The Spectator's

NOTE BOOK

Never having stayed on to the end of a Tory party conference before, I did so with much trepidation last Saturday, in order to hear the Prime Minister. I liked much of what I heard from him—his speech was the best, and the best delivered, I can recall hearing him make; and although he was not in the least specific about what the GoverninenVintends doing, I liked the way he sounded: 'there will be less government but of a better quality' is precisely what I wanted to hear, and wait to experience.

Certainly Edward Heath sets his sights high, looking forward to 'a change so radical ... a revolution so quiet . . . that it will go far beyond this Parliament . . . this decade ... away into the 'eighties.'

Mirror of the times

My trepidation was not concerned with the Prime Minister, but with his audience, with the whole ritual of the Saturday morning rally to hear the Leader, the ecstasy, the lack of sweet moderation. Always before, at Tory conferences, I had fled by Friday evening; and never before had I experienced one of these political orgies. Behind me sat another new boy at this curious function: Hugh Cudlipp, and what he made of it I know not, but can easily enough guess. It is hard enough for him and his papers to have to support the Tory policy on the trade unions. But to have to support the Tories at a time when, to judge from their Saturday performance, they are in full throat, bellowing in triumph, must be nearly intolerable.

Decibelisation

It struck me as the organ's preamble to Heath's speech began working the audience up, and as the Cabinet trooped in to stand upon the platform to await the coming of the Leader, and again, forty-five minutes later, as the applause went on. and on and on, that as part of his radical change, as part of his quiet revolution, Heath would do well to get rid of this Saturday morning rally. Excessive.polit- ical applause is invariably an ugly noise, a disgusting noise; and should be discouraged, rather than deliberately produced by stage- management more suited altogether to total- itarian regimes of the extreme right and left than to an Administration proclaiming that `there will be less government, but of a better quality'.

Certainly if the Tories are as serious as they say they are about re-creating 'one Nation' a small sacrifice to make for the sake of that cause would be to abandon the absurd and nasty anachronism of their Saturday morning rally and instead have the Prime Minister report to the conference, at an appropriate and early part in the proceedings, on the work of the Government.

As long as the Conservatives' end-of-con- ference Saturday rallies are maintained and stage-managed as they have been they will remain it kind of annual inoculation prevent- ing the more squeamish and fastidious from actually thinking of joining their party.

Basic essentials

I was rather surprised and almost alarmed to hear one Cabinet Minister declare that he regarded a decision in favour of Concorde as one of the two 'essential' decisions the Cabinet had to take; and equally alarmed but less surprised to hear that the other 'essential' decision was to proceed with the Common Market not exactly come what may, but as near as damn it (or damn us).

Personally I admired the candour of another Cabinet Minister who said, 'The trouble is, we can't rely on the French saying "no" any more'.

Lancashire hot pot

According to one story going the rounds at Blackpool, the Prime Minister almost wrecked the delicate engineering and plumb- ing balance of the Imperial Hotel, where he and the top brass stayed at Blackpool. He complained of the temperatute in the hotel swimming pool that at 81 degrees it was decidedly too hot. Outside, the weather was much nicer than it had been for Labour the previous week. Apparently the heating for the pool is so tied up with the heating for the rest of the hotel that to reduce the tempera- ture of the pool to a level more to Prime Ministerial taste—say 78 degrees—and given the mild weather outside was to imperil the hotel's central heating and hot water system. Plumbing, and Prime Ministerial predilec- tions, and the responses of hotels, are myster- ious businesses.

The weight of interest

Now that the Conferences are all over, one is again left with the conclusion that the only one which matters is the Labour party's. And the reason for this remains very obvious. At Liberal and Conservative conferences the speakers represent none but themselves; and each speech is worth only its own weight in oratory. But when Jack Jones or Hugh Scanlon or even Clive Jen- kins speaks, he does so with the votes, and the political contributions, of his members

in his pocket. Genuine and powerful interests are represented, and in a way it is immaterial whether the representation of those interests is democratically determined (as Jack Jones has been persuasively arguing in the Times and elsewhere) or whether the union bosses are bullies as well as bosses (as they habit of looking and sounding like).

Astonished rapture

I was idly ruminating along these lines at the Tory party conference when Lord Ardwick, better known as John Beaven, of the Daily Mirror, leaned over to me and remarked 'isn't it odd that none of the great indus- trialists, or even the economic advisers, say, to lc! or BP, ever bother to come to speak?'

When John Davies spoke it was not only with the authority of a Cabinet Minister, but also with the authority of a man who has both managed a great company and represented to the public the industrial interest. It is small wonder his words were received with a special kind of astonished rapture.

Pacific Palestine

Palestine of the Pacific about sums up Fiji's problems as she faces her new status of first Commonwealth multi-racial state. All those problems, bequeathed by the British, with the best will in the world, have created her own Balfour-MacMahon tangle.

When Chief Cacabou ceded control to Queen Victoria in 1874 it was clearly under- stood that Fijian lands should be theirs for ever, and over 80 per cent has, remained to them. This being so, Fijians never showed the least desire to work on other people's land. The British. in a laudable desire to de- velop the country and pay its costs, brought in Indian labour to work the new and profit- able sugar estates. Fijian chiefs, formally consulted, have left on record their dubious assent under pressure. For, they said, a people so different from themselves could not be absorbed. They were right. Unfor- tunately, on expiry of indenture, Indian labour was given the chance to settle on Fiji as tenant farmers. Likes Moses' people they prospered and multiplied and outbred the indigenous Fijian.

Fijians have never been convinced that they should hand over political power to an alien people, merely because they can out- breed under favourable British conditions. This in turn makes nonsense of that sacred cow—one man one vote democracy (as any multi-racial society knows).

Bird of prey

I dare say ornithologists can explain it, but I see no good reason why herons are pro- tected birds. Goldfish are my favourite pets, being silent, requiring neither affection nor feeding, and pleasing to watch as they move continually throughout the lilies and the bull- rushes and the weeds in our pond. Last year a heron took to flying in from its near- by sanctuary; and being, as are all birds, inordinately greedy, it ate almost every fish we had. Now, this year, our pond is nicely stocked again.

An evening or two ago, in a warm and misty and very quiet twilight. I glanced out- side at the pond, and saw a heron standing in it, javelin-beak poised. It heati:I me. and slowly it rose. flapping its great big wings. and drifted off carelessly, knowing full well, .I supPose, that its life was no longer merely protected but had now become provided for.