Blackpool Commentary

Tories on Top

THERE must be easier ways of earning a living. Harken to Mr. Mencken : . . . meals bolted suicidally or missed alto- gether, nights spent in pursuing elusive and infamous politicians, hours wasted upon the writing of dispatches that were overtaken by fresh news . . . dreadful alarm and surprises at three o'clock in the morning, all the horrors of war without any of its glory.

And yet, for all the horrors, I would not willingly have missed an hour of this past month. Nor would Mr. Mencken : For there is something about a national con• vention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centres and the gluteus inaximus, and yet it is somehow charming. One sits through long sessions wishing heartily that all the dele- gates and alternates were dead and in hell— and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.

Even at the Tory conference? Even at the Tory conference. The sight of 4,000-odd Tories from all parts of the land is, to begin with, a sight like no other on earth. The hats of the women and the pots of the men are indescribable; the general air of smug, settled superiority—and goodness knows where that comes from—scarcely less so. Yet there they all are before my very eyes, filling the hall three times full and running over, and drowning the speaker's voice by walking about and talking at the back. And there, up on the platform, flanking a chairman (Sir Stanley Bell) Who gave rich and early promise of wrecking the proceedings almost as effectively as Sir Arthur Comyns Carr did for the Liberals, were Cabinet Ministers by the dozen.

The gulf between platform and floor is widest at the Tory conference, of course, because to very many delegates the annual get-together is almost entirely a social occasion (many Conser- vative MPs I know, for instance, would no more think of attending their conference than they would think of attending that of the Communist Party—and many, indeed, would be looked at askance by their local committee if they said they wanted to attend and thus deprive another local worthy of his annual chance to gaze upon the great ones). At the other three conferences any delegate could, if the need arose, put his point of view to the assembly; at the Tory conference I should think that quite half of the representa- tives present would be quite incapable of framing two consedutive sentences in public. At the other three conferences politics is, at any rate for a week, the most important business before them; at the Tory conference politics is for many a poor second to the meeting, the gossiping, the dancing and even (for the younger delegates) the sewing-up of pyjama legs and the making of apple-pie beds.

And yet, as I say, up on the platform are Cabinet Ministers, and it looks as though it may be a long day yet before any of them will find themselves sitting on the Opposition Front Bench. A year ago the Tories were in travail; today they are, if not in clover, at any rate on top. At the slightest reference to Mr. Macmillan, .the entire conference has a prolonged seizure; at the sight a Lord Hailsham, the air is thick with bursting blood-vessels. These people have one quality, it is clear, that is lacking from the three rival meetings —gratitude. They are grateful to their leaders for working the miraculous transformation; for changing certain defeat into probable victory.

They are not merely grateful, they are openly, demonstratively and aggressively grateful; they stride about the corridors of their hotels exuding gratitude. And well they might. The end of The Pit and the Pendulum expresses something like it : There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets II There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders] The fiery walls rushed back! An out-

stretched arm caught my own as I fell fainting into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The In- quisition was in the hands of its enemies.

Why and how the Tories have been thus nick- timely snatched from a hideous fate is a subject in itself, and , many gallons of ink have been squandered upon its discussion in the past few months. But nobody disputes that it has, at any rate temporarily, happened, and at Blackpool this year they had come together for the first time since it happened to give thanks for their safe deliverance. At the 1957 conference they were still reeling from Gloucester and Ipswich, and Rochdale and Torrington were yet to come. Ati this conference they have nothing worse to come than East Aberdeenshire.

In the circumstances, one could not expect much criticism of those lovely people up on the dais; for the Tories close ranks in success, as the Socialists do in danger. The ruinous level of taxation (unquote : I have never actually seen anybody being ruined by taxation, though I have frequently seen people being annoyed by it) is a favourite topic among Tories arid, indeed, others; here, however, is how the second main resolution of the conference went : That this Conference calls upon the Govern- ment to ease the burden of personal taxation, so encouraging initiative, enterprise and incen- tive, thus increasing the high standard of living which we now enjoy under Conservative ad- ministration and leadership.

And when I add that Mr. Charles MacCarthy, who moved the resolution, began with praise for `the welcome. reduction of taxation which has already taken place,' continued with a due ration of appreciation for 'an increasingly high standard of living, the like of which has never been in this country before,' and concluded by indicating his belief that Mr. Butler was a splendid fellow, it will be seen that the mood of the conference was not precisely hostile. Mr. Simon, who grows more civilised every year (fancy a Tory who quotes something from Sydney Smith, other than the three most hackneyed entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and whose talks require his audience to be awake if they are to be under- stood !), read them a firm but kindly lesson in elementary economics, and the motion was carried —which was what, after all, he had suggested it should be.

said the knowing ones, 'you wait until after lunch. Compensation for compulsory pur- chase. Sparks will fly. Blood spill. Heads roll.' Stationing myself near the emergency exit I waited for the holocaust. But the knowing ones, as usual, were wrong. In vain did Mr. David Price (Mr. Price, who is an admirable fellow, must really endeavour not to sound quite so much like the Member for Woodford), begin with a reference to Captain Corfield and end with a reference to Marcus Aurelius. In vain did delegate after dele- gate spring to the rostrum and request, demand --nay, insist—that current market value should be paid for land compulsorily purchased; the fact is, current market value is not going to be paid for land compulsorily purchased. and the dele- gates may put that in their Franks Committee Report and smoke it.

Not that you would have suspected this to be the Government's view from Mr. Henry Brooke's reply to the debate. His muddying of the clear waters of indignation was extraordinarily skilful; within ten minutes nobody in the place had the remotest idea of what he was talking about. To instances of hardship he replied : 'Send me the Particulars'; to the frontal assault he replied by dragging in that old chestnut about the man whose father was hanged (though he called it hung; per- haps the Labour Party is right about the public school), the relevance of which it was not easy to see until I noticed that the delegates were laugh- ing so hard that they had clearly forgotten the subject of the debate entirely. At the end the resolution calling for legislation ensuring market- value compensation was passed unanimously (indeed, one homely body near me almost had her arm broken by her companion when she absent- mindedly raised it against the motion); and a fat lot of difference it will make.

It is all, as it is with the Labour Party, a matter of face. And already at this conference it has been made clear that the face the Tories turn to- wards the public is a good deal more attractive than that of their opponents. Never mind whether their slogans—'Opportunity State' is a perfect example—actually mean anything; the fact is, they sound as if they do. Never mind if the bulk of the delegates look and sound as if the Archangel Gabriel would be asked to go in by the tradesmen's entrance if he called on them; the ones who get chosen to speak look like real people with the welfare of the country at heart. No trouble is too great for the Tory Party to take if it is going to help put their case over; their press relations are a model of what such things should be (the Labour Party's are staggeringly bad on their own, and by comparison are non-existent), their con- ference control impeccable (the hanging-and- flogging debate was carefully pushed into the fag- end of Thursday afternoon, so that none of the more bloodthirsty beldames of the party would get her face on the television film in the evening). If they win the election it will be because the public likes the look of them better; and in Black- pool they are doing their best to ensure that the warts are out of sight.

Meanwhile, I have to report that St. Annes, compared to Blackpool itself, is like heaven, though the taxi drivers are no more honest than they were last year; that the sun is shining; and that we have yet to hear from Mr. Selwyn Lloyd. Oh God ! Oh, Montreal !

TAPER