TORY NOTE BOOK
It was at one and the same time both saddening and heartening to read Sir Max Aitken in last Saturday's Daily Express declaring that "with Mr Heath's drive and determination " the consequential Common Market legislation "will be accomplished" and that "the Daily Express accepts the verdict of the freely elected British Parliament." The Express group has Maintained its opposition to the Market from the beginning; and had Lord Reaverbrook been alive, he certainly would not have flung in the towel following last Thursday's very peculiar vote. Max Aitken does not lack courage, and I am surprised that he should have given up the fight When it is very far from certain that for all the Prime Minister's "drive and determination " the Europeans will win. It is, therefore, saddening. It is, however, also Heartening, for the Express group has usually found that its causes have turned out to be lost ones. Now that the Express has, in effect, abandoned the anti-Market cause that cause may well begin to prosper as never before. There must have been some considerable heart-searchings within the Beaverbrook empire. The newspapers of the group had been preparing themselves for the awful task (as they saw it) of having to oppose the Conservative party and support the Labour party should a general election be fought on the Market. Now, all the national daily and Sunday newspapers either support, or do not oppose, the Market. Will public opposition crumble? I doubt it.
Tuf ton on Europe
There is a good case to be made for the Proposition that the Conservative antiMarketeers who have voted against. the Principle, and who continue to vote against the detail, are the only men of principle left in politics. Labour pro-marketeers, after all, can hardly make any very extravagant claims for the fibre of their Consciences, now that they propose to be good boys after all; and Tory protnarketeers have been through . far too many intellectual gyrations to leave any claim to consistency on their part intact. It Would be unkind further to dilate on the Prime Minister's theory of full-hearted consent — especially as this was thought uP last May twelve month only in case Mr Wilson should steal a March on him — but there is still open season in the best blood s_Port of all — the hunting of Sir Tufton bieamish. Poor old Tufton has just become the latest victim of quarterly journalism. In the latest issue of the Swinton Journal — the intellectual Conservative's answer to the Central Office Weekly News — Sir Tufton delivers himself of some weighty thought on public opinion and the EEC. Written ages ago, the article makes the point that the Government could not make the full argument for entry to the people because it "has been hamstrung while negotiations were in progress" and concludes comfortingly that, while in 1961 and 1966 public opinion was in favour of entry, "Eighteen months ago it was two to one against. Now, after a period in the doldrums, it is swinging back." Alas for poor Tufton, it did not swing back. And, amiable chap though he is, one feels a great deal more respect for the Market toughies who freely, if privately, say they don't give a damn for public opinion. Would that Tufton had as much gumption.
Echoes of the past
I had a chance of learning something about what goes to make up public opinion last weekend, when I spoke on Churchill to an adult education audience at the delightful Huntercombe Manor in Buckinghamshire. Here were thirty or so serious-minded people of various ages actively and energetically concerned to divine something of the nature of their heritage which Churchill represented. I found two contentions excited a particularly interested response: first, that every literate English person has his own definite and often dogmatic conception of Churchill; and, secondly, that, while it is highly desirable carefully to plan a programme of political reform, a man is even more important than a plan. I found, too, a good deal of real concern and disillusion about trends in modern politics, and some real worry about lack of leadership, honesty and definition of policies. When you think that my audience was at least representative of the 150,000 or so people regularly using the facilities of this kind of weekend course system, and probably a good deal more representative of the public than even that figure suggests, you may agree with me that there is real cause for worry about politics today; which I fancy can be symbolised by the lack of regard such people as Ted Heath and Tufton Beamish have for the ordinary decencies of the relationship between politician and voter.
The people at Huntercombe were extremely lucky because, due to an imaginative stroke by the course organisers, they had a politician in residence for the weekend. He was Mr James Griffiths, formerly Labour's Secretary of State of Wales, and once a protégé of Ernie Bevan. At eighty-two Jim Griffiths was amazingly intellectually vigorous. He, too, was disturbed by political developments, and lamented in particular what he called "the decline of the Tory squire and the cloth-capped Labour member." He had also a fund of good stories, recalling a vanished age of excitement and personality in politics. My favourite was his tale of Bevin going to see Churchill after a bitter quarrel with Beaverbrook and saying, "Winston, you must choose between that man and me." Churchill's reply was, "I choose me."
Bashing students
Market or no Market, some of the Government's more principled policies are still coming into action. At a press conference on Tuesday Bill van Straubenzee unfolded, in an engagingly and deceptively emollient way, the DES's proposals for reforming the system by which public money is made available to student unions through the taxpayer's subvention of membership fees for these unions. Hitherto, for most universities, the money which sustains student organisations, and also a good deal of student discontent, has gone from local authorities to student purses via university bursaries: the students have thus been given a certain financial locus standi, in that they have enjoyed financial support as students, separate from the institutes at which they study. The Government proposes to make the student grant merely a part of the money paid by the UGC to institutes of higher education: it will be for the academic authorities in each case to decide how much of the total grant goes to non-academic facilities. The principle of academic authority is thus restored, and that at a time when, after the supine years, university teachers and administrators are considerably less bedazzled than they used to be by student tantrums. The proposal has the corollary advantage of destroying in principle the idea that to be a student is to enjoy by definition some sort of social or economic position in the community apart from the studies one undertakes. It is perhaps the most pleasing of all Mrs Thatcher's reforms so far.
Cato
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