I could see trouble coming down the track and I expressed my unease about all of this. Geoffrey tried to convince me of the system’s merits by sending me a paper on how the Germans did it, but I wrote back: ‘This paper frightens me to death even more. We really must avoid some of this terrible jargon. Also we should recognize that the German talking shop works because it consists of Germans.’
Work on the document continued, but among the front-bench economic spokesmen rather than the Shadow Cabinet. By contrast with the Grunwick/closed shop issue, Keith, who shared my misgivings about the ‘forum’, was prepared to compromise more than I would have done. And in the end, the document appeared under the signatures of Keith, Geoffrey, Jim Prior, David Howell and Angus Maude; it was not formally endorsed by the Shadow Cabinet.
I never felt much affection for The Right Approach to the Economy. Unlike The Right Approach of 1976, it made little impact either on the outside world or on the policy we would pursue as a Government. I was careful to ensure that ‘concerted action’ — apart from within the limited framework of the NEDC — never saw the light of day.
So it was that we more or less successfully papered over the policy cracks up to the 1977 Party Conference at Blackpool. The Conference itself taught me an important lesson which Party managers in general find it hard to accept. On the face of it, the Blackpool Conference was a success. Colleagues generally stuck to the agreed lines on controversial issues. Embarrassing splits were avoided. Somewhat in the same spirit was my own speech. It contained many good lines but, for all the spit and polish, it was essentially a rollicking attack on Labour that lacked positive substance. Although the immediate reception was good, it was soon clear that it left the large questions about our policies unanswered; and I was not satisfied with it. My instincts proved correct. Having entered the Conference season several points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls, we finished it running neck and neck. A ‘good’ Conference never avoids rows at the expense of issues.
In any case, January 1978 saw the spotlight turn back onto just those difficult, important issues which the Party managers considered best avoided. Geoffrey Howe, speaking in Swindon, delivered a sharp and comprehensive attack on the role of trade unions in Britain and was met by a barrage of abuse from the union leaders and scarcely concealed irritation from some colleagues. I agreed with Geoffrey and strongly defended him in public. But I was still basically sticking with the Prior line and so I dissuaded him from making a second such speech, noting on the draft: ‘Geoffrey: this is not your subject. Why go on with it? The press will crucify you for this.’
Oddly enough, just a few days later I found myself on the receiving end of almost equally sharp criticism. I had determined to use a speech to a conference of Scottish industrialists in Glasgow to break away from the qualification and obfuscation into which I felt we had been manoeuvred over incomes policy. I said:
The counterpart of the withdrawal of government from interference in prices and profits in the private sector which both we and you want to see, is inevitably the withdrawal of government from interference in wage bargaining. There can be no selective return to personal responsibility.
This was attacked by, among others, The Economist under the timid headline: ‘Mrs Thatcher Takes the Tories into Dangerous Water’.
A kind of torpid socialism had become the conventional wisdom of Britain in those years. But as the old order started to break up, it was increasingly difficult for anyone with the responsibility to think ahead to avoid challenging the prevailing orthodoxy. The succession of crises — economic, fiscal and industrial — under Labour constantly invited us to think thoughts and propose policies that deviated from both the conventional wisdom represented by Economist economists and the agreed line represented by Jim Prior — which as it happens usually amounted to the same thing.
IMMIGRATION
I was soon to offend against Party political wisdom still more fundamentally. Ever since Enoch Powell’s Birmingham speech in April 1968 it had been the mark of civilized high-mindedness among right-of-centre politicians to avoid speaking about immigration and race at all, and if that did not prove possible, then to do so in terms borrowed from the left of the political spectrum, relishing the ‘multi-cultural’, ‘multi-racial’ nature of modern British society. This whole approach glossed over the real problems that immigration sometimes caused and dismissed the anxieties of those who were directly affected as ‘racist’. I had never been prepared to go along with it. It seemed both dishonest and snobbish.
Nothing is more colour-blind than the capitalism in which I placed my faith for Britain’s revival. It was part of my credo that individuals were worthy of respect as individuals, not as members of classes or races; the whole purpose of the political and economic system I favoured was to liberate the talents of those individuals for the benefit of society. I felt no sympathy for rabble rousers, like the National Front, who sought to exploit race. I found it deeply significant that such groups, both now and in the past, were just as much socialist as they were nationalist. All collectivism is always conducive to oppression: it is only the victims who differ.
At the same time, large-scale New Commonwealth immigration over the years had transformed large areas of Britain in a way which the indigenous population found hard to accept. It is one thing for a well-heeled politician to preach the merits of tolerance on a public platform before returning to a comfortable home in a tranquil road in one of the more respectable suburbs, where house prices ensure him the exclusiveness of apartheid without the stigma. It is quite another for poorer people, who cannot afford to move, to watch their neighbourhoods changing and the value of their house falling. Those in such a situation need to be reassured rather than patronized. Nor, as I knew from talking to immigrants in my own constituency, was it just white families who were deeply worried. Those immigrants who had already come here and wanted to be accepted as full members of the community knew that continuing large-scale immigration would provoke a reaction of which they might be victims. The failure to articulate the sentiments of ordinary people like these had left the way open to the extremists. And, of course, the very success of those extremists was something which the Left in all its varieties could turn to its advantage. No matter how much the socialists mismanaged the economy, cut Britain’s defences or failed to uphold law and order, they were at least able to guarantee a sympathetic hearing by condemning their opponents as bigots. For the Left has never been slow to exploit the problems it creates.
Policy work on immigration had been proceeding under Willie Whitelaw’s direction for some time by January 1978. But it had not progressed very far — certainly not as far as many of our supporters, vocal at Party Conferences, wished. This was only partly because Willie himself was instinctively liberal-minded on Home Office matters. The problem was that it was very difficult to see what scope existed to cut down on present and potential future immigration.
Roy Jenkins had changed the immigration rules to allow in male fiances for the purpose of marriage to UK citizens, a provision which had been much abused. Illegal immigration, about whose size one could only speculate, had in effect been encouraged by amnesties. It had become normal practice for those who entered Britain after 1 January 1973 for a ‘temporary’ stay to be accepted later for settlement on removal of the time limit and their dependants also admitted. Work permits were not sufficiently tightly restricted. There was much uncertainty both about the accuracy of the immigration figures and, above all, about the number of potential immigrants and their dependants who had a right to come to Britain. There was, therefore, scope for action in these areas, but that scope was limited. For there were a number of commitments upon which we could not honourably or humanely renege — in particular, to UK passport holders in East Africa and (under the Conservative Government’s 1971 Immigration Act) to the dependants of those immigrants who were ordinarily resident in the UK on 1 January 1973.