Lord Vaizey sees the light

Geoffrey Hawthorn

  • In Breach of Promise by John Vaizey
    Weidenfeld, 150 pp, £9.95, September 1983, ISBN 0 297 78288 6

Vaizey has no doubt at all. ‘They were the best.’ Hugh Gaitskell, Iain Macleod, Richard Titmuss, Anthony Crosland and Edward Boyle. They were all ‘clever, honest, admirable and honourable’. They were all, except Boyle, who was at school at the time, affected by the slump. They were all excited by the political changes and administrative advances of the war. Four of them entered the Commons soon after. They were all convinced that with Keynes, Beveridge, most of Whitehall, Transport House and even Smith Square behind them, they could do something towards a more decent society. They did not, of course, all always agree. ‘Crap merchant,’ said Crosland to Titmuss at Vaizey’s own wedding. But they were all radicals, and they were all, in Vaizey’s view, wrong. They ‘lacked the power to rethink fundamentally’. That would have required them, ‘perhaps’, ‘to approach questions from the right and not’, as they all did, ‘from the left’.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions