In retrospect, it is clear to me that this summed up how far my understanding of these matters had gone — and how far it still needed to go. I had come to see that the money supply was central to any policy to control inflation. But I had not seen either that this made any kind of incomes policy irrelevant or that monetary policy itself was the way in which demand should be managed.
Partly as a result, I suspect, of the attention I received for the CPC lecture, I was asked to contribute two articles on general political philosophy to the Daily Telegraph early the following year. In these I developed some of the same themes. In particular, I argued the case for the ideological clash of opposing political parties as essential to the effective functioning of democracy. The pursuit of ‘consensus’, therefore, was fundamentally subversive of popular choice. It was wrong to talk of taking the big issues ‘out of politics’ or to imply that different approaches to a subject involved ‘playing polities’. I applied this specifically to the question of nationalization versus free enterprise. But I could have done so on a range of other matters, not least education, which was soon to become my main political concern and where the ruthless pursuit by the socialists of comprehensivization was threatening not just Britain’s schools but long-term social progress. The fraudulent appeal of consensus was a theme to which I would return again and again, both as Leader of the Opposition and as Prime Minister.
JOURNEYS TO THE FUTURE
By now (1968) the left-of-centre consensus on economic policy was being challenged and would continue to be. But the new liberal consensus on moral and social matters was not. That is to say that people in positions of influence in government, the media and universities managed to impose metropolitan liberal views on a society that was still largely conservative morally. The 1960s saw in Britain the beginning of what has become an almost complete separation between traditional Christian values and the authority of the state. Some politicians regarded this as a coherent programme. But for the great majority, myself included, it was a matter of reforms to deal with specific problems, in some cases cruel or unfair provisions.
So it was that I voted in 1966 for Leo Abse’s Bill proposing that homosexual conduct in private between consenting adults over twenty-one should no longer be a criminal offence. In the same year I voted for David Steel’s Bill to allow abortion if there was substantial risk that a child would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped, or ‘where the woman’s capacity as a mother would be severely overstrained’. On both these issues I was strongly influenced by my own experience of other people’s suffering. For example, when I was a barrister I had been moved by the humiliation I had seen inflicted in the dock on a man of considerable local standing who had been found engaging in homosexual conduct.
On the other hand, some aspects of the liberal agenda, even at the time, seemed to me to go too far. Divorce law reform was such a case. I had talked in my constituency surgeries to women subjected to a life of misery from their brutal husbands and for whom marriage had become a prison from which, in my view, they should be released. In these circumstances divorce might be the only answer. But if divorce became too easy it might undermine marriages simply going through a bad patch. If people can withdraw lightly from their responsibilities they are likely to be less serious about entering into the initial obligation. I was concerned about the spouse who was committed to make the marriage work and was deserted. I was also very concerned about what would become of the family of the first marriage when the man (or woman) chose to start a second family. So in 1968 I was one of the minority who voted against a Bill to make divorce far easier. Divorce would be possible where it was judged that there had been an ‘irretrievable breakdown’, broadly defined, in the marriage. I also supported two amendments, the first of which made available a special form of marriage that was indissoluble (except by judicial separation). The second would seek to ensure that in any conflict of interest between the legal wife and children of the first marriage and a common-law wife and her children, the former should have priority.
Similarly, I voted against Sydney Silverman’s Bill to abolish the death penalty for murder in 1965. Like all the other measures listed above this was passed by Parliament, but subject to a Conservative amendment to the effect that the Act was to expire at the end of July 1970 unless Parliament determined otherwise. I then voted against the motion in December 1969 to make the Act permanent.
As I had shown in my earlier speech as a backbencher on corporal punishment, I believed that the state had not just a right but a duty to deter and punish violent crime and to protect the law-abiding public. However sparingly it is used, the power to deprive an individual of liberty, and under certain circumstances of life itself, is inseparable from the sovereignty of the state. I never had the slightest doubt that in nearly all cases the supreme deterrent would be an influence on the potential murderer. And the deterrent effect of capital punishment is at least as great on those who go armed on other criminal activities, such as robbery. To my mind, the serious difficulty in the issue lay in the possibility of the conviction and execution of an innocent man — which has certainly happened in a small number of cases. Against these tragic cases, however, must be set the victims of convicted murderers who have been released after their sentence was served only to be convicted of murder a second time — who have certainly numbered many more. Despite all the uncertainties and complexities, for example of forensic evidence, I believe that the potential victim of the murderer deserves that highest protection which only the existence of the death penalty gives. The notion of certain particularly heinous murders as ‘capital murders’ (as under the 1957 Act) — a concept which now again underlies changes in the system relating to life sentences — seems to me the right model. I have consistently voted in Parliament for a return of capital punishment for such murders.
