TIME TO TURN TO LABOUR

A. N. Wilson explains why he believes

he must come down from the political fence on the Left side

ENGLISH politics are excruciatingly bor- ing, English politicians even more so. 'A plague on both your houses' has been my political creed for years; and when sup- posed alternatives to the Conservative or Labour Parties arose, I wished a plague on them as well. I am sure that this indif- ferentism is not unusual, and it partly accounts for Mrs Thatcher's extraordinary success. The thundering dulness of her Cabinet is matched by the greyness of the Shadow Cabinet. The choice between Mr Lawson and Mr Smith, or between Mr Hatters- ley and Mr Hurd is ab- out as exciting as the choice on the menu at a Macdonald's take-away.

Given this, it has been obvious who would win the last three elections. That is to say, it would be the party who fiddled the figures to provide the lowest rate of in- come tax. And it is these two facts alone, in my opinion, the dulness of • the politicians and the apparently low rates of tax, which have allowed Mrs Thatcher to get away with her so-called social revolution.

But since the last elec- tion, I have changed my mind about the whole matter, and I suspect that I am not alone. It now seems to me quite essential, regardless of their personal unattractive- ness, to support. the leadership of the Labour party.

The trouble with Thatcherism could be summed up in the words of the Duke of Norfolk when, on a notorious public occa- sion, he offered some reflections on the 'rhythm' method of birth control: it doesn't bloody work. The illusion has been that it is possible, or desirable, to dismantle the semi-socialist state set up by Attlee's admi- nistration and supported, more or less ineptly, by every government until 1979. Every civil servant and public administra-

tor must have known from the beginning that this was an illusion, but Mrs Thatch- er's public relations advisers have allowed the public to believe otherwise.

The illusion may be summarised in this sort of way. In an 'enterprise' economy, it will eventually be possible to reduce public expenditure and discard the notion of 'public' services. Taxes will be cut. There will be more money in the hands of private individuals. They will then be 'free' to choose whether they wish to spend their money on transport, motorways, airports, education, health, art, or any other desir- able commodity. Nationalised industries will be sold off. The burden on the individual will be lifted and the socialist tyranny will have been destroyed forever.

The trouble is that none of these public services can actually be paid for by private individuals. All that happens when you privatise British Telecom is that for a publicly owned company, answerable (at least notionally) to Parliament and people, you substitute a hopelessly inefficient 'pri- vate' company answerable, it would seem, to nobody. The Government knows this really, and is therefore incapable of living up to its supposed convictions. It has therefore increased public expenditure in most areas, but done so in a mean-spirited way which has resulted in a decline in quality in almost every area of public life.

This principle is ex- tended by the Govern- ment into every area of life. They have not been prepared to make the necessary capital outlay to overhaul the railways. Speak to any librarian, museum curator, keeper of an art gallery or of a building in public own- ership. Rather than allowing adequate funds to these bodies, the Government has relentlessly refused to increase the money as required. So, we have to face the prospect of artefacts falling into disrepair, books not being replaced or added to, museums closing off their exhibits. The classic 'monetarist' response to all this is that the idea of patronage should be reintroduced into the arts and 'heritage'. The simple fact is, that however generous rich patrons may wish to be to opera companies or museums, there is not enough money to keep these things going without government help. Insidiously, the argument turns from the rich patron to the less rich member of the public: museum

charges, public library charges, and the exclusion of those who cannot pay.

The same is true of universities. Since Mrs Thatcher failed to become a Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, we have witnessed a Positive Ice Age as far as the 'freezing' of academic jobs is in question. Universities are kept going by the money placed in the Vice-Chancellor's begging-bowl by busi- nessmen from Hong Kong or the Uni- ted States. The oldest copyright library in the world, the Bodleian, is engaged in such a begging exercise, and it will almost certainly fail to raise enough even to repair its existing stock of priceless books, let alone expand to house the boundless flood of new ones. Oxford has been through a Period of having no Professor of French and no Professor of German. There was even talk of 'freezing' the Regius Chair of Greek. In less famous universities the situation has been more parlous and the anti-intellectuals (right-wing dons among them) have been conspicuously gleeful at the prospect of reducing these seats of learn- ing to a position in which they can no lon- ger properly function. There is then the inevitable cry of 'close them down'.

If this has been true of the universities, it has been even truer of the National Health Service. And now we have a Secretary of State for Health who is only half commit- ted to running the Health Service in the way that the vast majority of patients wish' it to continue — and have paid for it to continue.

