Political commentary
Manifestos do matter
Ferdinand Mount
The last visitor to Guadeloupe to make a memorable stir was the French Revolutionary terrorist, Victor Hugues. The selfstyled 'Robespierre of the Isles' arrived from France in the spring of 1794 to recapture the island from the British. Where Columbus had had crosses painted on his sails, Hugues carried as his figurehead a real guillotine in the bows, shrouded. As he approached land, he tore off the tarpaulin sheet, and the sunlight glittered on the blade which was to sever the necks of thousands of Guadeloupeans who had sworn allegiance either to Louis XVI or to Timbecile George III.' The market place in Point-h-Pitre was so muddy with blood that Hugues had to move his guillotine down to the Place de la Victoire where the blood could drain into the river.
Events on such a dramatic scale are scarcely to be looked for from Mr Calaghan's visit to Guadeloupe at the invitation of President Giscard to meet Helmut Schmidt and Jimmy Carter. Giscard has, after all, already displayed enough Ang,lophobia in Brussels to keep the Gaullists quiet for the moment. There will in any case be no formal agenda. Wives will be present. In other words, the event is a junket, joyride, or unstructured meeting of minds to exchange views on world problems of mutual interest, according to how you look at it. In the Commons at any rate, the Prime Minister's announcement of his flight to the sunshine was rudely greeted with • cries of 'And very nice too' and 'some people have all the luck.'
The House of Commons is more than usually an arena of stale jest and empty gesture just now. There is no serious business to be done except the business of surviving. Mr. Callaghan accuses Sir Winston Churchill of having had 'a vendetta against the miners' and smirks all over his face. Mr. Foot bobs up to denounce the Tories as 'the landlord's party' and sits down with a there-that's-telling-them thump. These scraps of a dead language of • indignation float on an inexhaustible supply of hot air the politician's natural resource. The real political argument is going on inside the National Executive of the Labour Party, from which raised voices and cries of anguish are now and then to be heard, most notably in the Communist Morning Star which last weekend printed a preliminary draft of the Labour manifesto.
The only scoops the old Daily Worker ever had were items like the exclusive text of the message of solidarity from the Hornsey Young Socialists to the Chilean Housewives Against Fascism and scoops usually require friends. A reporter's exclu sive stories indicate the company he keeps. The moment this embarrassing Labour Party document was made public there was the usual scramble to pretend that nothing of importance had happened. Party manifestos on the whole could be brushed aside as 'a boring irrelevance', according to the Guardian. Labour's October 1974 manifesto had been given 'pretty short shrift' by the government elected thereon, and the odds were that after all the hooha this one too would be 'largely ignored.' Neil Kinnock, the flame-haired enfant terrible on the National Executive (well, rather more flame than hair these days and more terrible than enfant), said the document made 'blancmange look firm and dynamic by comparison.' The paper was no more than 'a trawl through the remains of the last manifesto, things which have not yet been done and agreements made with the TUC.'
This dismissive nonchalance happens to fit in nicely with a view held on the Right that election manifestos ought not to matter. In the good old days, one simply sent out a leaflet with a photo of oneself plus wife in twinset and pearls or, if a Labour candidate, oneself with telephone stuck to ear, accompanied by a few words in favour of cheap food, better schools and Mr. Churchill/Attlee. The manifesto was strictly to amuse the boffins. As for the doctrine that a government was elected with a mandate to do specific things, that was a nasty continental practice and not to be encouraged.
For good or ill, those days are done. Once settled, the manifesto now does dictate the legislative planning for the next five years. Civil servants mug it up to prepare for their new masters. Bewildered new Ministers parachuted into foreign fields grasp instinctively for it. Very soon Ministers are ticking off the promises kept. And contrary to myth, political parties nowadays do keep their promises. Not the ones to abolish war or poverty of course, but those that can be fulfilled by passing laws or raising taxes. The October 1974 manifesto promised, for example, to nationalise building land and the aircraft and shipbuilding industries, to set up the National Enterprise Board and the British National Oil Corporation and to provide for elected assemblies for Scotland and Wales and they have. Even without the compulsory planning agreements also promised, that's enough mischief for a single Parliament.
What matters is the step-by-step raising of the level of socialist content from Labour's Programme 1973 to Labour's Programme 1976 to the draft for Labour's Programme 1979. Take the House of Lords: not mentioned in 1973. The 1976 Spectator 16 December 1976 document says: 'We believe that the House of Lords is an outdated institution, coinpletely inappropriate to a modern dons)" cratic system of government. It should not, therefore, continue in its present form. MYSecond Chamber which replaces it must be much more representative of the allmunity as a whole, and we shall examine ways of bringing this about.' The draft f°r 1979 says abolish it and adds an obscure passage that 'to safeguard electors' rights' we would require that any extension of the life of a Parliament should be subject ,.t° approval by a two-thirds majority in t11e, House of Commons.' Now who on eari" would be thinking of extending the life of 3 Parliament? We are told not to fuss too much about these dark hints. They are just the flourishes inserted by the weirdos. You can rely 00 Mr. Callaghan and the sensible majoritY t° cut the nonsense out by the time the doen" ment is officially published. But their inehli sion at any stage raises them to the level 0t the debatable. And by, say, 1982, the debatable has a way of becoming taken lot granted. Or take pharmaceuticals. The 191 document said only that 'we shall insist °he some element of public ownership in At'', future.' By 1976, this had become a Pleu,g; 'to create a major public holding within tilf industry. This will involve an initial stake,° at least one major UK-owned coMPTI; which the Government (or the at use should acquire as a matter of urgeneY, use as a base for the expansion of theenu':o sector' a pledge carried forward though; less detailed terms into the 1979 drthe. Much the same has happened with 'of gradual extension of the nationalisation North Sea oil. Similarly, initially vague c ticisms of financial institutions have ha3 dened into 1979 draft pledges to set tiPof new state bank, to reform the sank. . England and to direct pension funds 00 government approved investments. ore Mr. Callaghan has promised to prese us only from the National Executivelise ''s e,ho more extreme proposals to nationaes four major clearing banks and the sevhs major insurance companies as well as, 'socialisation' of the Bank of These proposals were endorsed at the 17/, conference and are therefore partY but they need to mature in cask a "the longer before drinking while we r011 lesser proposals around the palate.ng The war which Mr. Callaghan is fen, s over what goes into the manifesto is 0111 phoney war; nor is he a tyro or a fain ad. Over the years he has been the most ste A A fast opponent of extravagant n-° OF isation on the NEC. But even he can nt-tie moderate and delay; he cannot refutecat, presumed superiority of state control' coir laghan or no Callaghan, the process the tinues of moving from the implicit tato explicit, from state shareholdingt°,51-he ownership, from supervision to control. or retreat may be long and it may be mote less dignified; but it is a retreat.
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