THERE SHOULD be bronze plaques. Put one in front of the defunct Regal Constellation Hotel on Toronto's airport strip. That's the concrete hulk where Paul Martin's gang once convened to discuss when, if ever, Jean Chrétien might retire -- and what they might do to bring that day closer. Another should adorn that much more agreeable auberge, Montreal's Ritz-Carlton, where Brian Mulroney solemnly promised Joe Clark -- and nobody does solemn quite like Mulroney -- that he wouldn't undermine Clark's leadership of the Tory party.(Apparently, Joe bought it.)But the first such marker to great moments in political double-dealing must be put up outside Toronto's Albany Club, where Dalton Camp launched his campaign to dump John Diefenbaker with a provocative speech on the limits of loyalty in politics.

Or, to put it another way, Camp's theme, when he addressed a closed meeting of Conservatives back in May 1966, was that stirring moment when a thinking partisan must embrace disloyalty. It's a rich subject. Disloyalty must be the most underrated commodity in democratic politics. Reviled by those who claim that fealty to the leader is the essence of party discipline. Disparaged by pious pundits who find conniving backroom types an easy target for lectures on good manners. Feared -- and fear is what it really comes down to -- by those leaders, like Chrétien, Clark and Dief, who find themselves in the undignified position of having to demand the loyalty they no longer inspire.

Most ecosystems need their destructive agents. Forest fires are frightening to watch -- but they clear the way for new growth. In party politics, there's no use praying for a lightning strike to ignite the rotting timber. Somebody has to strike the match, and that somebody should be prepared to get scorched in the process. Such is the moral of the Camp story, as told so vividly in the engaging new biography The Player: The Life & Times of Dalton Camp, by Geoffrey Stevens. In bringing down Diefenbaker, Camp became a pariah to many Tories, and, for all his admirers, remained a lonely figure in the party up to his death last year. "The reaction was stronger than anything Camp had anticipated," Stevens writes. "And it proved more enduring than anyone could have predicted, surviving even the departure and death of Diefenbaker."

But the rewards of creative disloyalty are well worth the risks. Does anyone really believe the Conservatives would have been better off sticking with Diefenbaker? Camp and those who rebelled with him must have taken deep satisfaction from having done what had to be done. Similarly, while nobody praised Mulroney's operatives for making Clark's life miserable, is there a plausible case that Clark deserved to remain as leader? For those who forgot what he was like the first time around, his comeback from 1998 until last June -- a period that saw the Tories drop from 20 seats to 12 -- served as a more than sufficient reminder of his limitations. Finally, what was so wrong with Martin's cabal conspiring to shove Chrétien toward the exit? Their alternative was more popular with party and populace, and he wasn't getting any younger. They had a good case for a little controlled burning in the Liberal woodlot.

What's worrying today is that Martin has too exclusive a grip on the governing party. No faction capable of thoughtful disloyalty toward him is now evident. One can only hope it emerges in due course. When it does -- if it does -- it needn't rise to the level of outright revolt to be useful. Consider the way John Turner privately sniped away at Pierre Trudeau through the late '70s, talking down Trudeau's grasp of economic policy at cocktail parties. Turner and his loyalists kept alive the neglected strain of business-friendly Liberalism that Martin ultimately inherited -- a notable accomplishment, even if Turner failed when he got his own chance as leader. Disloyalty can be a close cousin to diversity.

A note of encouragement to any Liberal tempted by the noble calling of internecine dissent: it looks like fun. Dalton Camp was not a dour man. Let's commission a bas-relief of his amused face for those plaques, just to remind us of the satisfactions reserved for those who hatch disloyal plans behind closed doors.

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