MEN AND MATTERS

Training the Tory troops

“Be enthusiastic, confident and smile, do not apologise or hesitate, if the person is rude do not be upset.” This is some of the advice to party workers contained in the Conservative Party's “little blue book” a guide for party workers entitled Constituency. Campaigning which was launched yesterday at the Carlton Club by party chairman Lord Thorneycroft.

It was a jolly occasion with Thorneycroft at his most avuncular and Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, obviously buoyed up by the favourable reactions she has provoked in her City of London and Westminster by-election walk-about, in fine fettle and insisting on the need for the party organisation to be “outward looking” and establish closer contacts with youth, the trade unions and all sorts of community groups and generally “be seen in action.”

The aim of the 84-page, simply written and cartoon-packed booklet is to prime eager constituency workers on the basic skills of electioneering and getting their message across.

It is the brainchild of Basil Feldman, managing director of toy group Dunbee-Combex-Marx, and long time party sympathiser. He thought up the idea when reflecting on the lessons to be learnt from his trouncing at the hands of the then resurgent Liberals when he stood as greenhorn Tory candidate in Richmond at the 1974 GLC elections. “I certainly wouldn't send out my salesmen without training no matter how good the product, and I don't think the Party should do so either” was his reasoning. Nobody questioned the logic of that, and the booklet is the result.

Mrs. Thatcher had her audience in the palm of her hand with her claim that “a cycle of 30 years of socialism is coming to an end.” There were no complaints either when she said it had led to a low wage, low productivity economy descending into a vortex.

“Can we get out?” she cried. “Yes, we can. The state can't do it but individuals can, if given the incentive and encouragement.” That was the essence of “people politics” à la Thatcher, or “taking power away from the politicians and giving it back to the people,” as she underlined later. It was, I thought, slightly inopportune at the launching of a booklet designed precisely to help the Conservative Party get back into power.