POLITICS
The performing seals use their training to avoid debate
NOEL MALCOLM
It is unthinkable that we could go to war without having a proper debate in Parliament first.' So said Labour MPs at the beginning of the week, and so say all of us. But the question is, what is a proper debate? One or two thoroughly improper things happened in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon: one woman un- furled a 'No to War' banner in the public gallery, and another hurled a ball of red paint-powder at that well-known hawkish militarist, Mr Julian Critchley.
But the right of Mr Critchley to smirk undisturbed was not the fundamental prin- ciple which the Labour radicals had set out to defend. What they had complained bitterly about on Monday was the use of an adjournment debate as the form for Tues- day's discussion of the intended use of force in the Gulf. The motion put to the vote at the end of such a debate is simply `That this House do now adjourn': it allows MPs to register general agreement or general dissatisfaction with the Govern- ment's conduct of policy, but it does not try to encapsulate that policy in a motion which could then be contradicted by amendments.
Is this an improper way to discuss a war? It may seem, to the outsider, a rather vague way of doing things, but in the Commons it is a traditional method of handling a large issue in an emergency. When the House was recalled to discuss the Gulf crisis in September last year, it held just such a debate. When it met to discuss sending a task force to the Falk- lands, it did likewise. And it was an adjournment debate on 5 May 1940, held to discuss the Government's conduct of the Norwegian campaign, which directly brought about the downfall of a prime minister. These are heavyweight occasions, not Mickey Mouse affairs.
One could even argue that this kind of free-wheeling discussion offers more scope, not less, for proper debate. Labour MPs would not have had the comparative freedom of a one-line whip if they had been given a specific Opposition amend- ment to vote for on such a crucial issue. As it was, they could speak their minds.
That is the theory, anyway. But what Tuesday's session brought home to me was that 'proper debate' is something which many parliamentarians are trained up to be unable to perform. They are so used to conducting a non-stop bombardment across the party divide that they can hardly imagine any other way of doing things. Whenever Mr Major suggested that any principles were at stake in opposing the unprovoked annexation of Kuwait, a chor- us of Labour voices broke out, like school- boys ragging an unpopular master: Nicar- agual"El Salvador!' Panama!"Grenada!' `The West Bank!' Mr Bernie Grant sat on a gangway step chanting 'What about Nami- bia?' (to which there can only be one possible reply: what about it?) These MPs were enjoying the freedom of repl debate rather in the way that circus animals, set free at last in the jungle, might spend their time balancing objects on their noses and riding imaginary tricycles round the trees.
The excuse for this boisterousness was the radicals' frustration at a Commons procedure which gave too much leeway to the executive i.e., the Government. But in reality it was the behaviour of their own party's executive which really had them boiling. The Labour side of the House presented a strange spectacle during Mr Major's opening speech: on the front bench, Messrs Kinnock and Kaufman gravely nodding their heads in agreement with the Prime Minister, while behind them merry hell was breaking loose. A casual observer would not have guessed they were all members of the same party.
So was Mr Kinnock, at least, engaging in `proper debate'? Yes and no. It sounded as if he was debating with himself. The first part of his speech was much more stern and uncompromising than Mr Major's: he seemed to be saying that Saddam Hussein must be defeated or toppled from power in Iraq. 'He cannot be allowed to retain his power to jeopardise the region.' But then, having claimed with more than a touch of machismo that 'I have never argued for relying on sanctions alone or indefinitely', he suggested that while there was a teeny- weeny chance that sanctions might do the trick, the allies should not go to war. Many observers have difficulty enough with the idea that sanctions would force Saddam Hussein to disgorge Kuwait; but that they will force him to give up 'his power to jeopardise the region' must strain credul- ity.
Mr Kinnock's debate with himself re- mained, to put it mildly, open-ended. And of course that is how it is meant to be. If war is swift and successful, he can claim that he never shied away from the need to apply the ultimate sanction of force. If it is slow and costly, he can say that he always warned against the rash resort to force before all other means had been ex- hausted. Those who accuse the Labour leader of breath-taking cynicism should remember the pressures the poor man is under: both the need to throw some mackerel to the performing seals who sit behind him, and the need to satisfy the opinion-poll analysts who tell him that while quite a lot of people support going to war, quite a few do not.
As for the Tory side, their performance in the 'proper debate' stakes was not impressive either. Primed by an absurd remark by Mrs Edwina Currie at Prime Minister's questions, when she said that they should be as unanimous as the Iraqi parliament, they kept on the whole to the easy parts of the argument. The dog that did not bark in the night was the Powellite or anti-American wing of the Tory Party; but perhaps they were just too appalled at the thought of having to line up behind Edward Heath. And Mr Heath's perform- ance was lacklustre by his own (normally high) standards. It is 'not impossible' to bring about a change in Mr Hussein's attitude, he declared; why, he has already changed his attitude towards Iran. . . . Which is rather as if, on hearing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, one had said that at least it showed how open-minded the German Chancellor was.
Mr Major's speech was strong on emo- tion but weak on content: it concentrated on the sufferings of the Kuwaitis as if that were almost the only reason for going to war. The truth, surely, is that it is just part of a complex of reasons, within an equa- tion of possibilities and doubts over the consequences of doing nothing for much longer. Some parts of that equation may be less easy to talk about in public (such as the fear that the coalition of nations will fall apart); but all parts of the whole pattern of reasons are familiar enough by now. So if this was not quite a proper debate, perhaps it was because too much was clear already, and too little needed to be said.' When Mr Healey accused the nation of `sleep-walking', he was exactly wrong. We have all watched this conflict coming with unnatural lucidity — the lucidity and sense of inevitability that one normally finds in dreams, maybe. Only this time we are all wide, wide awake.
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