Political commentary

Spring in Blenheim Gardens

Ferdinand Mount

The sun shines on Blenheim Gardens. The new leaves glisten emerald and gold on the shrubs along the precinct walls — daphne and viburnum, skimmia, coton-easter and mahonia. The flowering cherries toss their blossom over the white wooden fences round the back yards of the estate, which must be Lambeth Council's pride and joy. Not a car, not a tower block, not a mugger in sight. Clip-clop go the smiling pedestrians on the decorative stone and brick paving. In their simplicity the low-built little houses with their mansard roofs are not unlike those Mayfair mews cottages in which property tycoons of the better sort used to instal their girlfriends. How spacious are thy walk-ways and how plenteous thy piazzas, 0 Blenheim Gardens. True there is No Cycling and there are No Ball Games in this new Jerusalem, but there are also no vandals, no broken glass and no peeling paint after seven years' occupation.

This is what council estates ought to be like and these are the people who ought to be living in them. Following in the train of Ivfr Jerry Hanley, the cheerful Tory candidate for the Lambeth Central by-election, we meet among others: a mother with a handicapped child; a blind man; a woman aged eighty-six, whose three sons are all dead; a man with scarcely any vocal chords, who remembers the candidate's father, Jimmy Hanley the actor; a man who has just lost his job because of some undisclosed illness and who looks as if he is wasting away; a woman whose husband is now in jail for statutory rape on his daughter (actually we only meet her neighbour, who wants to move). Everyone else is out at work. There may be scrap-metal dealers with two Jaguars and social security scroungers living on this estate too, but we do not meet them. The only black person we see is a cross woman who says she can't stop because she is late for work, but she plans to vote Labour because 'I believe in people working for a living.' In fact, nearly all the people we meet are Labour loyalists or politely non-committal, suggesting that they will vote Labour on the day.

We also meet the Liberal candidate, Mr David Blunt. Mr Blunt drives about in a chocolate-coloured pre-war Austin Seven

and he distributes his news-sheet Blunt Speaking with the words, 'Have you got one of these awful things?' Mr Hanley shakes

hands with Mr Blunt. We all shake hands

with Mr Blunt. 'Nice chap', says Mr Hanley afterwards. Mr Blunt is a nice chap. His

election literature shows him in a jeans jacket carrying two shopping bags. His wife is Indian and he plans to 'lick racialism'.

Next we meet two tough eggs in heavy

leather distributing literature for the Workers' Revolutionary Party. They are less nice chaps and only with difficulty are persuaded to part with one of their extensive store of leaflets. It is a message from Vanessa headed Why You Must Vote for Truth, or, to put it another way, Why You Must Vote for My Brother Corin. At the top of the leaflet there is a picture of Vanessa. At the bottom of the leaflet there is a picture of Truth/ Corin. In between it says that 'capitalism and imperialism, like feudalism before them, are historically outmoded and bankrupt systems — Don't vote for these liars, parliamentary twisters and class collaborators. Don't vote for the fascist National Front, the running dogs of police-military dictatorship.' There are almost as many posters of My Brother Corn plastered around the constituency as there are signed photographs of Dr David Owen in the Foreign Office. Several of these posters have been decorated by unknown hands with a Hitler moustache and forelock, others with Trotsky goatee and granny glasses. Like all true actors Mr Redgrave remains obstinately Mr Redgrave behind the disguises just as Sir John Gielgud remains Sir John whether you put him in Plantagenet armour or a Roman toga. But even the Workers' Revolutionary Party cannot cast a blight on Blenheim Gardens today. The running-dogs of police-military dictatorship might have posioned the atmosphere somewhat, but they are scarcely visible anywhere in the constituency. The National Front did manage to lay on a riot last Saturday but it was a rather small riot caused principally by too many people being crammed into a tiny school hall. As almost all the people inside were National Fronters, they did not have anyone much to riot against. And there were a few anxious moments until somebody raised the required provocative clenched fist enabling the punch-up to proceed.

In spite of the huge coloured population, estimated at up to 25 per cent, the crucial political division in the constituency is not between black and white or even between Brixton or Clapham. The division is between Blenheim Gardens and the dirty, broken-down, multi-occupied slums which have shocked visitors from the other side of the river who imagined that all that kind of housing had been cleared and replaced years ago Street after street in Brixton is cut off half-way by corrugated iron or has some of its houses boarded up but not others.

Some streets have stayed like this for years suspended between life and death

— as though the clearance and redevelopment were being directed by some hugh spoilt child who keeps on getting bored half-way through and ,dropping everything. Rents in Blenheim Gardens (which cost more than £3 million to build — and that at 1974 prices) vary between £4.98 and £9.06 a week. Private landlords charge anything between three and six times as much for the seedy, the slummy and the half-cleared properties around about. Two nations again. And the worse-housed nation not only has to pay higher rents and live far closer to racial friction but also must subsidise the rents of the lucky ones. The political consequences follow. Contrary to received opinion, gratitude does exist in politics and Blenheim Gardens is where you find it. People there do acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the Labour Government and the Lambeth Council which has been almost invariably Labour throughout living memory. Outside Blenheim Gardens and its like there is considerable resentment , amongst those who have still not been take° on board by the Welfare State. The new Tories are not only to be found among the overtaxed skilled and semi-skilled worker° but also among the very poor. That may help to explain the somewhat apprehensive expression on the face of Mr John Tilley, the Labour candidate, despite the comfortable majority he inherited, on the other hand, he may simply be an, apprehensive type. After all, as both he an° Shirley Williams pointed out during he Lambeth visit, Mr Healey has produced a Budget which might have been designed f01; this constituency with its high proportion 0` immigrants, the very poor and the Il housed. The two major parties are now aPPealirg, directly to their traditional constituencle.' and they are rising inexorably towards their traditional levels of support. The Labour Party and the two-party sYstern are far more durable and resilient than the lovers of novelty like to admit. The, party has longstanding debts to collect election time and who better to collect thent,, than Tammany Jim? What we had last wee" was really an old-fashioned Labour Budget' combining real increases in public exPehi diture with tax cuts to soften the sting 1,°,, inflation, at least momentarily, for IIlow-pa id. Social democracy is compelled bY tins innermost nature to rely on high taxatil‘, and high public expenditure as the (3112, means of changing society radicallyitho total state control. It never came natulfd to Labour politicians to boast that they twit

controlled public spending; they t

thereby appealing to a constituency tof was not their own. That brief pett°,d by restraint — memorably characterisakie Anthony Crosland in the phrase I„.te party's over' — is now itself over. neighbours complained about the 0°.1,75 The music was turned down. But WO l'et back on full volume and they won't g much sleep over at the IMF tonight.