The Leaders HOW MACMILLAN AND GAITSKELL COMPARE

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29021, 9 October 1959, Page 10

The Leaders HOW MACMILLAN AND GAITSKELL COMPARE

[By

DONALD McLACHLAN

in the “Daily Telegraph”]

(Reprinted By Arrangement]

London, September 30—They are famous in East Anglia for their bluntness. Nowhere, it is said, does the floating voter when pursued kick more strongly. So I was interested to read, among the reports of Mr Macmillan’s tour coming in from all over the country, this remark from those parts: “Gaitskell looks to me as though he ought to have his apron on and be helping in the kitchen, whereas Macmillan is not prepared to overstate his Case.” At first reading, this is rather puzzling. What connexion, what contrast is intended between the two parts of the sentence? We are all kitchen helps now, so what is the point? Television,, as on so many matters in this election, gives the answer. There is a look on the Opposition leader’s face of “Is there nothing more I can do?” which is the mark of the scholar playing demagogue, of the economist turning spendthrift. Like other mannerisms that Mr Gaitskell has wrestled with, it is less frequent than it was. But it is still there — and was noticed in East Anglia. “Is there anything more I can do?” is, of course, a fair enough slogan ”to match “You have never had it so good.” Its effect, however, depends on how the record of the man who question compares with thaF of the man who makes the boast. Indeed, that is the question to which many voters will address themselves in the coming week. At one time it looked as if there must be a matching of the Tories’ man against Socialist measures. But now Mr Gaitskell is being built up. Slogans and Facts “Ten bob on the pensions” and “tax the speculators” looked like being the answers to Supermac and Macwonder. But these twins begotten by the cartoonists of the Left have not come up to expectations.

The calculation was that if the Prime Minister could be committed in the public mind to a sequence of political miracles, he must sooner or later disappoint. Though admired by the party whose morale and unity he restored with such skill in the winter of 1957, it seemed unlikely that he could achieve in the country the triumph which even his opponents conceded him in Parliament.

As things turned out, he did bring off a number of dangerous successes of which Labour could not cheat him: riding the London bus strike; backing Mr Thorneycroft’s first attack on inflation and then resisting unreasonable demands for a second assault; tolerating just enough unemployment —though with memories of the ’3os in Stockton, he is more sensitive about unemployment than anything else —to correct some of the abuses of full employment; restoring the intimate friendship with the United States, and inviting himself to the Soviet Union, Greece, and Turkey on a peacemaker’s patrol. In almost every case timing was the main reason for success; it is rightly one of the most admired of political skills. Yet it is precisely the one in which Mr Gaitskell has until recently shown himself least adept. Over and over again in the House of Commons we have been promised a debate which would shake the Government to a jelly: the Rent Act, Devlin Report, unemployment, the landing in Jordan, the bank rate affair. When these names are shouted on the hustings they recall Labour defeats, failures of timing in Parliament. Riding Two Horses

It is not difficult to explain this. Lack of experience has been less of a handicap to Mr Gaitskell than the lack of unity in his party on certain key questions. As its leader he has had to learn to ride two horses; the badly-broken Welsh pony of the constituency associations and the slow, sturdy cob of the trade unions. He has shown much courage and persistence; but the ordeal has given him that habit of looking over his shoulder, that sharp-nosed and peaky look which the cartoonists contrast with M.- Macmillan’s bored and aloof look. As an American observer of the election put it: opposition corrupts, but opposition on two fronts corrupts doubly. Mr Gaitskell has been fighting for years on two fronts, gaining stature in the process. Mr Macmillan has had the solid backing of his party on nine issues out of 10, foreign as well as domestic; and success, achieved by an unworried and unhurried manner, has added to his stature. But while Mr Gaitskell was learning party leadership, Mr Macmillan was giving a nation firm government. If Mr Gaitskell looks more confident now, it is because for once he can rely on party unity—during the campaign. There are other points of difference, especially in experience, worth recalling. Mr Macmillan, having been in charge of defence, foreign-policy and finance, knows how to leave his principal Ministers alone. To delegate successfully one must either be master of the job one delegates or lose control. Mr Gaitskell, I fancy, would find it difficult, indeed impossible, to resist looking over the shoulders of Messrs. Bevan, Wilson, and George Brown. Of none of the departments which Mr Gaitskell has promised them have they direct administrative experience.

Economic Expert As for Mr Gaitskell himself, he is, as his friends admit, in the super-tax’ class as an economist, whatever his performance as Chancellor. That is to say, he has a g eater wealth of economic knowledge than any of his contemporaries in politics. Whereas Mr Macmillan, after four years’ fighting in the First World War, went into public life instead of trying to add a First in Greats to the First in Honor Mods he had taken in 1914, Mr Gaitskell took his First in 1926 in the new School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. He then studied, taught, and thought economics for most of the ’thirties while the rebel Macmillan was being kept in the wilderness by Baldwin. For the leadership he was groomed in politics for four years by Mr Attlee. Mr Macmillan’s experience is of a different order. When Mr Gaitskell was teaching at London University in the ’thirties, he was holding Stockton-on-Tees as a Conservative, showing the social conscience that he has never lost and that survivor’s air which has grown more marked with the years. I mean the mark of the comparatively few young men of promise who survived 1914-18.

When thoughtless people toss off the word "Edwardian,” it is worth reminding them that if it had not been for Passchendaele and Galli poli there would be many more Edwardians among our rulers When Mr Gaitskell was doif an admirable job at the Ministry of Economic Warfare and Board of Trade, Mr Macmillan was learning foreign affairs in the hardest possible way: dealing with Americans and the Gaullist French in North Africa. The “Unflappable” That, I suspect, was the experi. ence that taught him the importance of patience, poise, and relaxation. “Unflappable” his admirers call him; “a proper old smoothy,” said a Liberal in the West country. The 12-year difference of age-~ Mr Gaitskell is 53—is probably unimportant; but the contrast in experience between the Edwardian and the Georgian is striking. When the Labour leader was deciding whether to make a career in *politics< the present Prime Minister was thinking of leaving them. The one has the air of a man who has proved his decision to have been right, the other has the air of a man who is still trying to prove, to himself as well as to others, that he was right.

Some people think that Mr Macmillan should compete with his rival in the kind of vigour that is supposed to show sincerity. They want more counter-attack; they want him to take his coat off. I wonder whether this is good advice: to look as if he, too, were going to put on the apron and lend a hand. The Right Moment

He has so far succeeded by restraining impatience and waiting for the right moment, in the knowledge that good timing brings what is called luck. If he is to make a political kill, it must be quick and clean. The Labour party, with its over-bidding, may be preparing the opportunity by turning out its pockets as well as taking off its coats. I suspect that Mr Macmillan is waiting for a chance to cut its braces. Meanwhile, the calm, smooth manner has its effect, especially on older people with memories of Crippsian homilies and still in their ears the sound of the song in Dr. Dalton’s heart.

A quotation from Torrington, in the heart of the Bonham-Carter country, seems to me apt. To a Liberal working woman who referred to Mr Macmillan as an “old dandy” came the reply of a farmer: “I’d buy a horse from him without seeing it first.” Suitably amended for the town, it makes a very good question for viewers of Labour performers on TV: “Would I buy a car from them without seeing it first?”