RABBLE WITHOUT A CAUSE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87-00462R000100100007-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: May 21, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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THE DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
FROM: Herbert E. Meyer
Vice Chairman, NIC
22 May 1985
This cri de coeur over the UK's
Conservative Party has an echo that leaders
of our country's GOP should hear.
Herbert E. Meyer
Attachment:
Article from London Times,
May 21, 1985: "Rabble without
a cause" by Bernard Levin
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-CHE TIMES TUESDAY MAY. 21,1985 _
Bernard Levin: the way we live- now,
;_.
I first became interested in politics
when I was a schoolboy. I used to
read the Parliamentary` Reports-'in
The Times, and kept an annotated
register of MPs.'l'think I classified
them according to their distance
from my own views, which at-that
time were roughly those held 'today
by Mr Kinnock -that is,. based on
the assumptions that would. be made
by a rather naive 15-year-old. (My
excuse is that I was a 'rather naive
15-year-old what i5 Mr:Kinnock's?)
A few years went: by, and` I was a
fellow-student of ? Sir Alfred Sher-
man, who was the leader of the LSE
Communist Party; I always knew he
would, to far. I had had ambitions
for a political -career, but at the
university -I , shed them pretty
quickly, together with the naive I5-..
year-old's_views:
Another few years and I had
become a journalist, and began to
write about politics, among many
other subjects. I had first voted in a
general election - in 1951; 1 voted
Labour. A certain amount of
disillusion with Labour set in shortly
afterwards, but I certainly voted for
them in 1955 and 1959. In 1957 1
became 'a parliamentary correspon-
dent; Gaitskell became my hero, not
only for his own qualities but also by
way of reaction from' my contem-
plation of the malignant shadow
dogging his footsteps. :I may not
have been the first man to take the
full measure of Harold Wilson, but I
am sure I was the first to proclaim
that measure regularly and fre-
quently, and a fat lot ofpood it did. I
voted Labour, I admit, in both 1964
and 1966. when he was leader, but
by then I had known for many years
that in a democracy it is frequently
necessary to enter the polling booth
holding one's nose. More years
rolled bv; I voted Labour in 197D,
despite feeling strongly that, it was a
mistake to do so.
I have not done so since. As more
scars passed, Labour began to
stampede not just towards the.,Jeft,
but away from sanity; worse, away
from liberty. My recoil from them
was largely based on that, but there
was another element, my growing
conviction that what governments
could do was far more limited than
most of them profess most of the
time. At the ti'ct of Sir Karl Popper,
I had learned to distrust the past as a
guide to the future; now I had' to
learn that the present was not much
help either. 1 have quoted Michael
Oakeshott's splendid metaphor
before; it will endure another airing:
In political activity, then, men
sail a boundless and bottomless
sea; there is neither 'harbour for
shelter nor floor for anchorage,
neither starting-point nor ap-
pointed destination. The enter-
prise is to keep afloat on an even
keel; the sea is both friend and
enemy; and the seamanship
consists in using the resources of
a traditional manner of behav-
iour in order to make a friend of
every inimical occasion.
It was in that sceptical frame of
mind that I watched Britain's retreat
through the Seventies; the withering
of enterprise, the increasing reliance
on the state (and' the increasing
greed of the state for those willing to
be reliant upon it), the' general
political decay, best symbolized by
the rise of Solomon Binding, though
we should not forget Mr Heath's
invcntion'of "comparability", to get
him off the miners' hook."
Suddenly, there was somebody
else. Mrs Thatcher, from the
moment she threw her hat in the
ring (she had sewn rocks into the
lining, which is why it hurt Mr
Heath' so much when it hit him),
began not only to talk a different
political language, but to behave as
though she.meant what she said. I
sat up sharply to watch the fun, and
s oted for her in 1979 with
considerable enthusiasm, and in
1983 with even more. Now read on.
