Political commentary

Selwyn and the real world

Ferdinand Mount

'You will find Selwyn a very modest man.' It sounded unlikely. The description, from an old parliamentary ally of his, did not seem to tally with the world's picture of Selwyn Lloyd at that time —stiff-necked, inclined to be prickly, a somewhat off-putting figure.

Yet modest was precisely and inalienably what he was, and I do not mean falsely modest. He possessed, as few public men possess, an exact appreciation of himself. His qualities of patience, tenacity and industry were not to be undervalued. But he knew the things he was less good at and he did not pretend to talents he did not have. He spoke with little facility, and wrote with less; a speech or an article meant discarded pieces of paper scrumpled all round the room. When most people look back on successful careers and say in a tone of mild surprise 'you know, I have really been very lucky,' you can be sure that they are secretly thinking that history with its usual unerring wisdom has showered its favours on a person of exceptional talent. In Selwyn's case, the mild surprise was genuine, because this shy, kind, not entirely happy man was unremittingly realistic about himself as about everything else.

His loyalty was what he was most praised for, often rather condescendingly by those who found this quality of limited value in their own lives, and indeed loyalty was the reason why he was landed with me as a surly and indolent personal assistant. Nobody but Selwyn would have taken on the menial job of reviewing the organisation of the Tory Party only a few weeks after being sacked as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the most humiliating manner conceivable. Nobody but Selwyn would have continued to sit in frostbound trains and draughty halls throughout the worst and longest winter since the war in order to carry out his intention of visiting every area of England and Wales and leaving no malcontent unheard — although we very soon discovered that every area had almost exactly the same story to tell.

Nobody but Selwyn would have thought it amusing either that his report should have finally come out on the day after Mr Pro fumo resigned — and so was not exactly deluged with publicity. The report itself was modest and sensible. There was nothing much to say except that the government was unpopular and that by sacking Selwyn and half the Cabinet, Mr Macmillan had, if anything, made it rather more unpopular. That, however, was not to be said.

Our travels were fascinating excursions back into that solid pre-war provincial Eng land with which Selwyn himself was so indelibly stamped. We sat opposite each other in heatless first-class carriages as the train rumbled through endless snowscapes, bound for Chester or Newcastle, with as often as not a bowler-hatted stationmaster waiting on the platform to greet us; Selwyn in overcoat and paisley muffler, reading Georgette Heyer with the book held up to those extravagantly flared nostrils or talking about his two passions, the House of Commons and his daughter Joanna.

Not surprisingly, coming as he did of a line of Anglo-Welsh Methodist doctors and ministers, he had started life as a Liberal. And he retained a core of distaste for the more brutish side of Tory life. Sir Cyril Osborne demanded an interview and ranted on for hours about immigrants and why wouldn't Rab Butler call him Cyril. At first, it looked as though Selwyn was listening with non-committal politeness. Then I noticed that his whole body had gone stiff as a board. And when I returned from ushering Osborne out, Selwyn did a kind of little dance on the scarlet and blue carpet of the Conservative Research Department, chanting, 'Thank God the man's gone.'

On the whole, though, he tolerated bores and oafs as well as fools gladly. There were few politicians whose company he did not enjoy. He was clubbable. And he enjoyed a marvellous late summer as Leader of the House and then Speaker which did much to make up for earlier slights and disappointments, not least the failure of his marriage which he regretted deeply both for itself and because he had not married earlier.

Yet it would be craven to praise him merely for the gifts of tolerance and sympathy which these last posts enabled him to display. What matters most is what he did as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor and the relationship between himself and Harold Macmillan.

History to the defeated does not merely not say alas or pardon; history, in the shape

of obituaries in The Times, sneers and patronises. Selwyn, The Times says, though of course 'a loyal servant', lacked 'the

sensitivity to adjust to criticism and the imagination to carve out original policies of his own.' The sophisticated and states manlike Macmillan, on the other hand, 'was

preoccupied with the broad issues of foreign policy.' And did not Selwyn seem slow

footed by comparison as old Supermac shimmied off into the blue yonder with a flash of discoloured moustache and the droop of an eyelid, leaving poor Celluloid to carry the can again?

Another way of putting it, however, would be that Lloyd had successively to serve a neurotic invalid obsessed with the 1930s and a ruthless hustler obsessed with his own survival. Without attempting to pre-empt Selwyn's own account of the Suez adventure to be published in July, one can fairly say that without Eden the adventure would not have happened and that Macmillan's posture of 'first-in, first-out' appears no more attractive now than it did then. Mr Macmillan's — well, what shall vie call it? — concern for personal advantage is even more strikingly shown in his conduct of economic affairs. After all, he got rid Of not one but two Chancellors who attempted to combat inflation, and launched not one but two irresponsible and damaging election booms. Selwyn's pay pause was in fact the only kind of pay pause worth having, being accompanied by strict control of the money supply. Its impact may have been inconsistent and unpopular, but it probablY helped to reduce unemployment and inflationary expectations as much as incomes policies ever do. What went wrong was that Macmillan became impatient; with his congenital love of the flash gesture, he could not accept the slow grind and the inevitably painful costs involved in defeat

ing inflation. The Macmillan memoirs are comically self-serving. He quotes from his diary repeated complaints about the Treas ury's lack of imagination and new ideas: 'Selwyn tired. . .seems to have lost his grip. . .strange apathy has overcome him.. .1 shrink from the task. . .1 have made up my mind where my duty lies.. .terriblY

difficult and emotional scene. . in the end

things worked out pretty well.'

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that just as Suez marks some kind of watershed In the conduct of British foreign policy, so the day Macmillan sacked Lloyd and the others marks some kind of watershed in the conduct of domestic policy. Before that date, the actions of the British government, however mistaken, seem to have some kind of weight behind them. After, they seem more like gestures of impotence, dictated primarily by the next by-election or last nights meeting of backbenchers. By contrast Set' wyn Lloyd, 'limited' and 'inflexible' though he might be, possessed qualities of realisai and steadfastness and common sense which sprang from a recognisable tradition 0.f sound government — a tradition which Is wholly at variance with the mixture of ruthless self-seeking and self-deluding fan" tasy by which we have been mostly goy' erned over the past twenty years. A little more inflexibility would not have gone amiss.

The paradox is that the most dramatic incident in Selwyn's public life remains the Suez collusion; and yet there is no politician since the war who has more steadfastlY shown that a politician can be an holt' ourable man — and a nice one.