I SUSPECT that Mr. R. A. Butler would be an
even more successful politician if he were a less good politician. He has a way of finding rationalisations to justify what his party has or has not done : they are usually clever enough to be hard to answer, but rarely clever enough to be convincing. Take his explanations of the Government's re- luctance to introduce legislation on the Wolfenden Report. At first he took the line that public opinion was not ready for it. This, of course, is true : pub- lic opinion rarely has been ready for progressive legislation—yet governments have, rightly, pressed on with it if they have felt that they would be retrospectively justified by results—or that failure to take action would mean trouble. Now that failure to act has meant trouble, Mr. Butler has switched his line; he has begun to talk about the undesirability of sweeping vice under the car- pet. The analogy is feeble. A good housewife suffering from dust throws it out if she can; but if she cannot she would prefer to sweep it under the carpet than have it getting into the eyes and noses of her visitors. In any case, the Wolfenden Report had many constructive proposals, which ought by now to have been incorporated in legislation. But on all such matters the Govern- ment is incurably timid; and I am sorry to see Mr. Butler, one of its few enlightened members, acting as spokesman for its timidity.
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