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Liberals resurgent
316
THE
Talking Politics LIBERALS RESURGENT
THE Liberal Press conference at the end of their " council of war " in deepest Oxfordshire last week was remarkable for the fact that nobody at any point
mentioned community politics.
Perhaps, now that the party is busy setting its future strategic priorities and looking forward to the terms on which it might possibly enter a coalition, it would have been out of place to remember the pitted roads and laggard buses and blocked drains which helped to put it in this
position. But that, on any reading, they certainly helped to do. Two byelections began the present Liberal resurgence: Rochdale, where they ran a candidate well established in the town, almost a Rochdale nationalist; and Sutton, where the candidate started as an unknown, but steadily established himself by searching out local grievances and helping to get them put right. Community politics, they called it; and its significance was discussed as if it had been a new technique. But, of course, it wasn’t. In his autobiography, which I wrote about here some weeks ago, Jack Ashley, the Labour M.p. for Stoke South, recalled how he had forced his way on to the council at Widnes as an independent, at the age of 19, by harrying the local council over housing issues and by denouncing the health hazards of slum housing which accounted for a local infant-mortality rate which was twice the national average. After one particularly successful campaign, he became known as " the knight errant of the dustbins ". This close concern with people’s problems, at the expense of making speeches on the direction of the economy or the state of British foreign policy, has been at the heart of Liberal successes in byelections as well as in local-government elections. The accuracy of the Liberal diagnosis of the new route to political success was confirmed in a series of opinion polls carried out for the Granada Television series, State of the Nation. Respondents were asked to say whose help they would seek in a series of imaginary difficulties. Replies showed that, even on matters which were clearly locally rather than nationally decided, more said they would turn to their M.P. than named their local councillor or local council officials. The M.P. consequently finds himself more and more coaxed into performing the role of social worker cum local ombudsman; he becomes a kind of public leaning-post for people who want help and don’t think that people of lesser standing than an M.p. can provide it. Some members of Parliament, of course, positively revel in this role. There are those members in the Commons who regard the constituency case as the reason for their political existence, and who pursue the grievances brought to their notice with saintly persistence and self-abnegation. But there are others who do not believe that they came into politics to be knights errant of the dustbins or Galahads of the leaking gutters, and they bear their load of constituency troubles with ill-concealed resentment.
LANCET, AUGUST
11, 1973
And certainly their reluctance is understandable. Did Gladstone (they perhaps ask themselves) spend his time persecuting the departments about house improvements or the lines of projected roads ? Did he, in the cause of election to Westminster, mend the neglected streets of his constituency with his own bare hands, as Mr Tope of Sutton was photographed doing ? (He chopped down trees, of course, but that was for his own benefit.) Many M.p.s came into politics for altogether different reasons: they were interested in trying to influence policy, for instance, or in attempting to improve the quality of the decisions made by Government. The community-politics aspect of being an M.P. is, to that extent, something of a nuisance and a distraction. One of the side-effects of the Liberal successes may therefore be to force M.p.s to ask themselves anew the question: What are we here for ? Could it be that the public assessment of the .reasons why M.p.s are sent to Westminster is really more realistic than those which Is it in fact a more attract the M.p.s themselves ? profitable investment of time (and one of the most crucial choices facing the new M.p. is how he invests his time at Westminster) to take on the grassroots campaigns and complaints rather than to concern yourself with huge aspects of policy-making on which, in an increasingly complex world, you have very little hope of mastering all the facts ? And if the answer to that is No-then who else is to take on the work which comes flooding in by every mail delivery, which eats up the hours in the M.p.’s weekly surgery ? If people cannot trust their localgovernment representatives with what are clearly local issues, what lesson should be drawn from that ? But if the answer is Yes-then will you still be able to attract men and women who will one day be able to grapple with the problems of directing the fortunes of a modern economy, or running services as vast and costly as the Health and Welfare Services are today ? Will you any longer be able to recruit to Parliament people with the imagination and capacity to extend the interest of the average elector to issues beyond those raised by the events of everyday life ? The Liberals, as I say, appear to have been concerned with more lordly aspects of political life during their council of war. Mr Thorpe, asked to account for his party’s recent successes, thought they were partly due to the failures of the other parties, and partly to the Liberals’ positive virtues-the excellence of their distinctive policies, and the fact that they provided " something different". Maybe. But it would be instructive to know how many of those who sent Mr Clement Freud to Parliament know how exactly the Liberals propose to damp down inflation, what attitude they take to site value rating, or where they stand on secondary education. What seems far more likely is that the Liberals are suc-
ceeding because, rightly
or
wrongly, they
are
believed
fulfil a need. One part of that need seems to be their readiness to patch a hole in society; a hole about which the ordinary voter, who may have no interest in the philosophical disputations of politics, is becoming steadily more concerned. DAVID McKIE.
to
THE
Talking Politics LIBERALS RESURGENT
THE Liberal Press conference at the end of their " council of war " in deepest Oxfordshire last week was remarkable for the fact that nobody at any point
mentioned community politics.
