'WHO IS THIS DISGUSTING PERSON?'

Andrew Gimson reveals the

power-crazed motives of campaigners for constitutional reform

OF ALL possible reasons for doing away with the British constitution, the sight of Cecil Parkinson in the Garrick Club must be among the most frivolous. Yet the author Marina Warner saw him there one night, and found he removed 'all my wor- ries that I am being simply wrong-headed, wingey and elitist'. It was, she says, an experience which proved to her the need for 'urgent reform of our political institu- tions'.

Her vignette of Mr Parkinson in the Gar- rick was given in Monday's Independent. According to her, he sang, 'The working class can kiss my arse, /I've got the fore- man's job at last', after which he noticed a man in Miss Warner's party and demand- ed, 'Who is this disgusting person?' As a sketch of club life, this was readable enough, though open to the usual objection about the behaviour expected of guests. But Miss Warner uses the episode to argue the need for radical constitutional change. One might as well draw sweeping conclu- sions from a displeasing encounter with a Jew, a black man or a feminist. In those cases, Miss Warner would presumably con- cede the injustice and stupidity of such rea- soning.

Her article appeared as one of the warm- up acts for this weekend's Constitutional Convention in Manchester, organised by Charter 88 and the Independent. Assuming Mr Parkinson does not exercise quite so great a sway over her thoughts as she says, why has she become so convinced that we

need fundamental reform of our political institutions? Or, to widen the question, What has led a growing number of charm- ing, moderate, cultivated people, including the great majority of those now chattering In Manchester, to campaign for the re- development of the British Constitution?

The answer, in a sentence, is that they want far more power to be exercised by people like themselves, at both Westmin- ster and Brussels. Underlying their zeal is a strong feeling of disgust with our present constitution: one of their most frequent complaints is that they have been 'disen- franchised'. This is not literally true, since they still have the vote. But they feel their votes do not count.

So they feel excluded from power. The Liberals have suffered this horrible feeling for many decades, which explains their long-standing support for proportional rep- resentation. For social democrats, it is a more recent affliction. Very few of the gal- lant band who set up the Social Democratic Party in 1981 had expressed the slightest interest in PR until they lost hope of attain- ing power through the traditional two-party System. People like Roy Jenkins only attempted to 'break the mould' of British Politics once it was in their personal inter- est to-do so.

The observation that good, old-fashioned lust for power underlies the vogue for con- stitutional reform will shock many of the reformers themselves. It does not square With their own emotions about politics. They know they are motivated by the high- est feelings of altruism and benevolence.

But lust for power and altruism are entirely compatible. Bossy people usually tell us they are ordering us about for our own good, not because bossing us around affords psychological satisfaction to the nanny or sergeant-major or government minister who is doing it. Politicians are conventionally expected to assert that they want power in order to benefit others — the nation, for example, or the poor — and in some instances the assertion is sincere.

I am sure Miss Warner is utterly sincere When she writes of the Eighties: 'I have not felt represented, either in Parliament or in law, and if someone such as myself does not feel represented, then how much greater the frustration of others who have immediate, practical reasons for dissatisfac- tion: the jobless, unqualified 20-year-old who has left home because of the poll tax and lost the right to vote in consequence; the neighbour who has had to pay for his cancer X-rays in order to have them quick- ly . . .' The only point on which there can be any doubt is whether the unqualified 20- year-old is happy to be roped in as one of her supporters.

Constitutional reform is easy to present in altruistic terms, involving as it does such helpful terms as democracy, justice and human rights. Advocates of PR always tell us they want it in order to make Britain fairer, not so as to turn Paddy Ashdown into the Hans-Dietrich Genscher of West- minster. Bagehot understood this sort of altruism very well when he wrote: 'So long as there is an uneasy class, a class which has not its just power, it will rashly clutch and blindly believe the notion that all men should have the same power.' The uneasy class he had in mind was composed of the northern manufacturers. Nowadays it con- sists of the kind of people who joined the SDP. In the name of the people, they seek power for themselves.

It would scarcely be too much to describe constitutional reform as the revenge, or attempted revenge, of the dis- appointed middle classes. God knows there is plenty in the condition of Britain to be disappointed about (as well as plenty in which to take pride). Crime, yobbery, ugli- ness, materialism, poverty, rotten schools and railways: the cultivated bourgeois with a social conscience sees so many things, outside his own home or district, which need improvement, and so much which looks inferior to the parts of Europe where he goes on holiday.

The defects of the British Constitution offer a convenient explanation for these defects, and its reconstruction on Euro- pean lines a panacea. Our existing Consti- tution can be likened to an ancient house, built, rebuilt and extended on no very rational plan over the course of many cen- turies, and always in need of repair, reno- vation and adaptation if it is to remain habitable. The reformers look on this extraordinary structure with disdain and pronounce it fit only for demolition. In their arrogance and simple-mindedness, they resemble the architects and planners who thought that by knocking down old town centres, and erecting modern, ratio- nal structures in their place, a great leap forward in human happiness could be made.

This was certainly a way of getting rid of some atrocious slums, but also, alas, of cre- ating new ones. It is now seen that many of the old buildings could much better have been renovated than demolished, because they were far better adapted than their 'functional' replacements to the needs of the people living in them. But renovation is slow and laborious, and seems rather unambitious.

How much more tempting to adopt, as Miss Warner urges, a Utopian approach; to dream of 'unattainable quests . . . unreach- able goals'. Never mind the human misery this approach is bound to cause. With any luck, the middle classes will be spared the worst.

Social reformers used to assure us that the man in Whitehall really did know best. Experience has exploded that claim, yet now they ask us to believe that the man in Brussels or Strasbourg really does know best. Europe will redress the injustices inflicted by British courts, Europe will clean up the environment we have mal- treated, Europe will replace the currency we debauched, Europe will introduce the social legislation we need. There is no need for us to do any of this for ourselves (a task which would, one inwardly notes, be terri- bly hard work). We can leave it all to Europe.

Perhaps the most annoying characteristic of the reformers now gathered in Manch- ester is their extreme naIvety. They imagine a new heaven can be built by introducing PR and giving Europe a much greater say in our affairs. The idea that we might be better off running our own affairs — better off making our own mistakes, and attempt- ing to learn from them — is rejected with- out a second thought.

Or perhaps the most annoying part of the performance is the pretence that far from being a way in which Miss Warner and her friends hope to take over, the whole programme is impeccably democrat- ic. Some of the reforms now being com- mended are positively anti-democratic (and not necessarily the worse for that): the written constitutions being touted about are designed to limit the power of whoever can command a majority in the House of Commons. Other reforms, involving the transfer of power to Europe, would destroy the one fairly democratic check we have on our rulers, namely the chance, once every four or five years, to sack the rascals. It seems only fair to warn Miss Warner, and others like her, that the British people may, at some point, get rather annoyed about that.