15 OCTOBER 1983, Page 6

Another voice

Never the twain shall meet

Auberon Waugh

Apicture from last week's Labour conference haunts me. It appeared in Friday's Daily Express and showed Neil Kin- nock in the midst of his various triumphs and disappointments in Brighton kissing a nurse identified as Sister Hazel Hall from a hospital in Newhaven. Her hospital, we are told, is 'threatened by health cuts'. He is kissing her on the lips. Her eyes are closed, her face rapt. Plainly, she is concentrating on the kiss to the exclusion of everything else, although the photograph is too blurred for us to be able to gauge exactly the degree of intimacy achieved between them. Presumably they have never met before this moment — in fact she is welcoming him on his arrival at the hospital.

No doubt elements in the Labour Party conference would have been appalled by the scene, had they been present, and denounc- ed their new leader for sexist filth, treating women as sex-objects and all the rest of it. Of course they have a point. There are women around in the Labour movement whom even the most chivalrous leader of the party treates as a sex-object at his peril. But to the rest of us it was rather an affec- ting sight — the young Prince accepting tribute from his followers.

At a time when it is fashionable to say that the Labour Party is finished, both elec- torally and as an alternative economic and social philosophy, I never cease to be amaz- ed by the size of Kinnock's army, and im- pressed by its abiding moral certainties. I am not talking about Yorkshire miners, or the unemployed of South Wales, Merseyside, Newcastle, Glasgow and points north, or, indeed, about any of the surviv- ing outposts of the traditional working class. I am talking about the nurses, teachers, social workers, university and polytechnic staffs, National Health techni- cians and the rest of the huge army of educated and nearly educated government employees whose adherence to the Left is as instinctive and unquestioning as any Welsh miner's ever was.

One does not need to be convinced, as I am, that socialism is a great mistake to see that these people have their bread buttered on that side. But so is the bread of the na- tion's sixth-formers and university students buttered on that side, and they show no in- clination to accept the doctrines of state paternalism in the same unquestioning way. Similarly there is a pronounced tendency among the nation's clergymen and religious leaders - not just the Catholics, as I may have suggested last week — and, indeed, among the old rich, to follow social workers and polytechnic lecturers down the same primose path, and their bread cannot possibly be said to be buttered on that side. A cynic might point out that the dependence of sixth-formers and university students on state aid is only temporary, and they are probably too goofy to identify their own interest in any case; while clergymen, being on the whole rather an idle collection of people, are only too happy to see the Government take over social responsibilities which were formerly their own domain. The social gospel, as they call it, is now fulfilled by urging the Govern- ment to spend more and more money on ex- alting every valley, making every mountain and hill as low as circumstances allow. Similarly, I suppose, the old rich have been so much enfeebled by generations of dependence on others, their sense of justice so much brutalised by the cruel and un- natural system of primogeniture, that they have no intelligent confidence in their right to exist. Shocked by the hatred and envy which their privileged position excites, they tend to adopt the easiest way out of it.

But none of these explanations really covers the fervour of Mr Kinnock's army, nor its certainty in the assumption of moral superiority. One can explain its attitude in socio-economic terms, and one can ques- tions its right to any such assumption — this passionate concern for the weak, the underprivileged and the sick on the part of the 'caring professions' is not so much in evidence during their frequent and usually unsuccessful strikes for better pay — but one cannot deny the existence of these moral certainties. Nor, increasingly, can one argue against them, pointing out that more spending on the social, education and health services will do no good to anyone and probably much harm. This is not just because the two halves of educated (and semi-educated) Britain talk a different language: they also have a completely dif- ferent perception of the world around them.

The most extreme example of this alter- native perception is suppled, like so many of the better things of life, by the glorious John Pilger. To him — and I know better than to question the motives of this transparently honest rich man — Britain is indeed a country where the poor starve in damp, cockroach-infested hovels while the rich dance nightly to the strains of the Eton Boating Song. In a memorable portrait of Britain which appeared in the New York Times two days before the last election, Mr Pilger revealed: 'Of immigrant families I have interviewed, none allow their children to play outside, none has escaped at least one firebombing, none bother to call the police for fear of being arrested themselves on a bogus charge.'

It would be unjust to lumber all those good clergyment and headmasters with Mr Pilger's first-hand perception of immigrant conditions in this country. Obviously, some blacks live in fear, some whites live in poor, even deplorable, housing conditions. But to pretend that these people represent a significant proportion of the population, or that they add up to an important blot on the society in which they live, requires a deliberate — I would say perverse — act of faith, a reversal of all the ordinary human processes of perception, deduction and understanding.

Yet this army of Kinnock-kissers un- doubtedly believes quite sincerely that Mrs Thatcher is a very evil woman, that those who support her are selfish and vile. By blowing on the fires of their indignation, they cannot see the real nature of their own society, almost entirely geared to saving the weak, the unfortunate and the sick. Nor could they ever understand that if the strong, the lucky and the healthy are to continue to shoulder this burden, comprising not only the unfortunates themselves but also the massive army of the 'caring professions' who minister to their misfortune, then they must be allowed .a little space of their own to kick their heels in.

If there is already little enough com- munication between the two sides, the gap is widening. Mr Kinnock's army sees it as a crime calling out to heaven for vengeance that some children can afford to go on skiing holidays, others can't; some children have worse conditions for their homework than others; some have better hospital treat- ment, some people own their homes, others don't. Never has the parable of the labourers in the vineyard fallen on stonier ground, and Jesus seems to have changed sides.

But the chief complaint now seems to be that those with the most jaundiced view of our society have least opportunity to ex- press their point of view. Apart from the Daily Mirror, the Guardian, the Sunday Mirror, the People, the New Statesman, a few fringe publications and television documentary makers, apart from half the pulpits, many of the classrooms and higher education lecture halls, they are effectively gagged.

So now Mr Kinnock's army plans to launch its own newspaper, even to buy its own London theatre, to give expression to its particular point of view. This may well prove the final monument to the lack of communication between the two sides. We cannot talk to them, they cannot talk to us. They find us disgusting in our selfishness, we find them boring and incomprehensible in their wrong-headedness. Let us retire to our separate corners, and allow the ballot boxes to decide.