Brown gives old fire to New Labour

Charterhouse Chronicle
Frank Longford in Brighton
4Om. is a cursed profes
sion," said the great Lord Salisbury, Prime Minis
tel near the end of the 19th century. He had just seen a great friend. Lord Iddisleigh stretched dead at his feet. Iddisleigh was so upset by the news that he would be Foreign Secretary no longer that he collapsed and died. Tony Blair might be excused a moment's sympathy with Salisbury and Iddisleigh. There has never in my lifetime, been such a dramatic swing in the opinion poll as occurred
recently. In a single week a Labour
majority of 20 per cent turned into one of 5 or according to some polls 10 per cent deficit. I am writing this on Sunday, a day before visiting the Labour Party Conference. There may be more news by Monday evening. More news again after Tony Blair has spoken on Tuesday and still more news or at any rate still further forecasts after the next opinion polls. So all that Tony Blair can do at the moment is to remember the lines of Kipling: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can keep your head when all men doubt you and make allowance for their
doubting too ...You'll be a man my son."
We loyal members of the Labour Party do well not to conceal from ourselves that our leaders have been far from clever in dealing with the issue of petrol. But I hope we will redouble our efforts to back them up through a difficult time.
The Labour Government has been in power for roughly three and a half years, They have tried to combine a traditional attachment to social justice with the encouragement of wealth Creation. At this week at the conference they will have more trouble over pensions than over petrol. I wish them nothing but good, but if they are going to go down to history as a great government they must realise that they cannot escape the Christmas instruction (Luke XIV.) When you give a feast invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind and you will be blessed.
The above was written before attending the Labour Conference on Monday. What follows is written before the Prime Minister's speech, which Catholic Herald readers will know all about by the time they read these lines. The Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his speech on Monday afternoon, which The Times described as a personal and political triumph. Matthew Parris. most brilliant of present-day political commentators, vividly describes the scene and the dramatic change of atmosphere by the time Gordon Brown had finished speaking. The standing ovation that followed was as long as I can remember in the 65 . years since I first visited the Labour Conference. All at once the clouds parted. On a grey and gusty Brighton afternoon, as anxious Labour delegates looked out towards a stormy political horizon, a great burst of sunshine burst through. For half an hour it lit the Conference in a warm glow. I cannot imagine a more successful speech, or so at least it seemed to all of us, by the time he finished. But how had he produced such a magical effect? He did not give us any new facts, although he brought home to some of us significant facts of which we were not fully aware. I am bound to admit, for example, that I had not realised that the world price ot oil had gone up 300% in the last 18 months. One was aware of a big rise, but 300%! Again and again he returned to the fact that a million more people had found jobs under Labour and whether one calls °nese! i old or New Labour, he made us proud to belong to a party that had achieved so much in three years. He disdained to comment on the opinion polls and indeed on the recent fuel crisis itself.
Of course such dire happenings cannot be laughed off, but for the moment Labour men and women were filled with hope of yet more victories to conic. In one way Gordon Brown's position resembles that of Dennis Healey, my muchadmired friend. They both possess enormous ability and great courage. But it was once said of Dennis " 'E bites ya shins". I suppose that the same might have been said of Gordon Brown until yesterday. The picture of him ardently kissing his wife on the front page of The Times suggests that a new humanity may have crept into his life May it indeed be so Tony Mai, will have spoken by the time this is read He has already expressed some rcgrcts for recent happenings. Gordon Brown's act is a hard one to follow, but I am confident Tony Blair will not falter.
Gordon Brown I have every reason to believe, is a good Christian. Tony Blair goes to Mass every Sunday with his devout wife. He is not yet a great man, nor was my hero Clem Attlee, when he was Blair's age. I make one humble suggestion, speaking as someone who hopes that he will be an ever more effective leader after the next election. None of us doubt the strength of his Christian convictions. But he never seems to refer to them in public. When he does he should begin to emerge as the great man that I believe at he has it in him to become. I was present at the Labour Party Conference in 1935 when Ernie Bevin destroyed the leader George Landsbury, when he announced: "I am not going to have George Landsbury hawking his conscience all around Europe." I was present when Hugh Gaitskill, in 1960, defied the Conference by announcing that he would fight, fight and fight again. He lost that time, but triumphed in the following year. I shall always think of Gordon Brown's speech as just about the most powerful one I have ever heard at the Conference.