Political Commentary
Heath's question, but whose answer?
Patrick Cosgrave
In the last week or so the leader of the Conservative Party and those closest to him when he made his decision to appeal to the people last February have experienced a certain grim and despairing satisfaction. Mr Heath then asked, in the most basic possible terms, who governs Britain? He was rewarded with that raspberry of a reply, "Not you, anyway." Since then that sense of a dislocation in society which he noted — but which he was not early in noticing — has been more widely diffused. Mr Peter Jay has written brilliantly in the Times of the ruin of Britain; Mr Bernard Levin has added to the bitter and despairing catalogue of his fun-revolutionaries a dour grandmother who has effectively persecuted patients in Charing Cross Hospital; and one expects daily an announcement from Mr Ray Buckton that first-class travel will be no longer permitted on British Rail, since it is clearly an affront to the workers. The police in the Metropolitan area may well be on the verge of strike action (what horrors that vision conjures up), an event which has not occurred since Lloyd George's day. In the governing party of the state a battle between two wings is waged which is far fiercer than that between the two main parties: Mr Senn, in the House of Commons last Wednesday — present, so to speak, but not active — failed to support his colleagues in the lobby on an issue on which he disagreed; Mr Benn, we are told, regularly entertains friends of a like revolutionary mind to dinner; Mr Benn, indeed, has become a party within a party.
There are many other signs of dissolution, disintegration and doom. Logically and reasonably, therefore, Mr Heath and his friends can say that the electorate got their sums wrong last time. Mr Heath, even, hopes that at another trial of strength this year the voters of Britain may have second thoughts, and make up to him for the insult they dealt him last time. No line of thought could be more dangerous for a Tory leader, nor more destructive for his party.
Let us pass over the mainly superannuated politicians who are calling for coalitions, national governments and all manner of unicorns. The fundamental problem of the nation is that no policy, however right, not politically — that is, electorally — acceptable can succeed. Now, there are innumerable electorally acceptable policies, though few right ones. The question Mr Heath ought to be asking himself is whether his policy can be made acceptable, as well as whether it is right. The concessions so far made by the Conservative leadership as a result of their defeat represent an alteration rather than a recasting of their February programme: the industrial relations legislation, first put forward so bravely in 1970, has been wholly abandoned, but the prices and incomes policy commitment remains intact — we have Mr Carr's word for it — partly, it seems, because Mr Heath is convinced that his Relativities Commission scheme makes his incomes policy different from any other. There are several other adjustments which have been made in Conservative policy generally, but they — and particularly the proposal for a whole series of citizens' charters — seem cosmetic rather than real.
All this is of tremendous consequence because, if the Tories are to have any chance of gaining the nation's confidence in the near future it will be necessary for them to put forward a fresh analysis of the nation's sickness. It simply is not enough, and will not be thought to be enough, to make surface changes in a rejected policy.
The question of who governs Britain is a fundamentally serious one, but it must not be thought that the issue lies between Westminster and the trade unions: if it truly did the Conservative opposition should stick at all costs to the principles of their industrial relations reform. The difficulty that appears to lie at the heart of the Tory approach to the unions is that it is a muddle of the disciplinary approach of 1970 and' the over-conciliatory approach of the Downing Street talks that preceded the last general election. It appears to be Mr Heath's conviction that, having failed to bring the unions effectively within the law, he would prefer to share with them the government of the country, on a syndicalist basis. I believe that the electorate detected this muddle last February, and declined to give their confidence to a Prime Minister who, while fighting an election campaign on the need to stand up to extra-parliamentary forces, proposed to settle with those forces as soon as his mandate was renewed.
It is now clear, however, that no government in the near future is likely to be able to impose its will on the unions by legal force. The only question is what kind of deal can be negotiated with the union barons, pending the eventual discovery by the country that both bankruptcies and unemployment will be necessary before economic sense can be made of the British mess. There is, alas, every sign that Mr Foot is more suited to making a social compact work than is any conceivable Conservative alternative. (This does not take away from the fact that all social compacts are economic nonsense; but it is a salient electoral consideration nonetheless.) The issue does not, however, lie solely between unions and Westminster because the wave of discontent, growing stronger and stronger every year since about 1966, is not solely a matter of unionisation. It is, rather, a much more general fracturing of the social cohesion between groups in our society. It is easy to say that, for example, the doctors, if they choose to fight Mrs Castle's attempt to drive them out of the National Health Service, are merely copying the tactics of Mr Gormley or NUPE, but there is much more to it than that. Fewer and fewer groups in society, whether they are strong or weak, rich or poor, are willing to continue their unquestioning acceptance that all must be to some extent inhibited in the prosecution of their own interests if the larger society of which they are parts is to continue in existence at all.
Mr Heath has shown some ability to grasp this truth in one or two of his recent speeches, when he has suggested that all sections and all parties must be prepared to make sacrifices, even of principle in some cases, for the greater good of the whole; but it is doubtful if he himself has the character or capacity to mould a new consensus. • And this is the crux of the matter. Few objective observers would deny that Mr Heath himself made a substantial contribution to the Tory defeat last'time because of the nature of the impact of his character on the campaign. Tories now veer between a desire for a Powell and a desire for a Baldwin as leader — either a man who will spell out the cruel choices before his countrymen, but manage at the same time to inspire them to sacrifice by his rhetoric, or a man of emollient character who can smuggle radicalism into his policies under a bland disguise. Not even his best friends could pretend that Mr Heath could do either.
Moreover — and here we are back to the first half of the distinction between what is nationally right and what is electorally acceptable — it is extremely doubtful if, for all his occasional appearance of penitence or suggestion of revision, Mr Heath has even begun to understand what went wrong with his plans for a quiet revolution last time. The simple overall statement to make about his period of government i$ that the inflation which he inherited from Mr Wilson got very much worse between 1970 and 1974, and he did very little abou_t it. As we are all beginning now to grasp, the foremost consequence of inflation is the rehding of the social fabric of a society. If inflation continues the tear in society's garment will become steadily larger, until the whole thing has been torn apart. As the process continues it becomes ever more difficult to reverse it, for confidence and belief alike suffer as the insidious destruction goes on. For these reasons, the worse inflation becomes the more difficult it is to gain the assent of a democratic electorate for a policy designed to halt the decay — the people having become daily more disillusioned by their leaders, and daily more cynical about their policies, and daily more bemused bY various new combinations of the mixture as before, they are unwilling to continue giving their votes with a full heart to leaders who have already failed them. Yet, full democratic con' sent all the time becomes more, not less, necessary if the right measures are to be taken. And that means not only leaders who have the weapons in their hands to fight the battle, but leaders who can make a fresh, a convincing, and a national appeal to the electorate. We must have leaders who can convince the peoPle that they can and will do what is right, but Who can also show, in language outside and above the tired clichés of the past, what the national, the social, purpose of the whole operation is. Mr Heath has never been a noted nationalist, an indeed, his European policy alone would PO; bably deny to him forever that distinguisheut appellation. More urgently, it seems clear tha„ he has not, and will not, rethink the policies 0" which he was defeated; and it seems likeWis; clear that he simply has not got the persona,: power to kindle the national enthusiasm whicl; becomes steadily more indispensable. For thee reasons the verdict on Mr Heath must now b., the same as that of the electorate earlier On', year: he asked the right question, but ha„' produced no evidence that he is the man tv answer it.
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