Political Commentary
Mr. Heath and the Rebels
By DAVID WATT
IT was like one of those gruesome Tatter pictures. 'The Hon. Michael Foot shares a joke with Lord Edward Heath' or 'The Duke of Foot has some- thing of interest to tell the Prime Minister.' All very cosy—and surpris- ing, considering it was the first day of the committee stage of the Resale Prices Bill. Admittedly, Mr. Foot, in his first speech since his motor accident last year, was in the most brilliant' form, but his cracks were intended to sting instead of merely reduce Mr. Heath to a quivering jelly of laughter and even produce that sly, lizard's smile on-the face of the Prime Minister. However, if one listened carefully to what Mr. Foot was saying, rather than to the Way in which he said it (always a difficult task), it was possible to see why the Government Front Bench remained relatively carefree. For Mr. Foot was taunting the Secretary of State for having given way to the rebels considerably more than he was taunting the rebels for having given way to Mr. Heath. It was better fun this way, but it was less effective, for, as one Heath sup- porter remarked beforehand, 'If only everyone gets up and accuses him of being weak, we'll get away with it.'
The truth is that the rebels have been taken for a ride. At the end of all the midnight-oil- burning and the heart-searching of the last two Weeks; the 'compromise' motions put down with the approval of Mr. Heath and Mr. Roy Wise, the rebel leader, leave matters almost exactly where they were before. The 'onus of proof,' the 'stigma, of illegality on resale price maintenance —the things over which Mr. Wise and his friends were frothing at the mouth a week ago are not altered except in the most superficial way by giving greater responsibility to a Registrar. The manufacturer will still be presumed in argu- ment before the court to be at fault in main- taining -prices unless he can prove otherwise. The fact that a manufacturer will now be able to practise r.p.m. for the few months before his case comes up without having to feel guilty is a change which can only affect the most tender-hearted of tycoons. Furthermore, the Board of Trade (and hence Parliament) will only be able to intervene in the process to the extent of saying which cases are to be taken first. Heath being so, it is difficult to see why Mr. math was so loath to 'come to terms' with the rebels. The reports which appeared of the events 0fthe last week suggest that Mr. Heath master- minded the compromise himself. This is not the case. Par from himself urging the setting-up of t astt.eering group to act as the channel of nego- tiation Tin, he at first refused to meet this body after The group was in fact set up immediately en the disastrous second reading of the Bill entirely on the initiative of the Chairman of the Joel 'Bench Trade and Industry Committee, Sir Vaughan Morgan. It was all very intelli- 6-"ny done. The group included moderate sup- porters of the Bill like Sir John Vaughan Mor- gan himself and Sir John Hall and Mr. Peter
rY; there was Mr. Philip Goodhart, a nice resp °risible, chap brought in formally on the grounds that he is a member of the Consumers' Council, but mostly because he is Secretary of the 1922 Committee; and there.were the three rebels most likely to crack—Sir Hugh Linstead, because he is a loyal Establishment figure whose objection to the Bill is confined mainly to pro- tecting the chemists, Sir Richard Glyn, another moderate opponent, and Mr. Wise himself, who, as everyone knew, lacks the fanaticism or iron (depending on how you look at it) of the other rebels. A Government Whip, again contrary to the report, sanctioned the meetings with his presence.
One can only speculate why Mr. Heath was at first so unforthcoming with this group. He was, according to senior colleagues, in an extra- ordinarily touchy mood after the second read- ing setback and it would be in character for him to want to keep all the reins in his own hands. At any rate, it needed the persuasion of the Chief Whip and a letter from Mr. John Morri- son, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, to the Prime Minister, to bring him round. In the end, of course, Mr. Heath need not have worried, for the ideas thrown out by the steering group were, as already suggested, astonishingly innocuous and required very little emendation by the Board of Trade, and the value of the whole procedure was proved from the moment Mr. Heath was able to get up at the 1922 Committee meeting and announce an agreed peace. After such a declaration, Sir Frank Markham and other irreconcilables had no choice but to make peace themselves or retire defiantly but hopelessly to the maquis.
