POLITICS

The perking up of Mr Edward Heath

FERDINAND MOUNT

Cabinet government is back. The news that 'collective responsibility is working again' travels like wildfire from Mendip's sunless caves to Malvern's lonely height. O'er Longleat's towers, o'er Cranborne's oaks, the fiery herald flies, and rouses the shepherds of Stonehenge, the rangers of Beaulieu with the tidings that British Ley- land is safe in British hands. And deep below the permafrost, the Lion of Old Bexley and Sidcup begins to melt, thaw and generally perk up. For Ted is back too. I have not seen Mr Heath in such good spirits since February 1975.

The popular prints are, I think, a little askew in their diagnosis. This is not quite the battle for the succession that it has been cracked up to be. Naturally, any minister down to the rank of parliamentary under-secretary who is scheduled to deliver a speech in these heady days will not miss the opportunity for a little oblique self- promotion. For who knows? If Michael is out and Norman is unfit and Geoffrey is too old and Ken is too young and John is too odd, there is, after all, always Me. But these are not serious speculations. Nobody seriously envisages an immediate vacancy. What is being celebrated here is one of those peculiar holidays more familiar in the Roman calendar — the Festival of St Futilis, a Christian adaptation of the old pagan Festival of Non-Rule, vulgarly known in the Middle Ages as Sillybuggers Day.

A couple of weeks ago, this column ventured to identify as the main legacy of the Westland affair just such a revival of the ideal of collective responsibility, which is only a code phrase for 'the quiet life with no radical or contentious stuff'. But I must confess to being startled by the speed with which it has come to pass. The British Leyland decision, or anti-decision, is one of the ripest examples of politics as the avoidance of pain — indeed, the avoidance of thought — that I can remember. And how sweet and heavy is the fragrance that hangs about it, the smell of Royal Yacht and well-polished shoes and the gents at White's. 'We stopped it, you know,' said one senior Cabinet minister.

It seems unkind to point out that in fact they have failed to stop the thing which is really on the point of happening, to wit, the takeover of BL's trucks by General Motors and BL's buses by Metro Cammell, and have only managed to sabotage what is no more than the glimmer of a possibility, that Ford would take over Austin-Rover. But let us proceed to examine Mr Heath's great oration in the BL debate, for it was in its way a little masterpiece, if only of demagoguery, and it certainly helped to precipitate the Cabinet's spectacular and humiliating retreat of the following day. Everything about it is fascinatingly flawed. . . .

I hope that my right honourable friend will not accuse me of being anti-American. . . . I am a great admirer of the Americans . . . I admire what General Motors has done. . . . Let us get away from this so-called anti- Americanism . . . . What is happening. . . is that, because of Westland, and now because of this, the public are becoming anti- American. They do not want to see our country and our industries handed over more and more to the American firms.

Now substitute for the word 'American' the word 'Jewish', and review the argu- ment. It's not because of who they are (some of my best friends are . . .), it's because of what they do and because they are so good at it, and I don't blame them for that, it's their business, but it's making them unpopular, and it's our own fault if we let them do it to us, and there are traitors in our midst who are betraying our own people, and we must stop them.

The preceding paragraph is extremely nasty, but it is a nasty argument.

'We export capital abroad,' Mr Heath goes on, `to my great regret, far too much capital. . . . Does the result of their invest- ment abroad return? No, it stays abroad for further investment. Every penny of profit that Ford makes here goes back to the United States.'

So it is wrong for British firms to invest abroad and wrong for American firms to invest here. All overseas investment seems to be a rather bad thing. This is self- sufficiency gone mad. As a matter of fact, dividends are now pouring in from British investments in the United States. Surely the Americans ought to be allowed to send home some of their own profits. What evidence is there that British firms are any keener than the Americans to reinvest their profits in their overseas operations? As it happens, it is scarcely possible to imagine a more consistent record over the years than Ford's of investing their British profits in Britain — most recently in the huge plants at Bridgend and now at South- ampton.

If British Leyland is sold out to overall American control, our control is lost . . . when the automobile industry goes into recession in the United States, British plants will be wound up.

It is worth asking whether employment at the old car firms which have been amalgamated into BL has been more or less secure than employment at Ford. Nor is it clear that 'control' — in the gov- ernmental sense in which Mr Heath uses that word — is any more secure over a domestic firm than over a foreign multina- tional. It is, after all, the multinational which is more liable to be coaxed or bullied by ministers, about the siting of its plant, about the percentage of foreign compo- nents used, about its percentage of im- ports. The overseas factories of multina- tionals are highly vulnerable — to government-inspired riot, or confiscation, or punitive tax regimes — in a way which they would not tolerate on their home turf. The overseas markets of multinationals are equally vulnerable

The alternative option is to work for a European arrangement — not a takeover, but an arrangement — which would be a joint operation. We have been successful in defence. There is no reason why we should not have success in the automobile industry.

Well, yes, there is actually. Defence industries sell mostly to government, car- makers sell mostly to individuals. It is possible and often desirable, though not always easy (cf the Westland saga passim) to arrange joint purchasing policies be- tween governments, not so simple to per- suade every inhabitant of the European Community to buy the same car. In any case, it seems that Volvo and Fiat have both already had a look at the idea of such an arrangement with BL and have not, so far, fancied it.

I do not know whether Austin-Ford would have been a success. Perhaps it would have come to dominate the Euro- pean car market and ensured steady em- ployment for tens of thousands of British car workers and component suppliers for a generation. Perhaps it would not. Perhaps Austin-Rover can maintain, on its own, the magnificent progress that it has made over the past few years. Just as new technology and new manning levels have made It possible for newspapers to survive with less than half the circulation they used to need, so the robots may make it possible for a volume car manufacturer to survive by selling only half a million cars a year. I do not know. But I do know that it is dereliction of rationality (= bonkers) not to explore every possibility.