Into Battle

"I'm looking forward to this fight," said Sir Alec Douglas-Home last week. "I'm almost spoiling for it." He did not have long to spoil. Next day, as Parlia ment reassembled, shouting, leaping Tory backbenchers cheered lustily while the newly elected member for Kinross took his oath as an M.P. and moved into his place for the first time on the government's front bench. Pulling out a small red and gold ballpoint pen, Douglas-Home hunched down in his seat and scribbled furiously on slips of paper for the next 42 minutes while Labor Party Leader Harold Wilson delivered a cutting attack on the government.

Like a Poster. Claiming that the Tories' "modernization" plans for new roads, schools and housing were borrowed from Labor, Wilson said tartly: "Imitation is the sincerest form of political desperation." Why, he continued, "have we heard so little about modernization in the past twelve years? I never undervalue the power of repentance, but it has taken a very long time."

Amid cries of approval and derision from both sides of the packed House, the Prime Minister rose, nervously shuffled his notes and placed them neatly on the dispatch box in front of him. "It's been twelve years since I last spoke in this House," he began.* In the next few minutes it became all too plain that the cozier, clubbish style of the House of Lords had blunted Douglas-Home's debating thrust, and his supporters missed his usual pungent wit. After a long, meandering preamble, he launched into a lackluster exposition of ambitious government policies for the coming year. "The formula," said he flatly, "is growth without inflation, and the method, acceleration from positions previously prepared." Groaned one Conservative: "God, it's like a Tory election poster!" Twice Sir Alec even made the tactical gaffe of referring to Wilson as "possible later Prime Minister." The Tory benches remained deathly silent while Labor's triumphant roar surged around the slight, pale Prime Minister.

Firmer Ground. He went on manfully, but again and again Labor's uproarious barracking silenced him for painful seconds at a time. He waded through the unfamiliar marshes of economics, finally reached firmer ground when he turned to foreign policy. Staring coldly at Wilson, who wants to abandon Britain's independent deterrent, Sir Alec declared that he intends to make this a central issue of the campaign. Once Britain renounces nuclear arms, he warned, "We could never go back into this business. The government means to retain nuclear forces under our own control," adding that without them "we would no longer have a place at the peace table as of right." The Cuban crisis, he said, forced Russia to "modify its tactics," but "the Communist aim is clearly still unchanged. It is to destroy our way of life."

In cold type next day, his speech read creditably enough. But on both sides of the House there was agreement that the Prime Minister's eagerly awaited Commons debut had been a disappointing performance.

* He sat in the Commons from 1931 to 1945 as M.P. for South Lanark, was re-elected in 1950 but went to the Lords after succeeding to the 14th earldom of Home in 1951.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.