All this bears out the contention made by the moderates all along that it was not so much Mr. Heath's policy as his methods and attitude which were the cause of the trouble. His de- fenders maintain, of course, that the course of events has entirely vindicated his judgment. 'Old Ted,' they say, 'knows a thing or two. He hasn't been a Chief Whip for nothing. If he'd approached the thing cautiously through the usual channels, it'd have got bogged down in no time. He had to get them all hopping mad so that they'd be thankful to get anything out of him.'
It hasn't quite worked like that. Mr. Heath has been genuinely surprised and shocked by the bitterness of the attack on him. In spite of all the ballyhoo his passage with his own party during the Common Market negotiations was remarkably fair and he had the protection that a strong Prime Minister had initiated the whole enterprise. Over r.p.m. he has reacted like a strong man hit in the face for the first time, with anger and disbelief, a profound distaste for the canaille who are mobbing him and a proud refusal to allow his friends to drag him away. As so often with Mr. Heath, it has been a strange mixture of the entirely admirable and the dis- turbingly unimaginative.
Everything has conspired to make the hunt for a new Chairman of the BBC a particularly pleasant outing for the Establishment pack. The resignation of the last Chairman, Sir Andrew fforde, the Government's unashamedly 'political' appointment of Lord Hill to the Chairmanship of the !TA, the expansion of the BBC into a second TV channel and, above all, the general election—this is a set'of circumstances not likely to recur and all concerned have made the most of it.
As the Director-General of the BBC, Sir Hugh Greene and his faithful grey eminence Mr. Har- man Grisewood (now about to retire) surveyed the field at the beginning of the year the out- look was murky.The Government was obviously going to need a major figure to succeed Sir Andrew fforde and, judging from the Hill episode, was not feeling particularly scrupulous about the politics of the business. Sir Hugh Greene and Mr. Grisewood put forward the best arguments they could in the circumstances. If, they said, the Government had made an even faintly political appointment, there was a distinct chance that a Labour Government coming in, say June, would immediately undo it and put in a worse (and even more political) nominee of their own. The Government apparently accepted this point and for a time the BBC relaxed. However, as the Government pondered the problem it seemed more and more essential to have a really strong Chairman (a)• as a powerful buffer be- tween the Corporation and a possible Labour Government, (b) as a counterweight to the strong Greene personality, and (c) as a public figure worthy of the enlarged reponsibilities of the BBC and on a par with Lord Hill.
Unfortunately, in the midst of these delibera- tions a member of the Government ran into Sir Hugh Greene at a social gathering and dilated upon these points, especially item (b), with such emphasis that Sir Hugh concluded that the Government had gone back on the understand- ing about political appointees. The BBC defen- sive machine went into action at once. The press was alerted discreetly, Establishment proponents of freedom of the air were contacted, that old mastiff Lord Boothby was encouraged to growl a line or two in The Times. It all worked splen- didly, for the press naturally rang up all the BBC's main opponents and a number of ex- tremist views were accordingly displayed for ridicule and contempt.
Meanwhile, who was the Government to ap- point? For the reasons already stated, govern- ment pensioners like Lord Eccles and Lord Kilmuir are ruled out and a rapid run-down of what one might call the Royal Commission list shows that the Establishment is rapidly running out of top-grade chair-fodder. Of the Law Lords, the public has heard of none except my Lords Radcliffe, Denning and Devlin. Lord Devlin has the Press Council, Lord Denning wishes to stay Master of the Rolls, but Lord Radcliffe, who has had a certain amount to do with the BBC, might do if he had not had so many cracks of the whip already. Of the •civil servants and diplo- mats, some, like Lord Franks, have retired to Oxbridge, and others, like Mr. Newsom, are re- cently appointed to other jabs. Lord Shawcross, a majestically uncommitted character, is happily minting money in Shell. Generals and admirals? Possibly, but well . . .
There remains a tiny handful headed by the strange figure of Lord Gladwyn, who was good enough to allow his name to go forward (not without some misgivings, one imagines, since he occasionally seems attracted by the thought that he might be persuaded to bring a little tone to a Labour administration as Foreign Secretary). Whether his tongue has made him too many enemies remains to be seen at the time of writing, but his huge ability, the debt owed him by the Government over his Common Market activities and his prudent decision to remain on the cross-benches in the Lords make him a hot favourite.
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