Wherever you choose to examine it, the Thatcherite idea has failed to work. It is not in a position to withdraw public spend- ing altogether, though its extreme propo- nents would perhaps like to do so. Instead, it opts for the worst possible alternative, Where bits of money are offered and everyone is in the red. Its attitude is that of a mean old friend of mine, now dead, who had the habit of 'taking' friends to meals. Everyone would eat their fill at his table. He would then airily offer a pound note to the waiter, and his 'guests' would be Obliged to make up the shortfall out of their own purses.

It is an illusion to suppose that the Welfare State and the idea of a beneficent government committed to public spending are designed solely for the poor or the socially inadequate. They are meant for all of us. Trains, museums, operas, hospitals, universities cannot exist without public funding and those of us who pay high rates of tax have a right to expect something better than the present government offers.

Those who do not pay high rates of tax, or who pay no tax at all, or who are poor and depend on state assistance, are of course the worst affected of any of us by the Thatcherite experiment. And it is impossible to resist a feeling of distaste and shame at the sheer unimaginative mean- ness of this administration where the poor are concerned. It is all the more nauseating since the majority of the new Right would

appear to come from modest backgrounds, and the likes of Mrs Thatcher and Mr Parkinson should be able to remember what poverty is like. One could mention their attitude to child benefit, their refusal to pay the dole to unemployed teenagers, their woeful record on housing. Two things which particularly outrage me, for some reason, are the introduction of charges for eye tests and false teeth, and the proposal for student loans.

If you are moderately well-off, it is possible to be persuaded that these schemes are fair, with ample provision for a means-tested poor. The reality of the situation is that by increasing dental charges the Government will deter the poor from ever visiting the dentist. We shall revert to being like our parents' generation, a nation of rotting gums and bad breath and people having false teeth by the time they are 40. Similarly, the principle whereby higher education was freely available to anyone clever enough to take it, has now been altered. This will in effect remove the chance of a university or polytechnic career from anyone whose parents are not in a position to help with the repayment of the loan in later life. We shall also, almost certainly, be welcoming in an undesirable system such as that which obtains in the United States, whereby graduates flood into the more swindling and superfluous branches of professional life, such as the law, in order to command the salaries which will help them with their loan repayments. (There is a direct correlation between the absurd costs of American litigation and the need for pushy young graduates to repay their loans to the state.) The unlikely spectre of a socialist state bossing our lives and confiscating our property gave Mrs Thatcher's Pooterite dream of the small share-holder buying his own council house a sort of quaint charm, though since the collapse of the stock market and the rise of interest rates the charm has lost its glow. Besides, as Aube- ron Waugh never tires of saying in these pages, this government is far more interfer- ing and bossy than any previous British administration this century. Whether you are a broadcaster, or a motorist, or a trade unionist, your liberties are markedly more restrained than they were ten years ago.

We need to return to the simple idea that public services require public spending and it is the responsibility of governments to administer this spending. The Conserva- tive Government does not display such a responsibility. Of all the parties on offer, only the Labour Party is fully committed to this idea of a government's role, and the fact that previous Labour governments were incompetent does not invalidate the principle of responsible government. Mrs Thatcher with her famous Gladstonian dictum that governments have no money (it all belongs to the tax-payer) has subtly evaded her fiscal and social responsibilities in almost every area until a crisis forces her to throw in money too late. It was truly scandalous, after two administrations of neglect, to watch her jumping on the Prince of Wales's bandwagon in her announcement that she would make 'inner cities' her priority. In some inner cities it is already too late to repair the damage caused directly by the wilful negligence of Conservative governments from 1979 on- wards, and their belief that it was more important to biff Labour councils than to look after the interests of the people.

How have they managed to get away with it? Not because a majority of voters have ever supportOd them, but perhaps partly because apthlitical figures (myself included) were unwilling to align ourselves with the Opposition. They were also helped by the fact that the Opposition party chose this moment to fragment into absurd Lilliputian factions. It is quite obvious that Dr Owen and the Other Man, leader of the Whatever It's Called Party, will never be in a position to throw the Conservatives out. The only way to bring about the electoral miracle next time round is for everyone who sees the awfulness of this government to vote Labour. Greens. Tory Wets. Liberals. Everyone.

I think there should even be electoral pacts before the next polling day in which these other individuals stand down instead of the Labour Party. Cynics would say that there is no evidence that the Labour Party would do any better. But Labour are at least committed to the idea that they ought to govern, rather than allow a free-for-all in which we are dependent on whims of multi-national companies and the security provided by private insurance schemes. Unless we all decide to vote Labour — we the majority who are not committed to Conservatism come what may — we face a future with dud trains, dud libraries, dud museums, dud hospitals, and the poor getting poorer — sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything.