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British Party Leader Dumps Tough Drug Stance After Officials' Pasts Hit Papers
San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Tuesday 10 Oct 2000 Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Author: Warren Hoge, New York Times LONDON -- Fresh from claiming to have unified his quarrelsome party, Conservative leader William Hague was obliged on Monday to abandon a vaunted new hard-line policy on first-time drug offenders after seven of his leadership associates said they had smoked marijuana in their youth. The proposal, put forward at last week's upbeat Conservative Party conference, called for $150 minimum fines and criminal records for people caught with small amounts of soft drugs in their possession or even in their bloodstreams. It was the centerpiece of a ``zero tolerance'' law and order approach that the party is adopting as campaign strategy in the election expected for next spring. The plan was immediately attacked by police officials and social organizations as draconian and unworkable and by senior figures in the party, who feared it would cost them votes from young people and their parents. But Hague said he had approved it in advance and would stick by it. The uproar exposed a dispute between authoritarian and libertarian branches of conservatism that appears to be replacing the issue of Britain's relationship with Europe as the party's main source of internal discord. The Mail on Sunday asked the 22 members of the shadow Cabinet -- the men and women who are the out-of-power party's counterparts to government Cabinet officers -- if they had ever taken drugs. Eleven, including Hague, said they had not. Two declined comment, and two could not be reached. But seven admitted they had. The confessions were bashful ones, with the acts attributed to college age curiosity and youthful interest in experimenting. What was particularly damaging to the image of a freshly united party was evidence that the confessions were planted by the liberal faction of the Conservatives in an effort to humiliate the leader of the hard-line wing, the shadow home secretary, Ann Widdecombe. The Mail on Sunday is a newspaper with an authoritative voice among the Tory rank and file. Widdecombe had brought cheering delegates to their feet Wednesday with a speech outlining the tough new measures. Her convention address followed by a day a similarly bravura performance by Michael Portillo, the other well-known figure in the shadow Cabinet, who set out a vision of the party's future as one more inclusive and tolerant of minorities, gays and other people marginalized by Tories in the past. When Widdecombe was asked later whether she approved of this social- tolerance approach, she appeared to draw a defiant line in the sand by saying she did not know what the phrase meant. Hague flew back from a long post-conference weekend in Spain and promptly announced that the proposal ``needs further consultation, discussion and debate.'' He said the drug proposals were back ``on the table'' and open to revision. Asked if he had confidence in the seven men, he said: ``Of course. Any Cabinet or shadow Cabinet that faces up to these problems is going to include people who 20 or 30 years ago had some experience of drugs. It would be extraordinary if it didn't.''
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