Political commentary
Did they lose the will to live?
Ferdinand Mount
The government did not have to fall. The votes were there for the taking. When all the sums are done, it is hard to avoid the feeling that Mr Callaghan had simply lost the will to carry on. Survival — even if only for a matter of weeks — was still worth something to Labour's election chances. The significant thing is that this time the government exerted itself so little and so late to improve those chances by dealing seriously with the minor parties who hold the balance and who, except for the Ulster Unionists, have nothing to gain from an early election.
In the annals of ratting, the behaviour of the Welsh Nationalists these past few days deserves at least a footnote. Plaid Gives Qualified Welcome to Quarrymen's Bill ran the headline on their press release — as meiotically misleading in its way as small earthquake in Chile: not many dead. Only the night before, Mr Gwynfor Evans had given Mr Donald Stewart the distinct impression that he would vote with the Scot-nats to bring down the government. Indeed, Mr Stewart had had the goodness to show Mr Evans the SNP's motion of no confidence, and a stirring thing it was too: Government betrayal of Scotland. Nothing qualified there.
But now the slate quarrymen were to be compensated for their lungs, and if and when and as and how the compensation is satisfactory, then the three Welshmen would have to bear that in mind. It's a great disappointment for me, said Mr Stewart with his genial mellifluity, as soft and burbling as burn-water trickling over the peat and into the distillery. Did that mean the Welshflats would be voting with the government now? Ah, said Mr. Stewart, retreating into the Hebridean mists, he was sorry but he could not recall Mr Evans's words as clearly as that, but he imagined it must mean something of the sort.
Pity the poor Whips and scribblers employed to track these snipelike fringe parties. You jump at each rustle in the bushes, and begin to detect movements which aren't there. Half an hour ago, there was Mr David Steel, the soul of rectitude, telling us at lunch that the Liberals would continue to vote against the government, and now the lobbies are humming with the report that the Liberals would vote with Mr Callaghan in otder to keep the all-party talks on Scotland going. A false report, it soon emerges. Mr Steel issues two press statements within the hour to explain that for the Liberals Scotland is one thing, the survival of this government quite another thing. Too subtle for us, that. And as for the Ulster Unionists, the mind boggles. The Great Bog of Allen is hard standing in comparison.
The calculations were endless. The place was full of discarded order papers with 281 + 13 + 11 + ? scribbled on the back. But these were passive speculations, not spurs to action. Because the Welsh and the Irish and the Scots have been conferring and spouting in an ecstasy of self-importance, we should not overlook the major cause that landed this government with a motion of no confidence, viz, its own loss of will.
This was disguised and rationalised as a high-minded reluctance to offend Labour idealists by dishing out bribes. Increasingly, we were told that Ministers were fed up with wheeling and dealing and believed that the voters were fed up too. Mr Callaghan was at pains to prove that the Quarrymen's Bill had just happened to come to 'a natural head' at this particular moment, convincing nobody. But the real point is that from the start there was remarkably little wheeling and dealing. Right up to the last few days, the government seemed to have lost the instinctive greed for power which keeps politicians going in off-peak moments. For, after all, victory was something genuinely worth scrabbling for. It was undeniable that Labour would be likely to do better in a June election than an April/May election and better in October than in June. True, inflation would look worse later, but the winter of strikes would be a more distant memory. Above all, the government would be able to say, 'Look, we have come through.' There is something cheering about the spectacle of sheer survival. And yet the government did not fight and claw. Their negotiations with the minor parties were, it seems, frigid and sporadic.
No good sending the whips out — they will just politely ask you how you intend to vote. Mr Michael Cocks's deputy, Walter Harrison, bounds around with a certain dogged zest. Indeed, the sight of Mr Harrison padding into the Chamber to report to Mr Cocks that the Scotnats had indeed put down a motion of no confidence recalled a smelly old retriever bringing back a particularly muddy stick to lay at his master's feet. Not much good either sending out Mr Michael Foot to win friends and influence people. It's not that he has any moral objection to greasing palms or fixing backstairs deals. He just lacks the talent. Beneath that Bohemian ramshackle exterior, he is really the sort of English gent who is too stiff to declare his love or bribe a head waiter.
There were the Welsh with their tongues hanging out, simply longing to be corrupted. Any competent fixer would have had them sewn up weeks ago. The Quar rymen's Bill would have been nicely poised halfway through its Commons run; and a subsidy for, oh I don't know, rural bus services in mid-Wales would be just about to burst into flower. It is the same with Scotland. The government appeared quite unprepared for the referendum result — although it had been obvious for a couple of weeks beforehand that the campaign was going wrong. Labour Ministers seemed to have no idea how to approach the Scottish Nationalists. Nor had anyone much idea about what form the proffered all-party talks were to take nor what might plausibly be expected to emerge from them.
According to one senior Minister, the thing to do was to take a look at Lord Home's criticisms: 'don't agree with all of them myself, mind you, but they could be accommodated within the Act and wouldn't it be absurd to wipe off the Act before you start the talks . . . No laughing matter. . . look what happened in Ireland. • •' When Labour Ministers start hiding behind the Douglas kilt, something must have gone wrong. But the most striking example of Labour's loss of grip was the government's illusion that time was on its side. Mr Callaghan and his colleagues just let things slide, instead of seizing the initiative the morning after the referendum and giving their opponents no time to think.
Over the last few weeks, some spring deep inside Mr Callaghan seems to have snapped, and the twangs have reverberated in the pessimistic forecasts of his closest supporters like Merlyn Rees, although in the Commons Mr Callaghan manages to appear unrattled. Yet power no longer seems to radiate from Downing Street at quite the same wattage. There is too much talk of retiring to the farm — which led one ministerial understrapper to wonder 'why the . . . he doesn't get on with it and go and retire to the . .. farm then.' This loss of wattage has been particularly evident in the negotiations with the minor parties, because the Labour Party possessed and possesses only one fixer of championshiP class, namely the Prime Minister himself. The Lib-Lab pact depended entirely on the personal courtesy and tact with which Mr Callaghan dealt with Mr Steel. Nor can the course of eyents be attributed to the daring or dynamism of the OPP°s.ition. If the Scotnats had not put down their motion of no confidence, it is highly doubtful whether, despite the impatient promptings of backbenchers, Mrs Thatcher would have made any attempt to bring down the government before the budget. Which only tends to indicate that if Mr Callaghan had negotiated directly and energetically with the minor parties, the motion of no con. fidence -might never have got put down in the first place. Mr Callaghan is a professional politician who has sat continuously on his party's .front bench for longer than any other politician, in this century. I would not like to accuse him of high mindedness. It is more likely that he is perhaps just a little tired.
Previous page
