Another Voice
Do as you would be done by
Auberon Waugh
Three things happened last week to convince me that law and order have broken down in the country. We have been lulled for so long by the voices of Ronald Butt and Bernard Levin warning of the terrible consequences if it ever did break down, that nobody bothers to remark that it has already done so. Yet before we can examine any logical response to the existing situation, we must surely fix in our minds two important developments: that the law, to the extent that it impinges on the life of the country at all, is now run by bandits for the benefit of bandits and is organised into a protection racket for the annihilation of any citizen who utters a scream of protest; and that the revenue of this country is now largely raised by a system of random forays, backed by threats of violence, blackmail and usurpation, inspired by the personal animosities of the Revenue men concerned.
The first of these observations is not a particularly original one, but it is important to fix it in mind when considering one's response to the second. Last week, by some accident or other, a solicitor's bill arrived on my desk which was not intended for me. Perhaps someone hoped I would pay it in an absent-minded moment. I don't know. I do not propose to identify the firm of solicitors, which probably charged no more than the going rate for the issue involved. Suffice to say that it dealt with an application for leave to appeal to the House of Lords. Although the case did not involve me in any way, it was known to me and I judged the application a sensible one, referring as it did to a Court of Appeal decision which had plainly been based on a misunderstanding of facts before the Court.
At any event, the application came up before their Lordships who, after an hour and a half or so of deliberation, decided to reject it. Possibly they were suffering from wind, or feeling their age. I don't know or care about the reasons for this particular decision; my main point concerns the bill which through, as I say, some error or other, has landed on my desk: it is for the sum of £2424.57, and deals exclusively with this application for leave to appeal.
These,! must emphasise, are not the costs of an unsuccessful appeal, but the costs of unsuccessful application for permission to appeal. Since the House of Lords is the highest tribunal in the land, the Law can have no more to say on the matter. The Law has also, as far as I am concerned, given a final judgment on itself.
There is nothing new in this. It has been common knowledge for as long as I can remember that only lunatics or multimillionaires go to law unless somebody else is paying the costs. I merely emphasise this state of affairs for the light it throws on my second subject, new developments in the field of Revenue collection. Here two stories came my way last week, both concerning Somerset tradesmen.
The first is a man who positively revels in the accountancy side of his business. When Inland Revenue officers descended on him one day out of the blue and said they wished to go over his returns for the past ten years, he was surprised but had all the papers available. Confidence in his own honesty and more important accounting ability even lent a certain enviable selfrighteousness to his dealings with the tax men. Although they have now 'retired to consider their findings and no statement has been made, it seems likely that they have found nothing and the only solid result of their visitation on this tradesman will have been about £600 paid by him in extra accountants' fees and hour after hour after hour of his time wasted on it. When they had been with him for some time, and after it appeared they had no particular idea of what they were looking for, he asked one of the officers informally why he had been chosen. The officer gave him to understand that a decision had been taken at some level slightly above his own to 'clamp down' on small businesses.
In other words, the Revenue was engaged in a simple harassing operation. Since no mention of such a policy was contained in the Labour election manifesto of 1974, and no such policy has been declared since, one can only suppose that it originates from within the Department, and that it derives from the policy of Mr Cyril Plant, former general secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, which he declared at the Trades Union Congress of 1976: 'With all the means at our disposal we must destroy the capacity to pursue self-employment.'
My second example is more disturbing. It concerns a working man who in the last ten years of his active life achieved his own business. It was not a tremendous success and seldom made more than 11000 a year profit. He lacked the first example's enthusiasm for paper work, and possibly breathed a small sigh of relief when his accounts were passed at the end of the year.
On hearing that he was to retire, Revenue officers descended and demanded to see his accounts for the past ten years. He gaped. They produced a demand, apparently out of the blue, for £14000 in back-taxes. Asked to itemise, they declined to do so, but hinted that they had a right to charge him income tax based on sales at a higher price than he had charged, and on assumed sales of
perishable goods he had thrown away. When he pointed out that his only asset was the bungalow in which he lived, and if be sold that the welfare would have to house him, they summoned him to a meeting at which he was required to list every object he or his wife possessed ring, clothes, bedlinen and everything else. As his accountant attended this meeting, I can only assume it was all above board. Eventually they found that he had received a small legacy from his mother about £1000 the previous year, and this was still untouched as he had been waiting to redecorate his bungalow. With amazing speed they adjusted the figure of their tax demand to the figure of the legacY, said 'Thank you very much' and left leaving him, and this is the real horror of the story, immensely relieved.
None of us can apply to the Law for protection against this form of banditrY, because the Law is on its side. But if our methods of Revenue collection are returning to the system of capricious foraYs associated with twelfth-century robber barons we must remember these robber barons had an advantage not enjoyed by the 60,584 members of Mr Cyril Plant's union that they lived in moated castles. But tax officers who have declared a war to death against one particular section of society, and a section which is far more numerous than their own expect to live side by side in perfect harmony with their victims, their children going to the smile schools, their wives singing in the same Amateur Operatic Societies. Their miscalculation strikes me as a fairlY elementary one and I think it might be a good idea if groups of concerned selfemployed activists took to calling on thein at their homes and explaining it. Mr Plant himself advertised his home address in Who's Who it is `Longridge', !9 Montacute Road, Lewes, Sussex (te'e. phone Lewes 2556) but it would not be difficult for groups of the self-employed i° every area to find out the names, addresses,' schools and outside activities of Inlanu
Revenue Staff families. of
Of course, I can't bear the thought anything beastly happening to the kiddies al school, but fortunately other children d° not suffer from these squeamish inhibitions; and the first basis of any social contract ": long before greedy trade unionists unscrupulous lawyers moved on to th Id scene has always been 'Do as yoU wou„", be done by'. You burn down my house, I burn down yours. Since the Law now Pr° vides no protection, the time maysol arrive (oh dear) when people may wonde, whether the obstinate weeds in certa": neighbours' gardens would be cured bY wholesale application of sodium chlorateci whether their fire control systems nee _ testing; whether their wives and daughter; need a taste of female liberation; whethe_ their marital bed might be improved by Mn artistic disembowlmeni of their Pet Seai lyham on the pillows. I hope not -Oh dear' do hope not.
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