As regards abortion, homosexuality, and divorce reform it is easy to see that matters did not turn out as was intended. For most of us in Parliament — and certainly for me — the thinking underlying these changes was that they dealt with anomalies or unfairnesses which occurred in a minority of instances, or that they removed uncertainties in the law itself. Or else they were intended to recognize in law what was in any case occurring in fact. Instead, it could be argued that they have paved the way towards a more callous, selfish and irresponsible society. Reforming the law on abortion was primarily intended to stop young women being forced to have back-street abortions. It was not meant to make abortion simply another ‘choice’. Yet in spite of the universal availability of artificial contraception the figures for abortion have kept on rising. Homosexual activists have moved from seeking a right of privacy to demanding social approval for the ‘gay’ lifestyle, equal status with the heterosexual family and even the legal right to exploit the sexual uncertainty of adolescents. Divorce law reform has contributed to — though it is by no means the only cause of-a very large increase in the incidence of marriage breakdown which has left so many children growing up without the continual care and guidance of two parents.
Knowing how matters have turned out, would I have voted differently on any of these measures? I now see that we viewed them too narrowly. As a lawyer and indeed as a politician who believed so strongly in the rule of law, I felt that the prime considerations were that the law should be enforceable and its application fair to those who might run foul of it. But laws also have a symbolic significance: they are signposts to the way society is developing — and the way the legislators of society envisage that it should develop. Moreover, taking all of the ‘liberal’ reforms of the 1960s together they amount to more than their individual parts. They came to be seen as providing a radically new framework within which the younger generation would be expected to behave.
Indeed, this was a period of obsessive and naive interest in ‘youth’. Parents worried so much about the ‘generation gap’ that even teenagers began to take it seriously. A whole ‘youth culture’ of
misunderstood Eastern mysticism, bizarre clothing and indulgence in hallucinatory drugs emerged. I found Chelsea a very different place when we moved back to London in 1970. I had mixed feelings about what was happening. There was vibrancy and talent, but this was also in large degree a world of make-believe. A perverse pride was taken in Britain about our contribution to these trends. Carnaby Street in Soho, the Beatles, the mini-skirt and the maxiskirt were the new symbols of ‘Swinging Britain’. And they did indeed prove good export earners. Harold Wilson was adept at taking maximum political credit for them. The trouble was that they concealed the real economic weaknesses which even a talented fashion industry and entrepreneurial recording companies could not counter-balance. As Desmond Donnelly remarked, ‘My greatest fear is that Britain will sink giggling into the sea.’[12]
Although Britain gave a distinctive gloss to these trends, the affluent consumer society to which they catered was above all to be found in the United States. I had made my first visit to the USA in 1967 on one of the ‘Leadership’ programmes run by the American Government to bring rising young leaders from politics and business over to the US. For six weeks I travelled the length and breadth of the United States. The excitement which I felt has never really subsided. At each stop-over I was met and accommodated by friendly, open, generous people who took me into their homes and lives and showed me their cities and townships with evident pride. The high point was my visit to the NASA Space Center at Houston. I saw the astronaut training programme which would just two years later help put a man on the moon. As a living example of the ‘brain drain’ from which over-regulated, high-taxed Britain was suffering, I met someone from my constituency of Finchley who had gone to NASA to make full use of his talents. I saw nothing wrong with that, and indeed was glad that a British scientist was making such an important contribution. But there was no way Britain could hope to compete even in more modest areas of technology if we did not learn the lessons of an enterprise economy.
Two years after that I went on a week-long visit to the Soviet Union. I had already come up against the obstinate contempt for human rights which was so characteristic of the USSR in the case of the detention of my constituent, the lecturer Gerald Brooke, for alleged ‘subversive criminal activities’ (i.e. smuggling in anti-Soviet pamphlets). I repeatedly raised the case both with the Government and in the House of Commons, though to no avail. Mr Brooke had become a pawn in the game the Soviets were trying to play to have their spies, the Krogers, released to them. (Eventually an exchange took place in 1969.) One good thing which came out of my work on Gerald Brooke’s behalf was that I made contact with the AngloSoviet Parliamentary Group. To my great surprise, when I went along to it I found MPs with equally strong anti-communist instincts as mine, but who unlike me were real experts in the field. In particular, Cyril Osborne began my education in assessing and countering Soviet tactics. It was he who before I went to the Soviet Union advised me that first of all I should not allow the Soviets to pay for my fare, and second that I should insist on visiting some churches. I took his advice. He also told me that the only way to win any respect from them was to make it clear that one was no soft touch. This entirely accorded with my own inclinations.
