'. Moreover the politicians fail to confront or even discuss the questions that really exercise the public. Some of these questions, like immigration and law and order, are less urgent here in Cornwall than in, for instance, Greenwich. However the main talking-point throughout last week was the Oxford undergraduate who tried to stop his mistress aborting their child. The tabloid newspapers splashed their story, almost all of them, like their readers, taking the side of the father. The 'quality' newspapers, read by the politician classes, gave less prominence to the story and tended to take the side of the woman wanting an abortion. Newspapers such as the Mail, Mirror and Star saw the irony of the judge, Mrs Heilbron, so to speak donning the black cap and ordering that a baby be taken to a place of execution. And, as Auberon Waugh has been predicting, fear of Aids is increasingly coming to influence people's attitude to- wards politicians. The main Cornish news- paper story last week was not the Truro by-election, a Falmouth helicopter crash, or even a father's murder and suicide; it was the Cornish girl who means to have a child by an Aids sufferer.
One could not say that Aids lost Labour the Greenwich by-election. But the de- feated Labour candidate, Deirdre Wood, is a member of the Inner London Educa- tion Authority and former member of Greater London Council, both of which have subsidised and encouraged homosex- ual proselytising, even of children. The Greenwich vote was a sign of revulsion against the attitudes of the GLC and ILEA, from feminism, through 'multi- racialism' to 'pupil power' in the schools. These are not what Mr Bottomley calls `national issues', because they cut across Party lines. He himself has dotty ideas on Central America. The SDP, which won at Greenwich, was part-founded by Shirley Williams, the person largely responsible for our ruinous education system. The Truro constituency is a living dis- proof that people vote about policies or the national issues'. Whereas all the other constituencies in this county are held by Conservatives, Truro was for the last 12 years the personal fief of the Liberal David Penhaligon until his death in a car crash. He was hugely popular and enjoyed a majority to match. But there is nothing that makes Truro more Liberal than any- where else in Cornwall. It is no more Celtic or Cornish-speaking or non-conformist than anywhere else. Quite simply the locals took to Mr Penhaligon. Moreover, Truro discovered that having a Liberal or a Social Democrat MP lends prestige. Because the MPs are so few in number, they get a disproportionate airing on television and the press. A Liberal MP also provides a boost for the Liberal Party in local govern- ment, and for the patronage it now com- mands in teaching, the education bureaucracy, the social services, the health service, the Water Board and perhaps the police. The last Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, John Alderton, went off to become a Liberal candidate, and still can be heard explaining his creed of 'commun- ity policing'. Just as local government in London offers patronage to Labour sup- porters, especially to blacks, women and homosexuals, so Cornwall is getting its Liberal Tammany Hall. Only 20 years ago, the Liberal Party appealed mostly to ideo- logues or idealists, as they would call themselves. Now it is gathering onto its bandwagon the purely ambitious profes- sionals, scenting the possibility of lucrative and powerful office; even at last govern- ment office. These are the people who manage the Party's famous dirty tricks, by defamation of their opponents. A great many people now have a vested interest in Matthew Taylor, the Liberal candidate, holding the seat. He has a large party machine. It used to be said of the Liberals, not least by their allies the Social Demo- crats, that because they had never enjoyed power, they had no taste for it. Only this could explain the vote by the Liberals in conference last year to get rid of nuclear weapons. No such problems of conscience affect the Liberals here. The candidate believes in the bomb. There are naval establishments in the constituency; and over the border in Devonport David Owen has the vote of the workers at the enor- mous naval docks which served the ships for the Falklands. The Truro War Memo- rial honours one Andrew Palmer who died in the Falklands in 1982.
The Liberals in Truro can say that 'we are the masters now', which makes life hard for the bright and very amusing Conservative candidate, Nicholas 'Nick' St Aubyn, the scion of one of the oldest Cornish families, named after the patron saint of hostages, a memory of those days when Cornwall was the Beirut of Christen- dom. Ever since the Aids scare, Tory candidates have had to be married men, and Mr St Aubyn asks the electors, over his loudspeaker, to vote for him 'as a Cornishman and a family man', calling to my mind the letter I saw or think I saw in the Daily Telegraph, that began: 'Speaking as a mother and a motorist'. The boast of being a family man is not quite fair on the Liberal Matthew Taylor who, at 24, has every excuse for not having a wife and children. He has a girlfriend, so there are no problems in that direction. The Labour candidate John King not only has a wife but a child called by the old Cornish name of Gawan. Not only that but he wears a Cornish kilt, and actually speaks the language. Not bad for a Londoner.
`Nick' St Aubyn is pro-abortion but does not favour the ordination of women into the Church of England. When this ques- tion was raised, the Tory MP for the next constituency, David Harris, said in a super- cilious way that this was not the kind of question that could provoke any interest in Truro. How Cornwall has changed. Christ- ianity flourished in Cornwall from Roman times and before the English arrived and `It's one of Gorbachev's.' converted. During the Middle Ages, the Church allowed the Cornish to use their own language, instead of Latin, for the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments. The Cornish rose in armed revolt against the English Book of Common Prayer, when it was introduced in 1549. They came round to the Church of England and took the side of the King in the Civil War, later suffering for their loyalty at the hands of Cromwell. In the following century John Wesley drew a crowd of 30,000 in this constituency.
Truro and Liverpool got new cathedrals in the 19th century. The Bishop of Lon- don, Graham Leonard, who leads the campaign against the ordination of women was previously bishop here. The threatened rift in the Church is an issue here for some of the faithful, if not for the politicians.
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