COMPROMISE AND BARTER

By ANGUS MAUDE

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every

prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. —Edmund Burke.

WHEN politics are in the doldrums, there is always a great deal of talk about political principles. Those who enjoy political controversy in abstract terms lament the absence of that `sharp conflict of principle' between parties which they believe will give politics the vitality they appear to lack. If a particular party hap- pens at any given time to be doing badly at the elections, there is always a demand from some of its members for 'a return to basic Conserva- tive/Socialist/Liberal principles.'

This demand may mean almost anything. It may be based on the simple syllogism that since the Labour Party won a great victory in 1945 with a programme of nationalisation and ex- panding social services it_ has only to produce the same programme to win another great vic- tory twenty years later. On the other hand, it may reflect a dim feeling that we should go back a couple of centuries and start all over again.

The shortcomings of economics,' said J. K. Galbraith, 'are not original error but uncor- rected obsolescence. The obsolescence has oc- curred because what is convenient has become sacrosanct.' He could easily say that again about political principles—if by these we mean the fundamental doctrines of political parties. This is not, however, always what people do mean when they talk about political principles. Often they mean political principle—that is to say, politics founded on a basis of morality (or, at the very least, of consistency) rather than on mere expediency—which is something rather different. By and large, this sense is generally reserved for the discussion of the principles of one's own party.

At the last Conservative Party conference, in- tervening in a debate on a motion emphasising the true Tory principles of duty and service,' I ventured to say: 'I do not believe that politics, and particularly Conservative politics, are Primarily about principles at all. Politics—and we forget this at our peril—are about people.' Predictably, the Liberals pounced gleefully on this observation, and I am prepared to believe that they rather failed to understand -it than deliberately distorted it. 'Angus Maude,' wrote Mark Bonham Carter in the Sunday Times, 'hit the nail firmly and beautifully on the head. Con- servative politics, he said, are not about prin- ciples.' Apparently unaware that this was not what I had said at all, he went on to suggest that 'the very absence of political principles, in the sense that most people understand that W.,,ord,' was at (ice the great strength of the

C Party and the cause of its ultimate .doWnfall, since the electors now regarded it as being opportunist and untrustworthy. But in what sense do people understand the word 'principles'? Those who consider that it is Wrong for a party not to have them clearly regard principles as having a moral content. On the other band, I suspect my dictionary is nearer to the root of the matter when it offers as definition: 'general law as guide to action.' This kind of political principles, I suggest, is dangerous. The danger lies in the fact that the principles are prone to what Galbraith calls `uncorrected obsolescence'; and when they are propounded in moral terms the danger becomes greater rather than less.

But surely, it will be argued, there must be some settled and unchanging standards by which policy may be guided? Very well; let us try to discover what they are. It generally helps on these occasions to go back to Burke, if only be- cause he spoke and wrote so much that one is bound to find a useful quotation somewhere.

At first sight, one appears to have reached journey's end with the following: 'The principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged; and I neither now do, nor ever will admit of any other.' Yet how is that to be squared with his definition of a political party as 'a body of men united, for promoting by their joint en- deavours the national interest, upon some par- ticular principle in which they are all agreed'? Is the 'particular principle' of each party simply 'morality enlarged'? If so, how do the parties come to disagree, and why are their principles not identical?

There can surely be no violent disagreement about what constitutes morality? Surely, as Goldwin Smith said, 'justice has been justice, mercy has been mercy, honour has been honour, good faith has been good faith, truthfulness has been truthfulness from the beginning'? But this proposition, so apparently self-evident, becomes more debatable the more closely you examine it.

It is, in fact, by no means generally accepted that there is such a thing as an absolute and enduring code or standard of morality. Leaving aside the question of whether the determinists allow us to be 'moral' at all, with or 'without the grace of God by Christ preventing us,' it is my (admittedly inexpert) impression that the Freudians do not. Certainly there are those who maintain firmly that morality is no more than the approved behaviour-pattern of a given society at a given time. (And so, in a sense, it is; consider, for example, the history of attitudes towards monogamy and divorce.) All this has been very simply summarised by Professor Alfred Cobban: 'Codes of moral behaviour and ideals are necessarily related to circumstances; they may become irrelevant not only because of moral progress or regression, but also as a result of changes in the facts to which they are related.' Professor Cobban attri- butes our modern malaise to the fact that there has been no 'vigorous ethical discussion' since the Enlightenment.

This may well be right. An almost total ab- sence of original ethical thinking in connection with politics cannot be good for politics as a whole. Emotion is 'no substitute for it. What is needed, no doubt, is some really tough intellec- tual thought and argument about ends. What inhibits this, it seems to me, is, on the one hand, the intransigence of those who insist on moral absolutes which have become at least partially irrelevant because of 'uncorrected obsolescence,' and, on the other, the complacency of those who believe that thought about ends is unnecessary and the bigotry of those who maintain that all that matters is the discovery of facts.

