Closing loopholes, tightening up administration and some new controls on primary and secondary immigration — all of these offered opportunities to reduce the inflow. But I knew that the single most important contribution we could make to good race relations was to reduce the uncertainties about the future. It was fear of the unknown rather than the awkwardnesses of the present which threatened danger. Willie Whitelaw shared that basic analysis, which is why he had pledged us at the 1976 Party Conference ‘to follow a policy which is clearly designed to work towards the end of immigration as we have seen it in these post-war years’.
Although I had not planned any specific announcement on immigration, I was not surprised when I was asked in an interview on World in Action about the subject. I had been giving it a good deal of thought, having indeed expressed myself strongly in other interviews. Nor, for the reasons that I have outlined, did I feel any inhibitions about doing so. I said:
People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture… So, if you want good race relations you have got to allay people’s fears on numbers… We do have to hold out the prospect of an end to immigration, except, of course, for compassionate cases. Therefore we have got to look at the numbers who have a right to come in… Everyone who is here must be treated equally under the law and that, I think, is why quite a lot of them too are fearful that their position might be put in jeopardy, or people might be hostile to them, unless we cut down the incoming numbers.
Even I was taken aback by the reaction to these extremely mild remarks. What it quickly showed was the degree to which politicians had become isolated from people’s real worries. I was denounced as ‘appallingly irresponsible’ by David Steel, the Liberal Party Leader, who later added for good measure that my remarks were ‘really quite wicked’. Denis Healey spoke of my ‘cold-blooded calculation in stirring up the muddy waters of racial prejudice… to spread fear and hatred among peaceful communities’. The Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, accused me of ‘making respectable racial hatred’. The bishops joined in. Fifteen years later, this reaction to ideas which were later embodied in legislation and are all but universally accepted seems hysterical.
Even at the time, the reaction in the country, undoubtedly sharpened by the exaggerated rhetoric of critics who imagined they had finally sunk me, was completely different. Before my interview, the opinion polls showed us level-pegging with Labour. Afterwards, they showed the Conservatives with an eleven-point lead. This unintended effect of a spontaneous reply to an interviewer’s question had important political conscquences. Whatever Willie in his heart of hearts and my other colleagues felt about it, it provided a large and welcome boost at an extremely difficult time. It also sharpened up the discussion within Shadow Cabinet of our proposals. Within weeks we had a comprehensive and agreed approach which satisfied all but the diehard advocates of repatriation and which would see us through the general election.[55]
The whole affair was a demonstration that I must trust my own judgement on crucial matters, rather than necessarily hope to persuade my colleagues in advance; for I could expect that somewhere out in the country there would be a following and perhaps a majority for me.
THE NON-ELECTION OF 1978
Quite apart from the immigration issue, 1978 had all the makings of a politically difficult year for the Opposition. As a result of the financial measures introduced under pressure from the IMF, the economic situation improved. In January 1978 inflation fell below 10 per cent for the first time since 1974 and it continued to fall. Unemployment was also falling gradually from its peak in August 1977; although there were sharp increases during the summer of 1978, 1.36 million were registered unemployed by that December, 120,000 fewer than the year before. We succeeded, with support from the Liberals, in forcing a cut of one penny in the basic rate of income tax: but that in itself would probably reduce the gloom about the economy which had played such an important part in Labour’s unpopularity and which had worked to our advantage.
Our assumption was that Jim Callaghan hoped to coast along on these gradual improvements towards an election in the autumn on a platform of ‘safety first’. One large obstacle in his way was that the Liberals now recognized that the Lib-Lab Pact had been politically disastrous for them. But their anxiety to bring it to an end was modified by their reluctance to face the electoral consequences of having sustained Labour in power at all. As for the opinion polls, Labour had drawn almost level with us by the summer and though we pulled away from them in August/September, during October and November (after a difficult Conservative Conference) they were around 5 per cent ahead, with the Liberals not even in double figures.
In these circumstances, I commissioned work on a draft manifesto. It was drawn together by Chris Patten and the Research Department on the basis of Shadow spokesmen’s drafts. When I read it in July I was unimpressed. The large, simple themes had become obscured by lists of costly promises designed to appeal to interest groups. I said that the next draft must put the main emphasis on a few central objectives, like tax cuts and strengthening the country’s internal and external defences. The fulfilment of all other spending pledges was conditional on meeting these pledges first. In truth, I was disagreeably reminded of what little real progress in analysis or policy we had made in Opposition over the last three years. If we continued thinking in these terms, how would we ever manage to turn the country round?
More encouraging, however, was the change which had come over the Party’s publicity. Gordon Reece had returned to become Director of Publicity at Central Office. It was through Gordon that Tim Bell and Saatchi & Saatchi were made responsible for the Party’s advertising. This was a significant departure in our political communications. But I needed no persuading that it was right to obtain the best professionals in their field to put across our message. There was no question of the advertising agency devising what that message was, of course. But politicians should resist the temptation to consider themselves experts in fields where they have no experience. I would frequently reject suggestions for advertising on grounds of taste or sense, but I left the creative work to them. From the first, I found Tim Bell, the Saatchi executive who handled our account, easy to work with: like Gordon, he had a feel for politics and a sense of fun. When I first met Tim I laid down the basis on which we would always cooperate, saying: ‘Politicians usually have a lot of toes and you must be frightfully careful not to tread on them. I, however, have no toes — and you will tell me the truth.’ Of course, I was not always so self-restrained in practice.
Saatchis put new life into the tired format of Party Political Broadcasts. There were the inevitable accusations of frivolity or over-simplification. But PPBs should not be judged on the basis of the comments of the Party faithful, but rather by whether the casual, unpolitical viewer actually chooses to watch them, rather than turning to another channel, and whether he gains a sympathetic impression. On this score, the change was a great improvement.
55
Our manifesto pledged us to introduce a British Nationality Act defining British citizenship and the right to abode, to set up a register of dependants from Commonwealth countries who had the right of settlement under existing legislation (whose numbers were uncertain) and to establish a quota system to restrict the rate of entry for settlement from non-EC countries. In the event, only the first of these measures was passed into law. During the 1980s primary immigration — the admission of heads of household in their own right — fell significantly, diminishing the number of future dependants with a right of settlement and reducing the overall total below 50,000 in most years, compared to 82,000 in 1975 and 69,000 in 1979.