14 OCTOBER 1995, Page 28

AND ANOTHER THING

Jane Austen: not only a 'woman for the Nineties' but for the next government, too

PAUL JOHNSON

Jane Austen could well help Tony Blair to win the coming election. It may seem odd to say it, and the lady herself might have been surprised (though not, as I shall explain, displeased). But it is true.

Let me explain. JA has rightly been described as the 'hottest literary property today', not just in Britain but in Continen- tal regions and even across the Atlantic. A fascinating article by Brooke Allen in the current number of the New Criterion, America's best cultural review, hails her as `a woman for the Nineties', examines her growing readership among fellow citizens of all races and brows, reflected in the cur- rent rash of television and films, including the outstanding pastiche, Clueless, and rates her as the most persistently attractive of all novelists. In Britain what strikes us most is the paradoxically classless appeal of this most class-conscious writer in a country where class is normally a divisive force. But JA unites in the way the monarchy used to do before it was besmirched by the younger generation of royals.

JA unites us for many reasons, in the way that all great artists do, but the underlying one is that she makes the family seem important, central to the whole tragicome- dy of life, tiresome and maddening maybe, but also comforting, secure-making and in the last resort the only thing you can really rely on. JA had no illusions about the fami- ly, of course, — she had no illusions about anything — and she presented it in some of its least attractive guises. The gruesome meanness which a family may breed is the mechanism of Sense and Sensibility. She shows in Persuasion how the Elliot family disintegrates as a result of snobbery and vanity. The Bennet family in Pride and Prej- udice and the Bertrams in Mansfield Park reel under the blows unintentionally deliv- ered by weak or foolish or blind parents, and the evil inflicted on family life by a monster (General Tiltey in Northanger Abbey) or a self-indulgent nonentity (Mr Woodhouse in Emma) is ruthlessly exposed. But all these families heal them- selves in the end and it is precisely their ability to do so which gives JA's oeuvre its strength and cohesion.

Her Letters are a striking commentary on this central truth, for amid all the inconse- quential chatter there is an underlying, unspoken assertion that the family is the web and the woof of the good life. Without the family, where would Jane be — or any of the Austens? Or society as a whole? Or England?

A yearning for the stability and power of the family is the key to JA's extraordinary popularity today. And it is because Tony Blair is beginning to feel his way towards JA's position on the family that the same forces are making him popular too. What Blair is discovering — and the process is fascinating to observe — is that many of the most serious problems of modern Britain stem directly from the weakening of the family, and that our hugely expensive efforts to solve them have actually made them worse precisely because they have undermined family ties still further. We have to begin not by treating the symptoms but by getting at the real cause. If we heal the family and make it healthy and vigorous again, many of the symptoms of national sickness will automatically disappear, and the rest can be isolated and dealt with.

It was JA's contemporary, Coleridge, who pointed out the connection between family and national health. You might say he was the last one to preach, since he made a mess of his own family life. But it was because he was conscious of this and felt all the bitterness of guilt that he was able to see so clearly why family was the integument of society. He never made the mistake of so many intellectuals of his day (and since) of loving mankind in general but devaluing human beings in particular, or of seeing humanitarianism and devotion to the family as opposites. The family, he argued, was not a reactionary institution: personal affections at the family level were the key to any true progressive instincts. They expand 'like the circles of a Lake the Love of our Friends, parents and neigh- bours leads us to the love of Country, to 'It's a bit thin.' the love of all Mankind. The intensity of private attachment encourages, not pre- vents universal philanthropy.'

This is, or ought to be, the philosophy of any good Conservative government, indeed of any good government whatever. Yet the damage inflicted on the family under the present government, partly because of its actions or omissions, is immense. Blair sees this clearly because his own springs of polit- ical action are family-based. On education, about which he cares most passionately, he argues thus: 'This is what I want for my own children because I consider it is the best for them. How, then, can government make it available for all children?' The same principle applies to health, housing, job opportunities, indeed to all the funda- mental desiderata.

Such an approach ought to be the Con- servative approach, but it is not. They choose, instead, to fling wide the gates to the Meltors and the Archers, and to the hard-faced men who are looting the public utilities. Blair, by contrast, wants to get back to the simple ideology of the family. The Tories were panicking this week in Blackpool because Blair is stealing from them the crime issue, and patriotism, the Union Jack and anything else which isn't nailed down. But, more important than all of these, is that he is putting himself for- ward as the natural choice to head a nation which is no longer seen as a collection of classes but as an immense aggregation of families. He looks young to be the archetype British paterfamilias but he is growing rapidly into the role.

JA would have approved of him, I think, for one specific reason. What most attract- ed her in men — this comes out strongly in her letters as well as her novels — was nat- ural good manners, reflecting an unaffected and manly but courteous and chivalrous spirit. Tony Blair has the best manners I have come across in a politician for a very long time. It is the first thing you notice when you have dealings with him. No doubt he wants to please — what politician does not? — but in his case the politeness is instinctive and habitual and genuine. And it is linked to his belief in the family, for it is good families — of all classes and income groups — which breed good manners. That would be a point JA would note in apprais- ing Blair.

A man for all seasons? Perhaps. But cer- tainly a man for all families.