Another voice

Sloth

Auberon Waugh

' If the Fourth Commandment is reject- ed by the State, what hope is there for the rest?' demanded Mr William Benyon, Conservative MP for Buckingham, debating the Shops Bill on Friday night. As most people will be aware, the Private Member's Bill to remove restrictions on Sunday trading was defeated on a free vote by 205 votes to 106.

I was not present at the debate, and take Mr Benyon's words from the front page of Saturday's Daily Telegraph. If the Telegraph had them right, Mr Benyon would appear to have got his Command- ments ' muddled. The Fourth Command- ment, in fact, enjoins us to honour our fathers and our mothers, as any educated person must be aware who is not an MP try- ing to drum up the sabbatarian vote in Buckingham rather late in the evening.

The reason given for this Fourth Com- mandment (Exodus xx, 12) is that by honouring our fathers and mothers we will ensure a long life for ourselves when our own turn comes to find the kosher beef estouffack hard going. In its way, it reflects the precept do-as-you-would-be-done-by which is generally taken as the basis for modern secular ethics, and is held, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew vii, 12) to summarise the law and the prophets. But the injunction to honour one's father and one's mother, although eminently sensible, is not enshrined in British law — so far as I know it never has been — nor is it accepted by the State.

In fact very few of the Ten Command- ments are accepted by the State. Strange gods and graven images are tolerated, neither swearing nor adultery is forbidden, nobody is required to honour his father or mother. So far from its being a crime to covet one's neighbour's wife, it is generally thought good manners to put up a pretence of coveting her, while the sin of coveting a neighbour's goods has been elevated by much modern Christian theology, let alone by the law of the land, into a major civic virtue; rechristened 'standing up for your rights', or less selfishly 'concern for social justice', it is now one of the few dynamics of the modern democratic State.

What on earth did Mr William Benyon think he was talking about? Of all the Ten Commandments, and apart from the strange anomaly of Sunday shopping, only three are enshrined in our laws — the in- junctions against murder, theft and per- jury. Was Mr Benyon seriously arguing that if Sunday shopping restrictions are lifted, the State will also be tempted to lift its pro- hibitions on murder, theft and perjury? If

so, by what perversion of the rules of or- dinary human politeness was the House prepared to sit and listen to him? Why do the newspapers repeat it as if he had made a valid debating point?

To some extent, I suppose, the phenomenon can be explained by the Englishman's traditional respect for other people's sincerely held opinions. It has always been a bit of a Bloody Fools' Charter, that one, as the nation's bloody fools know only too well. They have only to take their pipes out of their disgusting, nicotine-stained teeth, wave the dribbling stem stem around a little, and say: 'Yes, but I happen to be of the sincere opinion that ....' Then a respectful hush falls upon the company while the bloody fool cere- moniously lifts his tail like a cow in the milking parlour: any amount of nauseating drivel pours out to make cowpats all around; we walk into these cowpats at our peril.

The first thing to learn about Sincere Opinions is that they are not opinions at all. They are not the product of any identifiable reasoning process. When anybody is asked to explain one, it is immediately apparent that the steps by which he has reached it are even more asinine than the Sincere Opinion itself. One may suspect that the reasons given for these passionately held beliefs (or fatuous opinions) are seldom the real ones, but in Britain it is considered libellous to speculate about a person's real (as opposed to avowed) reasons for anything. Nor can I think of any reason, even a libellous one, for Mr Benyon's religious objections to voluntary shop-opening on Sunday except that, through no fault of his own, he is a prize ass. It is true that the Bible suggests observance of the Sabbath should be ex- tended to man-servants, maid-servants, cat- tle and strangers within the gates, but it also forbids the eating of pigs, rabbits, prawns, lobsters, owls, cuckoos and tortoises, while encouraging people to eat locusts, beetles and grasshoppers (Leviticus xi). Perhaps, if he has good luck in the ballot for Private Members' Bills next time round, he will see fit to enact all this.

Bloody fools have as many rights as anyone else, even if I would dispute that one of them is the unqualified right to a respectful hearing: there is little to be gain- ed by inviting those incapable of rational discussion to take part in it. But nobody can seriously argue that bloody fools should be encouraged to impose their ghastly opi- nions on the rest of us through the democratic process. 1 have dealt at such length with Mr Benyon's objection to the Shops Bill because I suspect that it is the on- ly one which might appeal to a few Spec- tator readers. Obviously he has a perfect constitutional right to vote for his own sincerely held opinions. 1 just wonder what Conservatives in Buckinghamshire feel like when they have to vote for this clown.

Conservatives in Hove have another pro- blem. Their constituency association has chosen to present them with a grocer for candidate in Mr Timothy Sainsbury. Perhaps he is a rich grocer, which is pro- bably better than a poor grocer, although Chesterton did not agree:

But who hath seen the Grocer Treat housemaids to his teas Or crack a bottle of fish-sauce Or stand a man a cheese?

Mr Sainsbury's objections, like those of the other grocers and grocers' friends who voted against the Bill, were founded on the extreme inconvenience of opening his shops on Sundays. In an ideal world, of course, all grocers would refuse to do so, but a few would inevitably break ranks and then he would have to open, too, for fear of losing custom. The 152 Labour MPs, led by Mr Foot, who responded to USDAW's call to oppose the Bill, were slightly less frank in pandering to the sloth of the shop assistants. If passed, the Bill would have led

to higher food prices, said USDAW as, indeed, it undoubtedly would have, but on- ly because the union insisted on them.

`The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns' (Proverbs xv, 19). 'The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour' (ibid xxi, 25).

Are the British, I wonkier, now the laziest people on earth? Opinion polls show that a huge majority of the population — some 13 per cent — would welcome Sunday shopp- ing. The House of Commons, being more than anything else a vehicle for special in- terest groups, rejected the measure by 205 votes to 106. But however much one may berate the stupidity of the unions for en- couraging the more vociferously lazY among their members to shape their policY — an idle man, as we all know, is an unhap- py man, and I attribute almost all the misery behind the Women's Movement to the fact that so many women have nothing to do — and however much we berate grocers and MPs and grocer-MPs for the same reason, the fact remains that they are not the worst offenders. Why do the rest of us put up with Mr William Benyon as our representative? The nation's lazy people are more energetic in defence of their own laziness than the rest of us are on the opposite side. While we complain bitterly about being governed by idle grocers, greedy shop- assistants and roaming, demented bloody fools we are none of us — least of all me -- prepared to do anything about it. 'By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through' (Ecclesiastes x, 18).