I travelled to Moscow with the amiable Paul Channon and his wife. We had a full schedule including not just the sights of Moscow but also Leningrad (formerly, and now once again, St Petersburg) and Stalingrad (Volgograd). But though the names might vary, the propaganda was the same. It was relentless, an endless flow of statistics proving the industrial and social superiority of the Soviet Union over the West. At least to the visitor, the sheer unimaginative humourlessness of it was an open invitation to satire. Outside an art gallery I visited there was a sculpture of a blacksmith beating a sword with a hammer. ‘That represents communism,’ my guide proudly observed. ‘Actually, it doesn’t,’ I replied. ‘It’s from the Old Testament — “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks”.’ Collapse of stout aesthete. Methodist Sunday School has its uses. I reflected, however, that at least it was a better work of art than the usual lantern-jawed, muscle-bound Stakhanovite outside the factories.
On another occasion I was asked rhetorically whether since it must be the aim of all peoples to live together in peace and harmony, surely NATO, that symbol of Cold War hostility, could be dispensed with. ‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘NATO has kept the peace and we have to keep it strong.’ A similar line was taken with me at Stalingrad where the local politicians complained that Coventry had severed its connections with them since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous year. I was not going to apologize for that either. Indeed, as sanctions went, it was hardly such as to strike terror into the Kremlin.
Yet, behind the official propaganda, the grey streets, all but empty shops and badly maintained workers’ housing blocks, Russian humanity peeped out. There was no doubt about the genuineness of the tears when the older people at Leningrad and Stalingrad told me about their terrible sufferings in the War. The young people I talked to from Moscow University, though extremely cautious about what they said in the full knowledge that they were under KGB scrutiny, were clearly fascinated to learn all they could about the West. And even bureaucracy can prove human. When I visited the manager of the Moscow passenger transport system he explained to me at great length how decisions about new development had to go from committee to committee in what seemed — as I said — an endless chain of non-decision-making. I caught the eye of a young man, perhaps the chairman’s assistant, standing behind him and he could not repress a broad smile.
The other abiding impression I had of Russia, which would be strengthened on my subsequent visits, was of the contrast between the exquisite cultural achievement, admittedly stemming from the old Russia but excellently conserved by the communists, on the one hand and the hardness of life for ordinary people on the other. Leningrad housed the extraordinary Hermitage collection and the Kirov Ballet, both of which I visited. And it was in Leningrad, from the window of my hotel bedroom, that at six thirty on a cold, dark morning I would see all the working mothers crossing the square with their children hanging on to them to place them all day in the state crèche whence they would be collected some twelve hours later. At Moscow airport while waiting for my delayed flight home I bought an exquisite coral-green porcelain tea service, the pride of my collection. Whenever I see it I also think of the grinding, hopeless toil which the system that produced it exacted. There could be no more poignant demonstration that communism was the regime for the privileged élite, capitalism the creed for the common man.
SELSDON WOMAN
On my return to London I was moved to the Education portfolio in the Shadow Cabinet. Edward Boyle was leaving politics to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds. There was by now a good deal of grassroots opposition at Party Conferences to what was seen as his weakness in defence of the grammar schools. Although our views had diverged, I was sorry to see him go. He was my oldest friend in politics and I knew I would miss his intellect, sensitivity and integrity. But for me this was definitely a promotion, even though, as I have since learned, I was in fact the reserve candidate, after Keith Joseph who was the first choice to succeed Edward: I got the job because Reggie Maudling refused to take over Keith’s job as Trade and Industry Shadow.
I was delighted with my new role. I knew that I had risen to my present position as a result of free (or nearly free) good education, and I wanted others to have the same chance. Socialist education policies, by equalizing downwards and denying gifted children the opportunity to get on, were a major obstacle to that. I was also fascinated by the scientific side — the portfolio in those days being to shadow the Department of Education and Science. Moreover, I suspect that women, or at least mothers, have an instinctive interest in the education of children.
Education was by now one of the main battlegrounds of politics. Since their election in 1964 Labour had been increasingly committed to maki
ng the whole secondary school system comprehensive, and had introduced a series of measures to make local education authorities (LEAs) submit plans for such a change. (The process culminated in legislation, introduced a few months after I took over as Education Shadow.) The difficulties Edward had faced in formulating and explaining our response soon became clear to me.
The Shadow Cabinet and the Conservative Party were deeply split over the principle of selection in secondary education and, in particular, over the examination by which children were selected at the age of eleven, the 11-Plus. To over-simplify a little, it was possible to distinguish four different attitudes among Conservatives. First, there were those who had no real interest in state education in any case because they themselves and their children went to private schools. This was an important group, all too likely to be swayed by arguments of political expediency. Second, there were those who, themselves or their children, had failed to get into grammar school and had been disappointed with the education received at a secondary modern. Third, there were those Conservatives who, either because they themselves were teachers or through some other contact with the world of education, had absorbed a large dose of the fashionable egalitarian doctrines of the day. Finally, there were people like me who had been to good grammar schools, were strongly opposed to their destruction and felt no inhibitions at all about arguing for the 11-Plus.
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