Home Thoughts from Abroad
SIR,
I must apologise for thus rudely interrupting, from my self-imposed exile, the calm confidence with which Westminster, under the impression that I am no longer watching, is doubtless going about its business, whatever that may be. But 'even in these remote parts some of the noises off can be heard, and one of the noises seems to me of sufficient importance for me to put down my glass, put up my sunshade and comment on it. I do not refer to the agreeable farce so beauti- fully entitled by Mr. Massingham 'The day The Times shot the pianist,' for that demands closer inspection than I can give at the moment. But in the same issue of the Observer as that in which Mr. Massingham turned his happy phrase there was a report of a speech by Lord Hailsham which was so full of nonsense—and nonsense of a particularly un-Hailsham-like kind,' at that— that I must (having some first-hand knowledge of the matter in question) break a muffin or two with him.
Lord Hailsham referred to the scenes of violence at last year's Conservative Party Con- ference at Blackpool, in which hecklers from the League of Empire Loyalists were beaten up. We can ignore his assertion that 'Violence of any sort is wholly contrary to our philosophy of politics'; from the man who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time of the Suez massacre this is nothing more than an example of the way in which even someone of Lord Hailsham's integrity can convince himself that some unpleasant and shameful event never occurred, simply by not thinking about it. But when Lord Hailsham prefaced his remarks by saying. 'Now that the matter is no longer sub judire,' and later added that he 'had to keep silence at the time,' he is being, I feel, a little disingenuous. The scenes occurred on October 11 last; Lord Hailsham knows perfectly well that no summonses were issued until nearly six months later. He did not have to keep silence until then, and as a matter of fact he didn't; among other things, he wrote a long and spectacularly silly letter to The Times on the subject. Lord Hailsham kept silent as far as he did because he chose to; and he chose to, I take it, because his investigations showed him that very considerable violence had been used.
But this is not the most important, or the most uncharacteristic, piece of nonsense in Lord Hailsham's speech. '1 have always resented the charge against the Conservative stewards,' he said, and then used the acquittal of 'the only Conser- vative steward against whom proceedings were brought' to bolster his own acquittal of the entire conference. The fact that the two men prosecuted
(and acquitted) were not the guilty ones is neither here nor there; for the main charge outside the courts was brought not against the Conservative stewards, but against the Conservative delegates. Lord Hailsham does not mention them, though a careless reading of his remarks might well give the impression that they, too, had been honourably acquitted. Sir, I (and many others) saw a man with his arms pinioned by those delegates sitting on either side of him being punched in the face by another Conservative delegate; and so did Lord Hailsham—not, it is true, at the time it happened, but subsequently, when he saw the television film of the incident.
Lastly, Lord Hailsham descends, astonishingly for him, to the smear technique : . . an attempt was made,' he said, 'both by the organisers of the interrupters, and by some Left-wing influences hostile to the party, to make out that the Con- servative stewards were guilty of undue violence.' Those journalists most prominent in describing the scenes at the conference included Mr. Douglas Brown of the News Chronicle, Mr. Henry Fairlie of the Daily Mail. Mr. Don Cook of the New York Herald Tribune, Mr. Hugh Massingham of the Observer, M. Jean Wetz of Le Monde and myself. If Lord Hailshain thinks that we add up to 'Left-wing influences hostile to the party' then he is off his agreeably dolichocephalic head. Nor, I repeat, whatever we are, did we in the main charge the Conservative stewards with 'undue violence,' but the delegates. (It is true that in my own report I mistook one man in plain clothes for a party steward, though I have subsequently learned that he is a Blackpool employee. But it . can hardly be this that Lord Hailsham is referring to.) What is most depressing about all this is that it should be Lord Hailsham who made these remarks. To sonic members of this Government doublethink of the kind I have described is second nature; to Lord Hailsham I should have thought it would be totally abhorrent. No doubt Lord Hailsham, who knows perfectly well that undue violence was used against the hecklers, will take steps this year to see that it does not happen again. But that is another matter entirely from trying to pretend that it never happened at all. And it is because I, at any rate, look to Lord Hailsham to set somewhat higher standards in these matters than some of his colleagues, that have thus ventured to remind him that there is one flame at, least than can reach out from the east unto the west, when he lowers his standards, and burn him at both ends.--Yours faithfully,
Previous page
