POLITICAL COMMENTARY

PETER PATERSON

A chilling moment occurred last Thursday evening in Committee Room No 10 at the House of Commons, chilling, that is. for all of us who are aware of the corruption of time and the depredations of age and dis- appointment. At that moment, Homer nod- ded, Cassius Clay found he could no longer put his combination punches together, Laur- ence Olivier fluffed his lines and we noticed bags under Raquel Welch's eyes. In other words, it suddenly became apparent that Harold Wilson is no longer the man he was.

There have been other indications, of course, since Parliament went back to work after its inordinately long summer break. A certain detachment, a lack of incisiveness at Question Time, an absence of the old killer instinct, rather like an ageing tiger brooding over his inability automatically to claim his victim. But it was in Committee Room No 10, at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour party, that the lack of edge became apparent and confirmed. Mr Wilson was listening to a speech by Norman Atkinson, the left wing mi. for Tottenham and one of the old boys of the Metropolitan-Vickers Trafford Park shop stewards' committee whose dominant position in the Labour party and the trade union movement is roughly equivalent to that of ex-members of Pop in the Tory party. In his extremely un-Tottenham accent, Mr Atkinson was philosophising about the technique of political opposition, a subject on which any member of the extreme left wing of the Parliamentary party is entitled to be listened to with retpect. Indeed, if you are searching for happy faces on the Labour benches these days, this is where you will find them.

However, Mr Atkinson is an intelligent man and he has an instinct and a taste for political theory every bit as keen as the more bookish approach of Professor John Mackintosh and the other intellectuals on the right wing of the party. His lecture last Thursday concerned the class interests of the Labour party and the need for the party in opposition to stress these interests. In particular he insisted that Labour has its sacred cows and should treat them as sacred, and he reprimanded Mr Wilson for having said, in effect, that all such beasts were liable to be slaughtered.

At this point the former Prime Minister interrupted Mr Atkinson to deny that he had ever said that there were no sacred cows. He had, he insisted, been misquoted. 'Oh no, you weren't,' retorted Mr Atkinson, 'You said it in Committee Room No 14,' and he went on with deadly accuracy to recall a speech Mr Wilson had made to another meeting of the Parliamentary Labour party defending the deflationary package introduced as a result of devalua- tion. He had then contrasted his own attitude towards health service charges in 1951, when he had resigned from the Attlee govern-

ment over their proposed imposition, with his willingness to contribute such charges to the deflationary package as an indication that there were to be no sacred cows. My in- formant (for such interesting gatherings are held in private so one must depend on the reporting ability of such friendly souls) records that something akin to collapse of stout party then occurred, with Mr Wilson slumping Jower in his chair and making no further contribution.

• Now, one should not exaggerate the sig- nificance of all this—indeed. I am more interested in Mr Atkinson's line of argument than in his outsmarting Mr Wilson in a political memory game—but Harold's power of total recall, sometimes down to the actual column number in Hansard, is part of his stock-in-trade as a politician. It is a form of mental agility that also acts as an in- dicator of the amount of adrenalin that the sheer excitement of political debate sends through his veins. If Mr Wilson is suffering from the 'Doctor, I even wake up feeling tired' syndrome it could mean that he is becoming bored with politics, or that the contrast between the pomp and power of No 10 Downing Street is no swap for opposition leadership in Committee Room No 10. What happened last 18 June was more than a sore disappointment for Mr Wilson; it was a crippling blow to his morale, to his pride and to his authority as a party leader. After that—at least for a while—he can no longer trust his own political senses. He got it wrong then, and like a tightrope walker who has fallen once, he can never be so sure of himself again. Politics is not so cruel, nor politicians so unkind, that the leader of the pack is immediately replaced and driven away when his powers show signs of failing.

All of which is, metaphorically, a far cry from sacred cows, unless you see them as Mr Atkinson does, grazing peacefully but vulnerably at the edge of the jungle. His line seems to be that Labour must keep such beasts as a symbol of dedication to the old religion of socialism, faithful to the monu- ments and achievements of Labour rule from 1945 to 1951 and again from 1964 to 1970. Even if the new radical Toryism of Edward Heath achieves a degree of popularity with the workers (and clearly Mr Atkinson believes that such a phenomenon would be purely temporary) they should

always have the old National Health Service, and even the old trade unions, untrammelled by the swarm of lawyers Mr Robert Carr is about to release on them, to go back to. The fear of the left is that the pragmatic style of government of Mr. Wilson is to be

followed by pragmatic opposition, when what is needed is for the party to cling to

its principles. Not being just a pretty face, Mr Atkinson has been looking at the tech- niques of opposition, and in the case of the forthcoming Industrial Relations Bill he has

come up with a suggestion as to how the Labour party should approach the problem. He believes that the party should demon- strate that it is fundamentally opposed to the Bill and all its implications by refusing

to put down any amendments for the com- mittee stage. This has been widely misunder- stood to mean that Labour should allow Mr Carr's Bill to go through on the nod. depending on the trade unions to demon- strate its unworkability in what Labour old-

timers refer to nostalgically as 'mine, field and factory'. What Mr Atkinson and his

friends have in mind, however, is that the

Opposition should take advantage of a procedural tradition that in the absence of amendments debate can take place on the motion that `the clause stand part of the Bill'. He has noticed that the Speaker (where the whole House is in Committee), or the particular chairman of a committee upstairs, curtails discussion on this motion when - there has been lengthy debate on amend- ments, but will give more time to the motion

if there are few amendments. By confining

the debate in this way, Mr Atkinson believes that Labour could condemn each clause in

turn and thus convey a more clear-cut im-

pression of opposition to the press and to trade unionists in the country. Putting down detailed amendments (and 'wrecking' amend• ments are not permitted) seem to him to smack of condonation and would land Mrs Barbara Castle in trouble as she sought to oppose details of legislation not very differ- ent from what she and Mr Wilson were pro- posing only a year ago.

Other MPS do not believe that the Atkin- son tactics are all that smart. Mrs Castle, they believe, can hardly expect to look very credible whatever form of opposition is adopted towards the Bill, but stands more chance of keeping her sanity if she is allowed to table amendments emphasising the on- workability of the Government's Bill, rather than having to dismiss whole clauses closely following her own ill-fated proposals, strike ballots, for example, or the cooling-off period, as a gross betrayal of the trade unions or an infringement of liberty. Cer- tainly Mr Wilson has no intention of being trapped, as the Atkinsonites would like to see him trapped, into promising to repeal the trade union Bill when Labour gets back into office. He may be nodding, but he is not fast asleep, and there are uncomfortable pre. cedents, like Mr Attlee's promise to end commercial television, to deter him from any such folly. But the important thing about all this.ts that Labour is coming to terms with life as an opposition. At another time Mr Wilson proved himself a brilliant opposition leader, and his friends believe he will be so agal.n. It was, I believe, Lord Randolph Churchill who said, rather mindlessly, that the .duty of an Opposition is to oppose. Harold Wilson will hit form again when he comes to. conclusion that the duty of an Opposlu°11 is to get itself re-elected to government