Looking at an Election

Extract

There wasn't much heard about Christian belief in the recent British election campaign, in spite of occasional Christian appeals to the candidates’ consciences; but then, with a renewed sense among Christians of the secular significances of the term ‘moral', this lack of directly Christian discussion ought not to be too disturbing: we were, after all, electing a government, not a parish council. What can usefully be looked at, however, is the degree of moral emphasis, in a general sense, in the parties’ programmes: how far was this a humane election ?

The Liberal Party is important here, because it focusses a complex of attitudes which have been dominant in British politics over the past few years. At the peak of its form, Jo Grimond's party stood for an impatient, dynamic streamlining of society, a tough concern with efficiency; Liberalism was a force to disperse the cobwebs, and the cobwebs included talk of class-warfare and socialization of industry as much as Tory old-boyism and bungling. There was an attractive radicalism about this, and it won over a good many people who failed to see that dynamism and efficiency are morally neutral terms which can shove out the central moral issues and reduce politics to technique and organization. At the Liberal Party conferences the hall was full of young men rearing to get industry off the ground and eliminate wastage and failure; the talk centred on expansion and cutting through red-tape, progress was the key-term.