Another voice
Et tu, Andrew?
Auberon Waugh
Tthe Duke of Devonshire announced his conversion to the Social Democratic Party too late for me to retract my article of last week explaining how, after 42 years of sitting on the fence, I had eventually joined the Conservatives. In fact the article, which was chiefly concerned with reasons for hav- ing nothing to do with the SDP, appeared on the morning of the Duke's momentous announcement. We who are left behind in the sadly diminished Tory Party will simply have to make the best of it.
On the same day that we read in our newspapers of the Duke's decision, a M0121 poll published in the Daily Star put the Conservatives ahead for the first time since SODPAL arrived on the scene. The poll, car- ried out within 24 hours of the Budget, showed the Conservatives with 37 per cent support, Labour with 33 per cent and SOD- PAL trailing behind with 27 per cent.
Within the space of a month, SODPAL had lost seven per cent and the Tories had gain- ed seven per cent. It seems reasonable to suppose that Tories who had run to join the new party, looking for a new approach to politics or perhaps just for the classlessness which Mr Bryan Magee describes as the new party's most fruitful characteristic, are now beginning to return.
Personally, I would rather one properly anchored Duke than 20,000 floating voters, or even a million of the brutes, but my preference is not widely shared. Another comforting thought occurs to me. Although
honestly believe, and constantly point out to Private Eye's six million bewildered teenage readers, that whenever a great nobleman dies we are all diminished, I am by no means sure that the same is true whenever a great nobleman does something really silly like changing sex, promoting a jazz band, losing his money or joining the SDP. Then, at any rate in a reasonably open society, it seems to me that we may even ex- pand a little: there is more room at the top of the pyramid and we all move up a place.
Few commentators have dared speculate about the Duke's motives for joining the party of O'Hallorans and Cunninghams, of Shirley Williamses and `Doctors' Owen, of squeaky little men with beards who have been awaiting this moment to voice their concern about the effect of government coots on the community as a holl, of terri- ble middle-class ladies with firm jaw lines who feel it is time they gave the country a lead. His own explanations seem a trifle confused: `It's not an indictment of Tory policies it's purely my own instinct. The Conser- vatives' policies are double Dutch to me at the moment.'
`At the end of the day one has to do what one thinks is right. Mr Jenkins is Britain's best statesman.' • Perhaps the Duke felt that he was being true to the Whig traditions of his family, but if so he cannot have studied the party he intends to join. Possibly, as one of the richest men in Britain, he is feeling a little nervous that Mrs Thatcher's policies will not succeed in winning the next election. We all suffer from these qualms. The pro- spect of a Labour government with its policies laid down by Mr Moss Evans, Mr Arthur Scargill and a handful of ignorant left-wing fanatics is alarming enough for most of us; for him it must be too horrible to contemplate. There is no particular reason why he should be convinced by my own argument that in the absence of a genuine multiplicity of parties the arrival of the SDP makes a Labour victory more, rather than less, likely under present condi- tions.
But to suppose he is frightened of losing his pile is to attribute a cowardly motive, and I do not see any reason to do that. Quite possibly he just does not like the new Conservatives, does not feel at home with them, or feels they do not like him. Very few people do like them much, although it is hard to see how they are more objec- tionable now than they were under Mr Heath. No doubt he misses the `One Na- tion' rhetoric but only fools were ever really taken in by it. In fact Mrs Thatcher's government has been extraordinarily — I would say disastrously — moderate in all the measures required to check the expan- sion of public expenditure, reduce the strangehold of the unions, bring inflation under control and restore some sort of credibility to our national defence effort. The real reason, I feel, is that as a rich man he cannot feel happy unless he is at peace with the world, and he sees government measures which are necessary to restore economic health as divisive, creating con- flicts and antagonisms which destroy his peace of mind. A more generous interpreta- tion again would be that he genuinely feels that the lower classes are getting a raw deal. I have no doubt that he has far more con- tact with them — in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Sheffield, Manchester, Chesterfield and wherever else he goes about his ducal occa- sions — than I or most other journalists do. As a richer man than any of us, he is perhaps more impressed by their piteous wails than we are.
In other words, he has lost the stomach to be a duke. There is nothing disgraceful about that. By no means everyone has the natural equipment — call it thick skin or in- sensitivity — to carry off the role. He was born a younger son, like Lord John Russell and Lord George Gordon (although unlike the Comte de Mirabeau), and after more than 30 years in the job it is beginning to show.
There is nothing shameful, as I say, in having lost the stomach to be a duke, but it is extraordinarily irritating for those of us who want nothing more than to be dukes to watch his sorrow, especially while our obstinate hell-cat of a Prime Minister refuses to create any new ones. If Mrs That- cher could turn her back on the odious ex- ample set by her predecessor, whom we are all trying to forget, and start creating hereditary peerages again she would find a wonderful transformation come over large parts of British society. Young and not-so- young men who had devoted much of their lives to insulting their political leaders would suddenly take an interest in wholesome and public-spirited things like wealth-creation.
Another reason for the Duke of Devon- shire's change of mind is plainly that he likes Roy Jenkins. So do we all. If the Social Democratic Party were nothing but Roy Jenkins we would all flock to join. But it isn't. At the moment of writing, it seems most uncertain that he will even be elected for Glasgow Hillhead next Thursday, and if he isn't everbody agrees that his goose is cooked. Certainly Mrs Shirley Williams seems to be doing her best to cook it for him. Without Mr Jenkins, the Duke of Devonshire will look the most frightful fool in a party dominated by this ambitious, bossy woman and by `Doctor' Owen,
with his born-again crusade against the evils of alcohol and tobacco.
With Mr Jenkins, of course, the Duke can reasonably hope to exercise a wholesome influence on the new party. If the pair of them can persuade the bearded ecologists and grim, firm-jawed middle- class ladies to resume the creation of hereditary peerages, I promise to resign MY new membership of the Conservative Party and join them. But I don't think they will. They have jumped on a pantomine horse with its front and back legs facing in op- posite directions. It is a terrible shame. One was our best statesman, the other our leading duke. In an ideal world, the Duke of Devonshire would be banished to some island where he would spend the rest of his days with Caliban in the form of Mr Moss Evans or Mr Arthur Scargill, to teach hop that envy and malice are not the products of any particular social system but are elemen- tal evils which walk about, seeking whom they may devour. The defences are not an agreeable or self-effacing manner, but sobriety, vigilance and a thick stick.
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