Labour's Crown Prince
POLITICAL COMMENTARY
By ALAN WATKINS
SOME weeks ago a member of the Cabinet be- came very angry about the prosecution of the art gallery which had exhibited the works of the American painter Jim Dine. A trial of this kind, the minister protested to his colleagues, would have been more appropriate to the days of Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (as he then was and, to me, always will be) or Mr Gwilym Lloyd George: in Mr Harold Wilson's New Britain, surely,• one was entitled to expect a more liberal and enlightened attitude from the authorities.
And the minister concerned went further. Ile threatened—not seriously intending to carry out his threat—to issue a statement from his depart- ment saying what a disservice had been done to the cause of art. The reaction was instantaneous. The Home Office sent to his department panic- stricken messages which combined the minatory with the maudlin. Did the minister realise, asked officials, how unprecedented such a statement on his part would be? Was he aware what a furore it would cause? The minister persisted in his campaign of terror against the Home Office officials for a few more hours, until it became obvious, even to them, that he had no real intention of issuing his deprecatory statement.
I begin with this story not only because it shows that politicians, or at any rate some of them, still retain a sense of humour, but also because it shows that, even under Mr Roy Jen- kins, the Home Office still retains its essential characteristics. In the past few months we have perhaps been in some danger of forgetting this.
Not that anyone should underestimate the magnitude of Mr Jenkins's achievement. His Criminal Justice Bill, which was published this week, will rank as a major piece of reforming legislation. There is a sense, however, in which things are going almost too well for Mr Jenkins. Mr Wilson is (at the time of writing, anyway) thought to have been indecisive over Rhodesia. Mr George Brown is in danger of ending up with a Foreign Office staffed solely by the devoted Mr William Greig. Mr James Callaghan is loved only by the Treasury and the Bank of England. And Mr Michael Stewart, for all the impact he makes on the public, might just as well not be there at all. Only Mr Jenkins seems at the moment to possess the gift of political alchemy. Crime rises, and he evinces a suitably grave con- cern. George Blake escapes from jail, and he wins a parliamentary triumph on account of it. The London elections are postponed, and he gives the impression of doing the local electorate a positive favour. Will he ever put a foot wrong?
To try to discover the answer to this question, it may be as well to look at Mr Jenkins's situa- tion through the eyes of Mr Wilson. Contrary to received opinion, Prime Ministers are on the whole pleased when their Cabinet colleagues do well, and annoyed when they do badly; and Mr Wilson is no exception. From time to time one reads stories of ministers being placed in depart- ments specifically so that they can make a mess of things and ruin such reputations as they pos- sess. Recent examples of this kind of cut-price Machiavellian writing concerned Mr Callaghan at the Treasury and Mr Anthony Greenwood at the Ministry of Housing. In fact, however, poli- tics do not work in this way. Subject to the necessity for paying off political debts and keep- ing potential trouble-makers quiet, a Prime Minister's interest is to secure the best depart- mental ministers he can. We may therefore take it that Mr Wilson is genuinely pleased at Mr Jenkins's success.
And yet it would be misleading to depict Mr Wilson as looking proudly and paternally on while young Roy distinguishes himself. There is, without any doubt, an element of watchfulness, of unease, in Mr Wilson's regard for the Home Secretary_ The Prime Minister, as we are all only too well aware, is a great believer in plots and rumours of plots, Could there ever be, indeed, was there at one time, a plot to replace him with Mr Jenkins? Perhaps it would be helpful to frame two separate though connected questions. Is there a general threat to Mr. Wilson's position? If so, is Mr Jenkins the most likely instrument for imple- menting that threat? And, to complicate matters, both these questions can be regarded in an objective and a subjective light. That is to say, they can be answered in terms of general politi- cal probabilities; or they can be answered in terms of Mr Wilson's view of those probabilities. The two do not necessarily coincide.