Perhaps, now that the party is busy setting its future strategic priorities and looking forward to the terms on which it might possibly enter a coalition, it would have been out of place to remember the pitted roads and laggard buses and blocked drains which helped to put it in this
position. But that, on any reading, they certainly helped to do. Two byelections began the present Liberal resurgence: Rochdale, where they ran a candidate well established in the town, almost a Rochdale nationalist; and Sutton, where the candidate started as an unknown, but steadily established himself by searching out local grievances and helping to get them put right. Community politics, they called it; and its significance was discussed as if it had been a new technique. But, of course, it wasn’t. In his autobiography, which I wrote about here some weeks ago, Jack Ashley, the Labour M.p. for Stoke South, recalled how he had forced his way on to the council at Widnes as an independent, at the age of 19, by harrying the local council over housing issues and by denouncing the health hazards of slum housing which accounted for a local infant-mortality rate which was twice the national average. After one particularly successful campaign, he became known as " the knight errant of the dustbins ". This close concern with people’s problems, at the expense of making speeches on the direction of the economy or the state of British foreign policy, has been at the heart of Liberal successes in byelections as well as in local-government elections. The accuracy of the Liberal diagnosis of the new route to political success was confirmed in a series of opinion polls carried out for the Granada Television series, State of the Nation. Respondents were asked to say whose help they would seek in a series of imaginary difficulties. Replies showed that, even on matters which were clearly locally rather than nationally decided, more said they would turn to their M.P. than named their local councillor or local council officials. The M.P. consequently finds himself more and more coaxed into performing the role of social worker cum local ombudsman; he becomes a kind of public leaning-post for people who want help and don’t think that people of lesser standing than an M.p. can provide it. Some members of Parliament, of course, positively revel in this role. There are those members in the Commons who regard the constituency case as the reason for their political existence, and who pursue the grievances brought to their notice with saintly persistence and self-abnegation. But there are others who do not believe that they came into politics to be knights errant of the dustbins or Galahads of the leaking gutters, and they bear their load of constituency troubles with ill-concealed resentment.
LANCET, AUGUST
11, 1973
And certainly their reluctance is understandable. Did Gladstone (they perhaps ask themselves) spend his time persecuting the departments about house improvements or the lines of projected roads ? Did he, in the cause of election to Westminster, mend the neglected streets of his constituency with his own bare hands, as Mr Tope of Sutton was photographed doing ? (He chopped down trees, of course, but that was for his own benefit.) Many M.p.s came into politics for altogether different reasons: they were interested in trying to influence policy, for instance, or in attempting to improve the quality of the decisions made by Government. The community-politics aspect of being an M.P. is, to that extent, something of a nuisance and a distraction. One of the side-effects of the Liberal successes may therefore be to force M.p.s to ask themselves anew the question: What are we here for ? Could it be that the public assessment of the .reasons why M.p.s are sent to Westminster is really more realistic than those which Is it in fact a more attract the M.p.s themselves ? profitable investment of time (and one of the most crucial choices facing the new M.p. is how he invests his time at Westminster) to take on the grassroots campaigns and complaints rather than to concern yourself with huge aspects of policy-making on which, in an increasingly complex world, you have very little hope of mastering all the facts ? And if the answer to that is No-then who else is to take on the work which comes flooding in by every mail delivery, which eats up the hours in the M.p.’s weekly surgery ? If people cannot trust their localgovernment representatives with what are clearly local issues, what lesson should be drawn from that ? But if the answer is Yes-then will you still be able to attract men and women who will one day be able to grapple with the problems of directing the fortunes of a modern economy, or running services as vast and costly as the Health and Welfare Services are today ? Will you any longer be able to recruit to Parliament people with the imagination and capacity to extend the interest of the average elector to issues beyond those raised by the events of everyday life ? The Liberals, as I say, appear to have been concerned with more lordly aspects of political life during their council of war. Mr Thorpe, asked to account for his party’s recent successes, thought they were partly due to the failures of the other parties, and partly to the Liberals’ positive virtues-the excellence of their distinctive policies, and the fact that they provided " something different". Maybe. But it would be instructive to know how many of those who sent Mr Clement Freud to Parliament know how exactly the Liberals propose to damp down inflation, what attitude they take to site value rating, or where they stand on secondary education. What seems far more likely is that the Liberals are suc-
ceeding because, rightly
or
wrongly, they
are
believed
fulfil a need. One part of that need seems to be their readiness to patch a hole in society; a hole about which the ordinary voter, who may have no interest in the philosophical disputations of politics, is becoming steadily more concerned. DAVID McKIE.
to