Political commentary

Avoiding the people

John Grigg

It used to be an axiom among courtiers and monarchists of the less enlightened sort that the Queen could not afford to behave too naturally in public — that she must always keep her distance or the magic of her office would disappear. Those of us who took the opposite view were accused of trying to cheapen the Monarchy, and of suggesting changes which, if adopted, would before long lead to its destruction.

Anyone who saw the Queen's 'walkabout' between St Paul's and Guildhall on Jubilee day must surely agree that such stuffiness was wildly mistaken. For all the beauty of the ceremonial functions, millions all over the world must have been even more touched and impressed by the sight of the Queen pausing to talk to people in the crowd, and by the obviously genuine pleasure that those brief encounters caused, both to them and to her.

If she ever feared (before 'walkabouts' were started, or in the early days of the experiment) that she would not be equal to the challenge of random, informal contact with people of all types and ages, she now knows that her fears were groundless. And knowing it she will do that side of her job increasingly well, because the best work is that which is done with confidence and enjoyment. Of all the great occasions in the Queen's reign none, it seems to me, has been more imaginatively organised, better executed or more hopeful for the future.

So much for the Jubilee. But while it has been proved once and for all that the Queen has nothing to fear from exposure to the people, it is equally clear that her present ministers and their Liberal allies have, in the electoral sense, everything to fear from it. Though there are no certainties in politics, the overwhelming probability is that an election this year would result in heavy losses for the Government and near annihilation for the Liberals. '

With every day that passes the odds lengthen against Mr Callaghan's being able to satisfy Mr Steel on any of the points of policy that might be held to justify the LibLab pact. Yet Mr Steel is clinging to it even more desperately that Mr Callaghan, because he knows that to abandon it might well be fatal both to himself and to his party.

If he really cared about direct elections to Europe (more, that is, than about his own political survival) he would break with the Government on its failure, or incapacity, to expedite the necessary legislation. He can hardly deny that a Tory government would put such a measure through, and it follows that by keeping the present Government in office he is betraying the European cause to which his party is ostensibly committed. Of course he can argue that the present Tory leadership is unsound on devolution and incomes policy, and it is true that if Mr Heath's line on both matters had been adhered to it would have been far more difficult for Mr Steel to enter into a pact with Labour, despite the traditional antiTory prejudice of his party.

Even so, how optimistic can he now be that Labour will be able to calrry a Scottish devolution Bill in the next session, even without provision for PR? And what does he think of the prospects for a Stage Three incomes policy? Is it self-evident to him, objectively, that accommodating Celtic nationalism and fighting inflation alike require that the Government should be kept in office and an election postponed?

Mr Callaghan has so many dissidents to condend with in his own party, particularly on the issue of European elections, that he may be looking for some device even bolder than the Lib-Lab pact, to save him from a total loss of authority and prestige. It is rumoured that he has had to retreat from his original declared intention to make the principle of direct elections an issue of confidence, and that he will soon be announcing that the principle, as well as the type of electoral system, will be left to a free vote.

It is even suggested that ministers will have the same freedom as back-benchers, which would be a more striking con' stitutional irregularity than the 'agreement to differ' on the EEC referendum, because in this case some ministers would be voting, even perhaps speaking, against a Bill introduced by their own goverument. If the reports turn Out to be true, one can only assume that Mr Callaghan is counting upon the Tories to give Shim a majority for the Bill, because the Liberals alone would by no means compensate for the number of opponents on his own side.

He would thus be legislating by means of what, in effect, would be a parliamentary grand coalition. There is unquestionably a strong majority in the House of Commons in favour of direct elections, granted a free vote of all parties, and Mr Callaghan must calculate that on the principle, as distinct from the voting system, the Tories would be bound to support him. If the opposition were then to put the whips on against a • proposal that voting for the European Parliament should be by some form of PR (which the Liberals, of course, would like), he could ask his allies to accept that he had done his best for them, only to be frustrated by the nasty Tories.

Mr Steel has as good as indicated in advance that he would accept this situation, and would try to persuade his party to blame the Tories rather than break the pact with Labour. In a letter to Liberal candidates he is reported to have said that the Conservatives might seek to defeat PR to break up the Liberal-Labour agfeement, but that if so the effect of their action would be to cement it, because they would have shown themselves 'so thirsty for power as to allow their personal hostility to PR to overwhelm their European commitments'.

It would be truer, surely, to say that Mr Steel is showing himself so terrified of an election in Britain that he is allowing the European cause to be left in the hands of a government and party which are manifestly far less committed to it than the Tories are, and which can be relied on to drag their feet over any European measure. Since the voting system for the first European direct elections is, by common consent, far less important than that they should occur, and at the agreed date, Mr Steel's hypocrisy nn the subject should deceive nobody.

It is understandable that Mr Callaghan should not wish to • have a showdown on European elections with six of his Cabinet colleagues, a large section of the Parliamentary Labour Party (including some right-wing as well as left-wing MPs), a majority on Labour's national executive, most leading trade unionists and, of course, the party conference. But he must resist the tendency, for which opposition to direct elections is (with many Labour people) a convenient cover, to make British mein" bership of the EEC an excuse for our own, and more specifically the Government's, failures.

Europe is in fact a crucial issue, and democratisation of the EEC the most crucial aspect of it. But in the present state of public ignorance and apathy it would not be the best issue on which to split the Labour Party. Many Labour anti-Europeans are also virulently opposed to the Government's whole economic 'strategy', and anY split should be on that, not on Europe. For instance, there should be no tactical retreat on the enforcement of cash limits within the public sector, or on the need for another general wages agreement with the TUC. The country might not survive another bout of inflation such as was permitted by Mr Healey during his first year II! Chancellor, and any election won by mean' of an electioneering boom would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed. If any Cabinet ministers are opposed to whatever a majority of the Cabinet judge5 necessary to contain inflation, their res.' ignations must be faced, with all the puss; ible consequences. After the anticipate° pantomine over European elections, the principle of Cabinet solidarity must be reas" serted. Democracy depends upon th?, acceptance of majority decisions, and 1' Cabinet ministers will not accept them ther,e is no reason why MPs should obey the party whips, or ordinary citizens the laWif enacted by a majority in Parliament. •Is anarchy is tolerated at the top, it might ! well be preached to the community at larg"'