End of Term
By JULIAN CRITCHLEY, MP AND what a term it has been! Was it only jeighteen months ago that every commentator was busily forecasting twenty years of unbroken Tory rule? Somehow it seems longer.
There was never any question that the Prime Minister would survive his Great Reshuffle of July 13. For while admitting to some surprises at the number of severed heads, and to shock at the speed at which it all happened, most Tory MPs believed that a reshuffle was long overdue. Throughout the summer, letters demanding that the Government be recast had been piling up at the Whips' Office, and recast it was in a way that caused many a Member alarm, bewilderment and, later, pleasure.
After his dismissal, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd bad the sympathy of all and the support of some; for he has been at one and the same time both the best and worst of Chancellors. Painstaking, thorough and loyal, he at least amongst a procession of Chancellors recognised the necessity for an in- comes policy, yet he was quite unable to corn- municate the virtues of such a policy to any audience other than a party committee. On one hand, there rallied to him powerful figures such as Mr. Nigel Birch, who sometimes appears to take pleasure in the unpopularity of deflation, and Sir Alexander Spearman, while on the other hand some lesser figures who had never been conspicuous as supporters of the pay pause, who suddenly discovered that not only had Selwyn gone but they had been passed over for prefer- ment. The truth was that despite all that he had done, Selwyn Lloyd had become a political liability. With him we could not win, without Into we might. Everyone learns that there is no such thing as gratitude in politics, and nor should there be; for the great strength of the Tory Party is not so much its loyalty, but the clarity with which it has always seen that power is the thing that matters.
In the days that followed Black (or was it `Good'?) Friday, there was disquiet among sec- tions of the party. The grammar school boys saw the reshuffle as a plot to replace those in the Government who had not been to public schools by gilded Old Etonians. One senior Member felt that it was indecorous that the public should have witnessed the to-ings and fro-ings of Ministers to Admiralty House. But among the older Mem- bers, the real cause of resentment was the 'act that their generation had been overlooked. and that power within the Cabinet had gone W brains trust of able forty-year-olds. For there can be no doubt that the present Cabinet is a formid- able body. Heath, Maudling, Macleod, Boyle and Powell are the most able men that the party has produced since the war, and if one looks for comparisons, one is forced back perhaps as far as Asquith. What of the Prime Minister's future? At first sight his own position might well appear to he insecure. For after the events of July 13 there can he no question of a further drastic reshuffle. 11° might conceivably go if we were unable to ate! the Common Market, for above all else he 1:1 identified with Britain's desire to force entry. Ail_ yet despite all the alarums of this week, there 15 no reason to think that Britain will be unable to obtain from the Six the further guarantees that will enable the Government to defend before Parliament what so far has been agreed to in Brussels. Given our entry, there is then the November series of by-elections. Mr. Mac- millan's position would then only be endangered if there is no improvement whatever in the Tory vote. But most important of all there is the question of a successor. It may be that the con- firmation of Mr. Butler as Deputy Prime Minister was the most subtle move of the whole reshuffle.
The significance of the replacement of Mr. Watkinson by Mr. Thorneycroft is yet to be appreciated. Fajen so, it is certainly to be wel- comed. Mr. Watkinson became Minister of De- fence at a time when the achievement by Russia 01 nuclear parity had already undermined the structure on which British defence policy had been built. At a blow, the Soviet Union had destroyed the military value of independent nuclear striking forces and had, as a consequence at the end of 'massive retaliation,' returned to the soldier his pre-nuclear importance. It was Mr. Watkinson's task to adjust our defences, wher- ever possible, to this new discipline, while strongly denying that he was doing any such thing. To the Americans he spoke of 'inter- dependence' and saw to it that the V-bombers were so integrated as to be to all intents and pur- Poses a wing of Strategic Air Command. To the country in general, and to the Conservative Party In Particular, he spoke of the 'independence' of the deterrent, maximising the political advantage that does accrue from the possession of such an Illusory independence. , It was over conventional forces that he was 'east successful. For it turned out that the de- cision to go over to an all-regular army (and to abandon conscription) that was made in 1957 could not have been taken at a worse time. Presi- dent Kennedy's new policies and the Berlin crisis of last August found Britain unable to meet her obligations to her NATO allies. Indeed, so as to Ziake sure that our forces did not fall even further hehind, the Government introduced the 'Ever- 'eadies' which so far have proved a disappoint- ment, and extended by six months the period to be served by National Service men in Germany.
It is not unkind to say that Mr. Watkinson's 11fIncl0a1 parliamentary virtue was his dullness. ems ability to keep the temperature of debate low
Were him to blunt most of the attacks that were made either on him or his policy. Thorneycroft's appointment foreshadows
Will changes in defence policy. There ;ill be greater emphasis both on the numbers Ict equipment of our conventional forces, par- ticularly in Germany; and many of the assump- u'ns that underlie our deterrent policy will have ,o It be rethought in the context of a United Europe. will Mr. Thorneycroft's task to see that the „,defence policies of Europe and America cornple- 'tient and do not duplicate each other.
The difficulties that have developed in Brussels
during the last week or so are no real surprise. Poi Just as in Britain a balance must be struck at the annual price review between the interests our farmers and the interests of the for the price fixed must not be so high as restrict unduly imports of Commonwealth food, and yet not so low as to reduce the stan- dard of living of the British farmer, so this is pre- cisely what Mr. Edward Heath and the Six are now doing in Brussels. They are working to achieve a similar point of balance between the farmers of Europe (including Britain) on one side, and Commonwealth, American and Argentine food-producers on the other. On Tuesday of this week the Conservative anti-Marketeers felt that the time had now come when they must show their hand. They have threatened a motion on the Order Paper for some time, but have been privately reluctant to put one down for fear that the poverty of their num- bers might finally be revealed. And revealed it was on Tuesday morning. Any Member who cared to read the list of thirty-six names that had been freshly stuck down in the Order Book in the Library would have had the curious pleasure of seeing for himself the rump of the Tory Party. There were no surprises, for it was the same old lot, but somewhat fewer in number than the '90
Tories' that the headlines in Monday's Evening Standard had claimed were about to revolt.
It is likely that the House will be recalled at the end of September to approve the terms of our entry. The Government will then come to Parliament with the reluctant approval of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference. Then it will be the attitude that the Labour Party will adopt that will be important, not the protests of a handful of Tory anti-Marketeers. It is to be hoped that Mr. Gaitskell will not oppose entry, for it would be best if, as has already hap- pened in the Six, the Common Market became common ground. Yet if Gaitskell were to oppose, he could not prevent our entry. Nor would the Labour Party find it convenient to oppose the Common Market at the election. For the elec- tion will be fought in conditions of renewed prosperity, and to attack the one will be to attack the other.
Is it too much to say that even now, from the Government's point of view, the worst is over?
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