All this autobiography has a
point. Tempora mutantur... I have
moved restlessly through the politi-
cal landscape of my time, and
though it is not difficult to portray
my journey as a continuous progress
from left to right, it would be
misleading; you will find nothing
like the abjuro of Paul Johnson in
my writings. The sceptical. stance in
politics, which I adopted (or which
adopted me) decades ago, still serves
me well in monitoring political
activity anywhere on the spectrum,
but it means that I could never drop
anchor, whatever happens. I remain,
and always will. a floating voter. Rut
there is one, and on!k one, political
position that. through all the scars
and all my (hinging Nic%%% and
come into qucstipn. never seemed
too simple for a complex world. It, is
my profound and unwavering
.contempt for the Conservative
Party.
That is much more remarkable
than, it may at first appear. The
Conservative Party, after all, has not
rSmained the same; there have been
several Conservative parties in my
time. When that schoolboy pored
over The Times, for instance. the
Tories in the House of Commons
were the pre-war vintage. Most of
them had supported Chamberlain.
and never stopped hating Churchill;
Harold Nicolson looked round the
room at Chips Channon's end-of-
the-war party, and saw "the
Nurembergers and the Munichois
celebrating our victory over iheir
friend Herr von Ribbentrop".
Well, it was not difficult to
despise that generation, and to
rejoice when they went down in
1945. But then, as I looked at the
Tory ranks in the six years of the
Labour administration, together
with the new intake when the Tories
returned to power, an amazing truth
dawned: the next generation was
actually worse than its predecessor.
It was characterized chiefly by
meanness of spirit; they hated the
welfare state. not at all (except for a
handful of the old guard, -like Sir
Waldron Smithers) because they
foresaw the nanny state that
eventually grew from it. hut because
it took money from the "right"
people and gave it to the wrong; I
suppose one of the most formative
political episodes of my life -
formative tar more widely and
deeply than its effect on my politics
- was the contemptuous jeering
from the Tories at the thought that
the National Health Service was
giving people teeth and spectacles.
It became a kind of expletive;
"teethandspectacles, teethandspec-
tacles", they chanted, enraged by the
thought, th t the poor might live a
better life. If it had not been for R. A.
Butler and his patient, careful work
in nursin* a new breed of Tory MPs
and officials, the party would have
descended to a level of Schweinerei
from which it might never again
have risen.
But what actually happened was
no' better. Under Macmillan, who
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offered nothing but his cynical
"Enrichisse_-vous!", all principles,
even vile ones, were abandoned by
the Tories, as they fought to get their
bread in the gravy. Going to the
Tory conference in Elie Macmillan
years provided, a unique insight into
the furthest reaches of fatuity,
complacency and selfishness attain-
able by the human race.,I remember
overhearing a middle-aged woman
delegate, with hdiband ' in tow,
talking to another. such couple. One
pair had installed a television set at
home, the other were thinking of
doing so. "Yes", she said, "I suppose
we ought to have. a television, to
know what the ordinary people are
thinking".
I can see her now if I close my
eyes; dowdy; vacant, overweight. I
never saw anything so ordinary in
my life (her husband matched her
perfectly), and she wanted to know
what the, ordinary people were
thinking. it believe, and I always will.
that the premature death of Hugh
Gaitskell was the 'single most
damaging political event in Britain
in the postwar world, for he left his
party to face that Tory attitude, and
the Tory attitudes that grew from it
later, in the hands of Harold Wilson,
an experience from which Labour
has never recovered and the country
only to a limited extent.
At the Labour conference there
were and are people very much
worse than that silly woman. There
are people who want to destroy this
country's freedom, and who work
implacably, and with a good deal of
success so far, towards that goal;
there are also the massed ranks of
union delegates, devoid of all
energy, understanding. magna-
nimity. largeness of %character or
imagination - the visible, tangible
incarnation of Britain's industrial
failure; and up on the platform men
are jockeying for power. lying about
their beliefs to gain favour with one
group or another, pretending to love
colleagues whom they hate, and
willing to go to any lengths in
damaging the country 's interests if it
will help them to get their behinds
`Labour began to
stampede not just
to%% ards t tie left but
a1say from sinitv'~ ^-
on the government benches. And yet
their veins are lull of blood, not
Babycham. and the visitor does not
want to go out into the corridor to
quell his shudderitfg ' stomach,
whereas I truly believe that I have
not spent a full day at any Tory
conference without at some point
longing, in Cassandra's famous
phrase, for a quiet corner, an
aspidistra, a handkerchief and the
old heave-ho.