Discussion of ends and purposes, which is at least in part a matter of morality, does matter. The discovery of facts is desirable, and the truly scientific study of human behaviour will cer- tainly be increasingly fruitful; but there is as yet a pretty small amount of this, and it tends to be swamped by the sweeping generalisations of a 'social scientism' which is neither genuinely scientific nor rooted in any coherent and relevant philosophy.

It is not merely that individual parties are suffering from arrested political development, but that politics as a whole have run out of motive power. Mr. Bonham Carter is at least right in perceiving that, to the extent that it is empirical rather than ideological, the Conserva- tive Party comes off rather better than the others in such circumstances. Even if you do not en- tirely understand the facts about which you are being empirical, empiricism is never so hope- lessly out of date as the ideology of a previous generation.

Nevertheless, empiricism by itself is not enough. Conservatives may reject what Professor Oakeshott calls 'the guidance of an indepen- dently premeditated ideology' (or, in other words, the notion of political principles as a universally valid general law guiding action). Yet those of them who try to think as well as act are them- selves subsisting on the remnants of the intellec- tual heritage of Burke, with the assistance of Professor Oakeshott and with all the blanks filled in with references to Original Sin.

Now I think that the nub of the problem is to be found in Professor Oakeshott's statement that 'a scheme of ends for political activity ap- pears within, and is valuable only when it is related to, an already existing tradition of how to attend to our arrangements.' It has hitherto been regarded as axiomatic that this political tradition remained intact, unbroken and valid. But does it? I do not unhesitatingly assert that it does not, but I am sure we take it altogether too much for granted in an age of violent change and mass suffrage. And if it is no longer intact and valid, then we are in serious danger.

It cannot be purely coincidental that there has been virtually no original political thought (apart from the historical analysis of Marx) or 'vigorous ethical discussion' since the Industrial Revolution. Is not Dr. Hannah Arendt right in suggesting that 'the priority of reason over doing, of the mind's prescribing its rules to the actions of men,' was 'lost in the transformation of the whole world by the Industrial Revolu- tion . . . the success of which seemed to prove that man's doings and fabrications prescribe their rules to reason'? And as a result of this, ideas. the primacy of which was once undisputed, have degenerated into mere 'values,' which are both irrational and even more subject to the whims of changing fashion.

In a situation such as this, when even the discussion of ends is inhibited by the lack of a firm basis of currently valid tradition, politics are inevitably reduced to the essentially simple (though practically complicated) process of the reconciliation of conflicting interests.

There are those who will maintain that this is all they ever were, or should be. But without clear ideas about ends, it is doubtful if any real progress is possible. It is, of course, easy to mistake means for ends in themselves, to imagine that it is enough to pursue 'equality' or the `abolition of privilege.' But it is not enough.

Meanwhile, it is difficult even to keep pace with change itself, to think into the future and disentangle the significant trends of events. The ideologies of yesterday are not merely irrelevant to this process, they completely inhibit it, as the dilemma of the Labour Party clearly shows.

But if politics are reduced to the reconcilia- tion of conflicting interests, without very clear ideas about ultimate ends, what test can be ap- plied to measure the success of a government's efforts? The answer, I am afraid, is very simple. Only its ability to win a general election at the end of its term of office.

Little as Mr. Bonham Carter may like it, furiously as Socialists may complain that Tories will say or do anything to gain votes, the fact remains that winning elections is an indication of success in reconciling conflicting interests. While that is what politics are about, that is the Only test. By all means let us agree that politics ought to be about more than that; but let us also be honest enough to admit that at present we are all in the same boat—Tories, Socialists and Liberals. Yesterday's ideologies, adherence to particular means and methods, noble aspira- tions about the future of mankind are no sub- stitutes for clear thought and rational convic- tions about the ultimate ends to be pursued in a violently changing world.

Let us work these out if we can—although I suspect that nearly all of us are still too deeply rooted, if not in the past, at least in the present for what is today an unprecedentedly difficult operation. In the meantime, we may be better occupied in pursuing and improvingL h

e pro- cess of reconciliation of interests than in calling for a return to principles that are of at least doubtful relevance to the present or future.

This is perhaps even more true in the field of international relations than it is at home. It is not really immoral to regard the task of diplo- macy as 'the endless composition of claims in ecnflict,' rather than as a glorious fight for principles—whether they are called 'freedom' or `self-determination' or anything else. And it is no more than common sense to believe that for this process there cannot be substituted a merely institutional or legal system that will do the job.

`The endless composition of claims in conflict' is, and always has been, the day-to-day stuff of politics. This is why Tories tend to • say that politics are about men rather than about man- kind. But it would certainly be better if we all knew--or even firmly believed we knew—where the hell we are all going in the long run.