POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Where have all the radicals gone?

HUGH MACPHERSON

There have been quite a few examples recently of chaps breaking the rules of the Westminster club. Often this can do nothing but good. For example during those salad days when Lord George-Brown was main- taining the traditions of Curzon and Salis- bury at the Foreign Office he came under fire about British ships trapped in the Suez Canal. He told the House that he had let his views be known to the United Arab Republic, and, in the menacing tone of voice he normally reserves for impromptu orations to British clubmen, he added that he told the Arabs he expected a reply.

Not surprisingly some display of ribaldry took place on the benches opposite but it was brought to an abrupt halt when George Brown invited anyone to tell him what else a British Foreign Secretary could do in these days. It was an excellent therapy for an in- stitution which is only tentatively taking steps into the twentieth century and which much prefers a decent fellow like Sir Alec Douglas-Home who makes appropriately Victorian noises even if he sometimes uses colonial names for independent territories.

On the other hand the kind of disorderly behaviour which led Labour MPS to stand in front of the Mace hopefully awaiting chastisement, and the dark talk of extra- parliamentary resistance to trade union legis- lation, with nocturnal vocal renderings of 'The Red Flag', is much more serious. Not, let it be said, because anyone objects to a spot of healthy irreverence.

No, the recent sense of disenchantment with the normal parliamentary processes among the tribunes themselves is of interest because it is a symptom of a disease which spread from Westminster over the last ten years and now could be coming back home in a mild form. During the last decade the merciless satirising of Harold Macmillan and some of his administration in television programmes; the false hopes of the tech- nological revolution raised by Harold Wil- son; and in turn the malicious personal attacks on Mr Wilson by his opponents have significantly contributed to the erosion of trust in politicians and in the Parliamentary process, particularly among young people.

To attribute the entire sense of disillusion to these three factors would, of course, be a gross over-simplification. Many of the factors involved were beyond the control of politicians not the least being the mushroom- ing of uninhibited television coverage of pol- itics. There was also the arrival in univer- sities of a generation which knew nothing of war, or even its aftermath. This genera- tion found itself in a country which had shed almost all its colonial power and had done little to re-examine its mid-Vic- torian political structure. For that, and the earlier reasons given. Westmirtster politicians must accept a large share–of the blame for the exodus of radical youngsters.

The evidence is reasonably clear. Between the years 1965 and 1970 the number of Young Socialist branches dropped from 605 to 500, and that is probably an optimistic figure. No figures are available for individual membership. It may, however, be assumed that if the numbers in some branches dropped to the point of extinction then there has

been a similar drop in membership.

It was often assumed that the type of youngsters who would normally be found in the Labour party had joined the Young Liberals. For a short spell of time that could well have been true. But in fact they have also declined to about half the numbers they enjoyed at their peak in the mid-'sixties. Whilst Young Liberal officials take the same cavalier attitudes to statistics as they do to Mr Jeremy Thorpe the actual number is now probably less than 10,000.

The Young Conservatives claim around 15,000. This figure was obtained from a study carried out last year. No previous figures are apparently available. Certainly the health of the Young Conservatives would have little relevance to what is being dis- cussed here for the kind of pressure which youth organisations traditionally exert on the other two parties has never been their func- tion. The decline of the institution of mar- riage has probably affected them more gravely than the decline of Parliament.

Naturally the question arises as to where the politically minded young people have gone. One things seems clear. The move has not been to less orthodox political parties but towards what is fashionably called 'dir- ect action'. Almost the first thought that occurs to any body of people who have a cause to proclaim, be it the retention of a nursery, resistance to the building of an airport, or opposition to a foreign regime, is the need for a demonstration or a 'sit-in'.

Clearly the political parties have failed to provide a climate within which youngsters can operate. This, unfortunately, has not simply meant that the more extreme bud- ding politicians are outside the traditional political structure. The more stable idealistic young person, who would normally be pro- viding the solid framework of political par- ties, is now much more at home in a pres- sure group or charity such as 'Shelter'. It was suggested recently that ninety per cent of the staff of Shelter are disaffected Labour supperters.

There is perhaps a clue here to the reason why they leave conventional politics. In a body such as Shelter they have the illusion that they are doing something significant. (One chooses Shelter as a typical lively ex- ample of many groups of its kind.) That this is an illusion can be seen by taking relative figures for the achievements of the charity organisation and more conventional housing agencies. From December 1966 to Feb- ruary 1969—a period for which both figures are readily available—Shelter raised £1,077,153, housed 1,107 families and claimed to have another 1,278 in the 'pipeline'. Over the same period the private and public sector built 800,000 homes.

To state the above is, of course, to invite the reply that at least attention has been drawn to the plight of the homeless. This is certainly true. But why should attention be concentrated on the homeless and not on cancer victims, the mentally handicapped or, for that matter, on relief to Pakistan? This does not apparently trouble the youngsters who work with great vigour for their chosen cause. Least of all the charity bosses. Modern pressure charities are engaged in a public relations war. Yet not a single major pol- itician has had the courage to stand up and seriously challenge them on the question of priorities.

A further clue to the exodus of young people from political parties, certainly from parties of the left, could lie in the loose way that radicals who are tired or frustrated have been prepared to speak loosely, if fashionably, of revolution, violence and dir- ect action. A prime example came from the celebrated drawing-room revolutionary, Mr Jo Grimond. Of course no one in his right senses would accuse Mr Grimond of being a man who advocates violence, and one could not conceive of his mounting a barricade even of the finest Chippendale.

Yet at the 1968 Liberal Assembly in Edinburgh he allowed the Young Liberals, who were running a rival 'free assembly' to the party's gathering, to print one of his unpublished speeches which contained the following passage: 'However unpalatable it may be, the truth is that again and again useful reforms have been achieved in Britain by force after argu- ment has failed. India and Ireland would have never got their freedom from British governments without violence. Even the latest student protests have won more by sit-ins than by reason.'

Now Mr Grimond argued at the time that, read in context, this would be a sane, academic, thing to write. No doubt he was correct. But to hand a document contain- ing this passage to a group of such as the Young Liberals was a straight invitation to being misinterpreted. It was hardly an en- couragement to the dull grind of politics.

And that is why those in Parliament who fancy a bit of direct action should think again. No one would lay blame for the present lack of respect for parliamentary government solely at their feet. But, if they, themselves, reject the machinery of Parlia- ment, one can hardly blame youngsters for doing the same. At best this means that potential political leaders end up as fund raisers. At worst it means that someone puts a bomb through Robert Carr's door.