it is only very recently, with the
rise of Thugdom Triumphant, with
the Scargills outside Parliament and
those who have taken to practising
physical intimidation inside, that it
has become possible for me to
despise the Labour Party as I despise
the Tories, although for different
reasons. Yet still, one look at the
other side and the devout will be
inclined to cross themselves, the
superstitious will- finger - a rabbit's
paw and the wholly materialist will
call for brandy..,
For today, difficult though it may
be to believe, the party's condition is
worse than ever. The old guard
condemn Mrs Thatcher as a lower
middle-class swot who has never
read arty history, and the newer
ones, .who have never read any
history themselves, or' anything else
either, are so busy selling their
services to bucket-shop proprietors
in need of an MP on their letterhead
to impress the puntcrs-that it is as
much as they can do to remember to
have their Herbie Frogg shirts
monogrammed.
i once described a "proinitien.
Conservative - never mind-which'
one - as having the vision of a mole,
the passion of a speak-youre-weight.
machine and the oratorical elo-
quence of a whoopee-cushion. But I
did so in the .courso of urging
support for him, And the reason for
my urging was that he wanted'' to
change this country for whaj he.
thought was the better.
Not the better o(J: the better.
Today, if you lined up:. the Tory
MPs, the conference representatives
and the entire staff of,Central Office;
you could throw coconuts at them
for an-' hour and. a half without
hitting one who knew the difference.
Where among them are more than a
handful who dream of changing
Britain, of offering her citizens an
aim beyond a bigger car and the
suppression of football hodtSganism,
of belie' ing that there is a moral
rontcnt to national life, of building
cathedrals and pulling down .Victo-
ria Street?
That is a lot to ask, is it? Then let
me ask less. How many are not
hankering for a return to "consen-
sus". for the tiniest increase in
inflation (', per cent. say). for a
programme of artificial job creation
that will make the figures h'ok better
until after the next general election.
ti?r leaving the rating s. stem alone,
1'r just a hunk cstpansiun of the
nwncy supply. t,)i an increase in
parliamentary all,,,,ances for se(!-
retarial help. research help. trans-
port, pension arrangements:. enter-
tainment of constituents and travel?
Now the most signiftc'ant.aspect
of this state of affairs lies in the fact
that an astonishingly high pto-
portion of Conservative leaders
have despised their followers quite
as much as I do. Obviously,
Churchill did; More subtle, though
no less ddcply, Macmillan: - did;
Heath would have been mad, or
almost incredibly generous. if he
hadn't, and not only after they
removed him from the, leadership;
above all, our present Prime
Minister does.
And so she should. For she is the
one post-Churchill prime minister of
either party who actually -has a
vision of this country's tranforma-
tion and future, who has off'e'red that
vision to the nation, who has seen
the nation beginning to respond to
it, and then finds that the moment
the opinion polls show a blip on the
screen, fully two and a half years
before there is the least likelihood of
an election, blue funk is running
through her party like Aids at an
orgy.
When Mrs Thatcher *makes it
clear that she wants to destroy the
class structure of Britain, she means
it. When she insists.on returning to
private ownership concerns-like the
telephone system, British Aerospace,
the Gas Board, British Airways and I
hope many more. she makes sure
that the public. and not just the City
friends of some of the spivs on her
back benches, can obtain a share in
the country's potentially profitable
assets. When she decides that
council-house tenants should have
the right to buy their homes, she
introduces legislation to that end.
What do you suppose it was that
first gave Mrs Thatcher her appeal
to 'the country? To find out the
answer to that question.,, you only
had to stand still for 10 minutes and
listen; you could hear it all-round
you, and from those who disagreed
with her policies as much as those
who believed in them. It was. that in
Margaret Thatcher the country had
again, after many a summer, got a
leader who knew her own mind,
spoke it, and acted upon it. And
what was. what is. her mind? It is
nothing less than the transmogrifi-
cation of Britain into a nation of
self-reliant, prospering individual-
ists.
She will *change the way people
sec the world and the way the)
think. She will make us all see that
in save for our-old age is not only a
morally commendable thing to do,
but is also likely to make our old age
much more comfortable than relying
on the state'. pension. She will
persuade us that it is not wrong that
those who can afford more than a
token contribution to their medical
care should be obliged to pay it and
when she has taught us that lesson,
we shall teach ourselves to make
better and more careful use of such
'l'icilitics. Nor will she stop there.
