HUMANITY IN POLITICS

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32252, 21 March 1970, Page 4

HUMANITY IN POLITICS

The Common Problem. By Angus Maude. Constable. 307 pp.

This brilliant book is something of a trap, cunningly baited with common sense and a sense of Britain’s glorious past. Its glittering generalisations, which really are iridescent, may ensnare the reader into agreement with an emotional attitude splendidly tricked out with all the accoutrements of reason Nearly every page has its epigram. The whole delightful carry-on—so gratifyingly cultivated with its quotations from everyone from Descartes to Samuel Butler—is in fact a manifesto for Britain’s Conservative Party (not Colonel Blimp, but his embarrassed children), a party in search of a dynamic. Your reviewer has rarely been so exercised to come to grips with a printed document He has avoided being thrown by such a statement as: “A great age is surely one which leaves to posterity a ’ lasting heritage

of beautiful and useful things, of significant creative ideas and inspirations, while using its own people with intelligence and humanity and passing on to posterity a physical environment improved rather than damaged.” He has dodged the karate chop of: "It is time to reverse the trend—to reject the theory of equality —and to proclaim, with passion, the ideal of quality.” But how firm a hold did he ever get on Angus Maude? No-one can gainsay the force of Maude’s negative criticism of a "consumer” society (he incidentally very effectively takes apart our concept of “society” as the embodiment of any self-conscious general will) and the growing sense of futility in crowded urban communities. He is more suspicious of technocrats, especially when operating with ail the powers of big business, even than of the Welfare State. He hopes too the “the technological revolution shall not be allowed to repeat, after its own fashion and on a larger scale, the inhumanity and physical destruction of the Industrial Revolution.” Mr Maude subtly hints at the possibility that the two opposing parties may “simply exchange roles,” though this he would not applaud. The conservative forces within the Labour Party would gain control and turn it into a party dedicated to the maintenance of the. status quo, while the Conservative Party would become a largely technocratic party dedicated to material prosperity and' ‘big government'." ... ■ The positive measures Maude is prepared to recommend are more elusive. He advocates, as a,counter to “equality,” a wider distribution of feta sUp... that large-scale industry . need mot bet' more efficient tKgij smalum enterprises: steals the clothes -of the older Labour supporters by persistently looking at the human impact of rationalist,' ‘ egalitarian, levelling policies. It does not sound at all a platitude when he re; marks: “There are important aspects of life other than the purely economic.” While neither of the great British political parties can at the moment offer their adherents any great sense of exhilaration: and idealism in publiclife is at a discount, it is questionable whether Angus Maude has succeeded in creating an acceptable mystique for latter-day Conservatism. Your reviewer’s complaint is. oddly enough, that he underestimates the strength of his own party and its traditional position. The implication of his attractive but not entirely persuasive pamphleteering is that the Conservatives are weak on ideas. They may well be stronger than he makes them look.