11 JUNE 1988, Page 8

ANOTHER VOICE

Why there is no reason to consult the Women's Institute about sewers

AUBERON WAUGH

Blake's reference to building Jerusalem in England, which used to be sung at every meeting of the Women's Institute up and down the land, cannot have referred to the Jewish idea of Jerusalem, as a focus for age-old national yearnings and the living proof of ancient grandeur. Nor is it really likely that he was using it in the Protestant sense of Holy City, to be distinguished from Rome, the Popish citadel. I imagine he was using it in the sense of building God's Kingdom on earth — an altogether more ticklish enterprise, and one which has probably caused more misery than any other, when idealists try to impose their blueprints for perfection on poor, imper- fect humanity.

Yet it is to this task that the new, politicised Women's Institute is apparently addressing itself in the 73rd year of its history. At its annual meeting of 6,000 delegates in the Albert Hall on Thursday it passed one resolution demanding longer sentences for convicted rapists, another demanding random breath tests, another urging women to abstain from buying hairsprays and other aerosols which are 'not ozone-friendly' and a final one calling for the Government to improve the sewage system. It is the last three which interest me most as steps to the New Jerusalem, but I suppose I had better discuss the first proposal, too. The Chairman, Mrs Agnes Salter (not yet Chairperson or Chair) explained that the Institute lost 9,000 members last year, and she attributed this to women's anxiety about leaving their homes. The Daily Mail took this up next day to demand a mandatory ten-year mini- mum sentence for 'violent' rapists (as opposed to rapists who achieve their ends through guile?) without remission for good behaviour. I am as disturbed as the next man that Women's Institute membership should be falling off, and I agree that anxiety about rape has increased, largely as a result of the anti-rape lobby. But the number of re- ported rapes — and it is generally agreed that a higher proportion of rapes are reported nowadays — is still tiny: 2,288 in 1986, out of a female population, at the last census, of some 28,701,000. To talk of an epidemic of rape is nonsense, when the average woman would still have to wait 12,544 years before being the victim of a reported rape. Perhaps stiffer sentences would increase the waiting time to 15,000 years, but there must be simpler ways to encourage attendance at evening meetings of the Women's Institute.

Readers may feel that I have discussed the merits of random breath testing quite enough, without going further into the claim by Mrs Olive Williams of Pwll, Llanelli, Dyfed, that an 'estimated' 1,000 lives would be saved annually, and 20,000 serious injuries avoided, if police were allowed to stop and breath-test drivers without giving a reason. In fact, they already do so in several police authority areas, and it doesn't have that effect at all. Most accidents are caused by things like drivers turning right. In Blake's new Jeru- salem, I suppose, they would turn only to the left. But at least Mrs Olive Williams, of Pwll, did not claim that members of the Women's Institute were prevented from attending meetings in large numbers through being run over by drunk drivers. Nor did she even claim, so far as she was reported, that drunk drivers were particu- larly hard on women. Her motion lifted the debate from any parochial consideration into the purest form of bossiness. DoT statisticans will now record that 347,000 women earnestly believe that the police should be given the power to set up roadblocks, delay, harass and humiliate motorists at will.

Motions on the ozone layer and the sewers take the debate above even the realms of pure bossiness into something approaching fantasy. We have all read reports that hairspray and deodorants are damaging the ozone layer, and we have all decided how much importance to attach to them. Similarly, we have all read claims that 'the Government' (presumably it is a concern of local authorities, who choose to spend their money elsewhere) is neglecting maintenance on our older sewage systems, particularly in London. But not one of the 6,000 delegates, I venture, and probably not one of the Institute's 347,000 members has any direct experience of this damage to the ozone layer, or this neglect of mainte- nance to the sewage system. It is all based on rumour and gossip. For my own part, I am sceptical about the claims put forward on behalf of the ozone layer, and have no particular reason to suppose that the ozone layer even exists, although I was sorry to see that my scientific guru, Mr Adrian Berry, had been converted to the cause: but I observe that when I flush a lavatory, the contents tend to disappear, and that is all I require of a sewer. If ever it fails to happen, I shall be appropriately annoyed, but until it fails to happen I do not see that it is any of my business to ensure that they are maintaining the sewers properly.

This initiative by the National Federa- tion of Women's Institutes to demand government action on drunken driving, on aerosols and on the nation's sewers is a reduction to absurdity of the whole idea of a pressure group as something which gov- ernment should heed. No doubt they will soon pass a resolution to stop smoking in public places, since only 35 per cent of adult women smoke.

It is true that the WI still claims 347,000 members, but its delegates do not repre- sent their views, nor do they control their parliamentary votes. What this 'pressure group' in fact represents, in common with so many other pressure groups, is the merest handful of self-important gas-bags. There is no reason why its views should be heeded any more than my own, or those of the dullest, drunkest, retired major in the remotest corner of the Farmer's Arms.

Politicians love listening to pressure groups for the good reason that nobody else has the slightest interest in talking to them. These self-important gas-bags pro- vide the only available assurance that politicians are in a position to judge between contending factions, that their power and glory are somehow part of a democratic system which has popular approval. They are in no such position. The only consideration which should mat- ter to them is how to retain power without antagonising voters by the exercise of it. Pressure groups, with their own particular version of a New Jerusalem, have nothing to do with survival in democratic politics.