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She will make trade union leaders
responsible to their members and if
she lives long enough she will goon'
to make the members responsible to
the industry that~will mike 'them
better off if they allow it.to.,She
will make it;easier for entreprenefifs;
big and little, to -start or extend
businesses, she will. -encourage
innovators, she will' "make, the C
country : once again respect those
who produce the wealth ("what the
water rises,, all-the boats= rise' with
it") of nation.
I ani joking, of.coUrse. :She
not do such things, though ~hewould dearly like -to, because ter
own party will prevent her. She word
the 1979 -election 'for them single-
handed; she - had.'- rather more
support from her colleagues in' 1983,
but that v4s oniybecause,the party
started, as , the` clea"r'fivquritc, so they
were putting. , their ti money:'ott' 'the
leadinhorse. (Even then, Mr gym
drew attention to"thc':dangers of a
landslide majority, aridAhenseemed
astonished'when she hastened'to get
rid of him as soon as she was back in
Downing Street.) Now' a couple. of
parliamentary seats have, been lost,
the local. elections have proved a.
serious disappointment, and the
opinion polls, arc adverse; the
standard of 'revolt has therefore been'
raised and U-turns are demanded.
Come; talk gently, to 'the' TUC, tell
Sir Keith to make more money
available, cover the 'country. with
factories in A(hich a million men
may be found' ,employment in
`Above all Tory leaders,
the present one despises
her followers.-.and so
she should'
extracting moonbeamstrotn cucuht-
bers. above all. don't be so abrasive.
Be like hir Julian Critchley: he's not
abrasive, and look where he's got -
writes regularly for The Listener, he
does. and the ladies of his
constituency association positively
adore him.
And why doesn't she lower her
voice? And drop the GU' Bill as a
gesture to national unity? And give
up confrontation'' And above all.
save ul(r seats. !lave out seats by
hook or by crook, or by both: save
our seats by the abandonment of the
vain (and anyway far too abrasive)
hope of changing the country: save
our seats by a liberal distribution of
Danegeld: save our seats by making
the compassionate Mr ' Walker
Chancellor of the Exchequer, save
our seats by hinting at an alliance
with the'Alliance: save our seats by
puttinf Mr Pym in the Cabinet and
MriPriot and Mr Heath and indeed
Mr Critchley; save our seats by what
we would do in similar circum-
stances - that is, save our seats by
fudging and smudging and nudging,
by pretending that Britain's prob-
lems can be solved without pain to
anyone," by seeking the. Middle
Ground, the Middle Way and the
Middle Ages. Ldt us lean neither too
far to the right nor too far to the left,
neither excessively. forward nor
exaggeratedly back, neither too
much up nor superfluously down.
That way we shall save our seats: we
know that many of us in the new
intake of 19.79 and 1983 look, sound
and behave like so many used-car
salesmen who do a bit of safe-blow-
ing on the side, but we wouldn't
want to earn our living that way if
we could help it. ,
'Have you noticed that some
people hate Mrs Thatcher? That, I
dare say, upsets Denis more than it
does her. But it dismays me not' at
all. For it means that the medicine,
nasty. though it tastes, may yet cure
the patient. Who hated Macmillan,
Home. Heath? Who hated Wilson,
Callaghan, Foot, and who hates
Kinnock?
They saj' they hate her for her ?
"manner", her "ruthlessness", her
"obstinacy", above all for her "lack
of compassion". They lie; they hate
her because they are afraid she
might succeed, and transform
Britain into. a country where
endeavour thrives.. where merit
advances, where the. invaluable
uniqueness of each individual.
is
promoted and made much of, where
success, not failure, is commended.
To sum up in terms as offensive as I
can fin4 words for, Margaret
Thatcher wants Britain to be a
country in which nobody has power
and influence either because he went
to bed at Eton with a future Cabinet
minister, or because he commands
at the Labour Party conference
hundreds of thousands of votes half
of which were rigged and the, other
half bought.
That is the kind of country I. and
many others, want too. Shall we
have it? Or shall we let the
('onservative Party ensure that we
do not?
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