As far as the existence of a general threat is concerned, we can begin by noting that disillu- sion with the Prime Minister has increased, is increasing and shows no sign of diminishing. At the same time, however, the back-bench critics are fully though uneasily aware that if it were not for Mr Wilson they would not be in a posi- tion to criticise at all: quite simply, they would not be at Westminster. A similar attitude can be discerned among ministers. It is not difficult to discover members of the Government who are prepared to criticise Mr Wilson, as it were, in detail—over, say, his handling of the Rhodesian crisis. In the end, however, all discussions of Mr Wilson come back to his sheer indispensability. Whatever the difficulties, he is the man who can always think up something.
Though Mr Wilson is not one to depreciate his own capacity, it is doubtful whether he is entirely certain of his own indispensability. It is not only that he is by nature inclined to believe in plots. It cannot have escaped his attention that Mr Cecil Harmsworth King has recently been saying to members of his Cabinet (Mr Wil- son's, not Mr King's) that he will `have to go' and will be 'out within a year.' No doubt North- cliffe-like pretensions of this nature need not be taken too seriously, least of all by Mr Wilson: nevertheless, he would probably feel happier if such sentiments were left unexpressed.
But if Mr King's vision of the future is correct (and, as I argue above, I see no reason to be- lieve that it is), will Mr Jenkins be the man to fill the gap? The answer is almost certainly No. Mr Callaghan remains by far the most likely short- term replacement for Mr Wilson. However, Mr Jenkins's admirers in the House of Commons put his future in less apocalyptic terms. Their theory is that Mr Wilson will perform for another ten or so years, until he or the television viewers become tired of the show, and that afterwards Mr Jenkins will take his rightful place. This view is vulnerable because it ignores the age-factor: Mr Wilson, at fifty, is only four years older than Mr Jenkins. However, what is I think potentially damaging to Mr Jenkins is not that the view is vulnerable but that it is being expressed as fre- quently as it is. There is a well-established tendency for Crown Princes to be assassinated. And the effect of much of the talk being put about by such young Members as Mr Roy. Hat- tersley and Mr Christopher Rowland is to make Mr Jenkins's. colleagues jealous and Mr Wilson nervous.
There is here a parallel, which we need not press too far for comfort, with the career of Mr lain Macleod in the 'fifties. Mr Macleod also, we may recall, gave some masterly parliamentary performances; Mr Macleod also was christened the Crown Prince. And what happened? It was discovered that Mr Macleod simply did not carry enough support among Tory MPs. This is not to say that Mr Jenkins does not or will not carry substantial support in the parliamentary Labour party. Nor is it to deny that he will in time be- come leader of the party. But at the moment Mr Jenkins's eventual succession is being taken too much as a matter of course; and this does not do his real interests any good at all.
In this context, what happens to Mr Jenkins at the re-shuffle will be of considerable interest. Perhaps `re-shuffle' is a misnomer. The entire fate of the British government, it seems, is to depend on whether a suitable job is found for Mr Fred Mulley when in January the Ministry of Aviation is merged with Technology. At the same time, one assumes, Mr Fred Willey and Mr Fred Lee are to be painlessly disposed of. 'The break- up of the Federation,' said someone this week. And the Rhodesian crisis may provide some vacancies caused by resignations: the favourites to resign are Lord Caradon and Mrs Judith Hart, though not Mrs Barbara Castle, who is contented enough to go on playing with her trains.
Whatever happens in the lower reaches of the Government, there are those who believe that Mr Jenkins will or ought to become Chancellor of the Exchequer in a straight swap arrange- ment, Mr Callaghan coming to the Home Office. It is difficult to see how such a move would benefit Mr Jenkins, though it might, of course, benefit the Exchequer. At the Home Office he is not only doing very well indeed, but—what he has not done before—winning the support of the left. He could hardly hope to accomplish this as Chancellor, not, at any rate, until the pre-elec- tion boom is started. Until this happy time arrives, Mr Jenkins would be well advised to stay on at the Home Office and in particular to refuse any non-departmental post which Mr Wilson might offer him. (The acceptance of a non- departmental post, as both Herbert Morrison and Mr Macleod discovered, is hazardous.) He would also be well advised to ask his young sup- porters to lower their voices slightly when they next decide to appoint him Prime Minister.
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