A reader scolded me last week for bothering with the party conferences. Why, I was asked, did I waste my time at these empty events with these empty people?
Well, I have an excuse. For me these occasions are a little like a period of truce, or one of those diplomatic quirks which allow one to venture for a few hours into hostile territory. Under a sort of Safe Conduct provided by my valued colleagues on our political staff , I can meet and assess politicians who would almost certainly never consent to speak to me if I approached them individually.
I will admit that these days I seldom enter the conference hall itself, and when I do I seldom linger for long. My memory still echoes with the raucous but genuine debates that used to rend the air of Brighton and Blackpool when the Labour Party was still a real party, rather than an election machine for metropolitan trendies.
Even Tory conferences had their moments. They were always so tightly controlled that we would joke that they were like the Supreme Soviet of the USSR ( later I was to attend this body, and it was rather more lively than any British party conference of today). I came years too late to witness the great thrashing administered by Tory stewards to the Empire Loyalists (described in my 'Cameron Delusion' ) who still believed publicly in policies quite recently supported (in private) by the then yet-living Winston Churchill. But you could often feel the tension between the assumptions of the urbane, socially liberal platform and the raw, lower-middle-class patriotism that came in waves from the floor, and which would be assuaged, year by year, by empty 'law and order' and 'strong defence' speeches from front benchers given the task of at least appearing to be conservative.
I myself once presented Kenneth Clarke with a Labour Party membership application form, in an unsuccessful publicity stunt after he had made one of his wilder pro-EU speeches.
Watching Mrs Thatcher coping with the disaster of the Cecil Parkinson scandal was quite instructive, in a Blackpool swept by enormous autumn rainstorms and overhung with black skies. Likewise the pitiful last days of Iain Duncan Smith, whose slow-motion assassination by his own party and the media was one of the most ruthless things I've ever seen. And then there was the tory conference where Ann Widdecombe tried to set out an effective anti-drugs policy, and was immediately torpedoed in the bars of Bournemouth by the drug confessions of her front-bench colleagues.
There was a period, from about 1980 till about 2005, when both major parties were undergoing revolutions, reveolutions in which their traditional supporters were told to get lost, and in which they were taken over by machine operators and political professionals, smooth, merciless and utterly uninterested in open debate.
Now that's over, the 'debates' are as exciting as a convention of tractor salesmen in Omaha , Nebraska, and perhaps less so. Even the fringe meetings, once a chance for dissenting thought to express itself, are now patrolled by the whips, and other sneaks and talebearers, , intent on ensuring that nobody does anything out of turn.
It was at one such meeting, organised by the Bruges Group, in Manchester two years ago, that I warned a stony-faced audience of 'right-wingers' that David Cameron would betray them utterly, and that the Tory Party didn't merit their support. Some of those there who gave me the cold shoulder that afternoon have since written to me, to say how right I was, and I'm grateful. But the delusion persists, that Mr Cameron has some sort of secret 'right-wing' agenda, which he is waiting to unleash if only Nick Clegg would let him, or if only he could get an outright majority.
There is no evidence whatsoever of this supposed plan, and plenty of evidence that Mr Cameron would have governed like this with a majority. But the utter feebleness of the Tory 'right', whom I have many times compared to those loyal black Labradors who totter trustingly into the master's car, as they are taken to the vet to be put down, ensures that it isn't tested.
Indeed when, as I have predicted, the coalition stages its split in 2014, there will be a series of empty gestures to the 'right', to reinforce this impression. A few appointments of 'right-wing' MPs to junior ministerial posts for the fag-end of the government; a few doomed pieces of 'right-wing' legislation, destined to fail noisily as the Liberal Democrats vote them down (they will also benefit from this panto, by appearing to regain their left-wing credentials). The 'right' will be taken in by them because they want to be. The alternative, a claws and teeth fight against the intolerant and spiteful liberal leadership of their party, doesn't appeal. It's not in their nature. Is the same true of Tory voters? I do hope not. The Tory Party, despite is recent acquisition of lots of unappealing millionaire supporters, is organisationally decrepit and close to extinction. It only needs a bad defeat to bring it all tumbling down. And then those who want a conservative, patriotic government will have to recognise, in many cases for the first time, that they are friendless at Westminster and must build a proper party to speak for them if they want to be heard .
A couple of other points:
1.I plan to write at some length about the forthcoming film 'We Need to talk About Kevin', quite soon. I've seen a preview.
2. And I should say to the person posting as 'Vegetarian' that free speech demands responsibility and respect for truth on the part of the speaker. It is not a licence to spread, er, mistaken information. This person posted 'I don't think he [Jesus Christ] would have sat like Hitchens while a man was electrocuted, boasted in a book about how he "smelt the human flesh burning", and then gone back for more. ('He liked it so much he bought the company!').'
Well, I can't argue with 'Vegetarian' about Christ's attitude under such circumstances. We can only speculate. But as for the occasion to which I think he must be referring, this is presumably the execution in April 1995 of Nicholas Lee Ingram in a prison in Jackson, Georgia, for the particularly vicious and cruel murder of J.C. Sawyer, many years earlier. Ingram *did* boast, during the crime, that he liked to torture people, and was as good as his word. This didn't stop various persons from campaigning for his reprieve, though they must have known he was guilty. There was eyewitness evidence against him from Mrs Mary Sawyer, who had feigned death after he shot her too. He had tied them both to the same tree. I am not sure how I can be said to have 'boasted' about this execution, though I have described it in print more than once, believing it to be part of my job as a reporter.
And so it is. Many US reporters regularly attend such events, and two of them were more than willing to pass the task to me when I asked them. As a British reporter working in the USA, I considered it my job to describe that country as it is, and to experience things that I could only experience there.
George Orwell also witnessed an execution, about which he wrote very memorably. So did Charles Dickens, and (I think) Emile Zola as well as Arnold Bennett, who graphically described a public guillotining in 'The Old Wives' Tale'. Many other reporters have done so. Perhaps it is all right to witness an execution if you disapprove, but not all right if you approve. I cannot say. The experience is chastening whatever you think, as I have written. I certainly dispute having written about how I 'smelt the human flesh burning'. I in fact recorded that no such thing took place, having had it many times suggested to me that it did. My account of the event, I like to hope, conveys some of the solemn, fearful dreadfulness of the occasion, even in the absence of such horrors.
As for 'going back for more' I have not subsequently attended an execution and do not intend to do so again. I had, however, attended an execution by lethal injection, of Larry Anderson , in Huntsville Texas, about a year before the Ingram case. Anderson had abducted and murdered Zelda Webster, stabbing her 15 times before dumping her body by the roadside. He was arrested while still spattered with her blood, and still carrying the knife. He said he was bloodstained because he had been 'skinning rabbits' but eventually told police where Zelda Webster's body could be found.
I have also described his execution. But I do not believe I have 'boasted ' about it.
This is why I object to what I regard as the insinuation and inaccuracy of the post by 'Vegetarian'. I've told him or her that he or she must either substantiate the assertion made ( I do not think it can be substantiated, but I must provide the opportunity). If not, he or she must withdraw and apologise unreservedly. 'Vegetarian' has replied with a rather petulant outburst (this is all on the 'What Labour Won't Do' thread). Well, this is my standard response to allegations of this kind. If he or she neither substantiates nor withdraws and apologises unreservedly, then he or she will no longer be welcome here. I don't believe this is an attack on freedom of speech. I think it is perfectly proper chairmanship.
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