Afterthought
By ALAN BRIEN
WHENEVER I ask myself (as 1 do every Wednesday morning in the Spectator office and every Friday morning in the Sunday Telegraph office) why I am a journalist, why I sit in a funk of sweat. dyspepsia and paralysis, when I could so successfully earn my living as Controller of BBC-2, Minister for the Arts or Chairman of British Rail, I come up with the sante answer. Much as I hate writing, I hate every alternative form of gainful employment even more. If I were not occupied writing for the newspapers. I would be neglecting my job to Write to the newspapers. Last week I was seized by the urge to send letters to their Editors about articles published by two friends of mine. It was only a mild seizure and instantly blocked by the realisation that 1 would be giving them free material which would be paid for by the Spec- talc».
rhe first article, by Bernard Levin, appeared In the New Statesman, Mr. Levin's thesis was that the country was disintegrating because of our oonsensical attitude to class. Mr. Levin's solution %vas the abolition of Buckingham Palace, the honours system, the House of Lords, the public ehools, Oxford and Cambridge, White's Club, the Guards. The Times, and perhaps Kingsley Amis. At first glance, this seems like a revo- lutionary programme which I ought to support. Apart from Oxford and Amis, the disappearance Of each and every one would not seriously lolpoverish my life nor Mr. Levin's. But this may he a weakness rather than a strength of the pro- gramme. The moral position of the reformer is always undermined when it becomes apparent that he is damning only the sins he has no mind to. I note the omission of privately-owned news- papers and television stations—does Mr. Levin also advocate the expropriation of Mr. Bern- %lein's Granada TV and Mr. Woodrow Wyatt's lianbury Guardian? Would Mr. Levin still 4PPear in Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail six or stven times a week if it were a public corporation
under Sir Hugh Greene as Editor General? And arc not the expensive restaurants as much class fortresses as the expensive clubs? Must Mr. Levin in self-denial give up swelling the profits of the White Tower, the Etoile and the Savoy Grill?
Our Savonarola rightly points out that the class system is underpinned by money. Remove that and the structure falls in on the heads of the inhabitants. He proposes to strike at the founda- tions by the odd device of outlawing the inherit- ance of fortunes. It will, apparently, be permitted for individuals to enrich themselves at the ex- pense of the community, by every anti-social device of chicanery and spivvery, so long as they do not pass the loot on to their children. 'King for a day' has always been a romantic dream of the poor. 'Millionaire for a generation' does not sound all that bleak and egalitarian. And it is, of course, a petty restriction on capital accumula- tion which is, in any realistic terms, unenforce- able. How would the revenue agents prevent the rich endowing their families during their life- time?
But then Mr. Levin himself more or less ad- mits that his programme is merely a paper petard whose explosion releases only a few sharp-edged adjectives. 'Not only will none of these things be done,' he remarks; 'most people who read this will conclude that I am joking. And perhaps I am.' In passing he rebukes the Daily Mirror, with some justice, for being a 'repository of fake radicalism and spurious classlessness.' The irony is that his article (minus that comment) could have been published as a centre-page spread of 'fearless outspokenness' in thatpaper. Radicals should be concerned with digging up roots, not pruning suckers. Mr. Levin would do well to re-read the best manual on social gardening ever written— Marx's Communist Manifesto of 1848—where he will find his policy devastatingly criticised in Chapter III, section 2. The second article, by Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph, is almost the mirror-image of Mr. Levin's. Here we learn that the country is disintegrating because of the weakness of the class system. And what has poisoned this healthy segregation of gents and players? The expense account, which has 'produced all the vices of
inequality without any of its virtues' and is a direct result of Socialism. The effect of permitting a businessman to entertain at no cost to himself is, he says, to develop in him superficial tastes of the gentleman without actually becom- ing one . .' The purpose of the expense account, he continues, was the good old Socialist principle of ensuring that everyone 'was author- ised to spend money only for the purpose of earning money.'
Mr. Worsthorne's main complaint (I take the accusation of Socialism to be simply a result of his well-known infatuation with the paradox) is that expense-account man could only live, with ele- gance and taste, in public. The paintings on the wall, the entourage of servants, secretaries and doormen, the elaborate cuisine, the cocktails and aperitifs, the boxes at the opera were all confined to his office day. At home (and connoisseurs of Mr. Worsthorne's fantasy world of modern living will relish the details) he slaves at the kitchen sink, drinks South African sherry, permits his wife only 'a herring' for lunch, carries coke for the boiler, as 'just another suburban father.' On a simple point of domestic financing, one might ask whether the end of his expense account would leave him more money for indulging his family with 'old silver, good claret, deferential and dextrous buttling, oil pantings,' etc., or less?
But let us carry the attack on the expense ac- count to the top of the class pyramid. Some Tories have, quite pertinently, asked whether the Prime Minister will give up his tax-free allow- ance for entertaining. I would like to go one giant step higher and ask, impertinently, whether the Queen's position as the fount of honour, and epitome of nobility, is not also endangered by her expense account? By Mr. Worsthorne's logic, it surely should be. According to Anthony Samp- son's invaluable, newly-revised Anatomy of Britain Today, her allowance is £475,000 a year, other members of • the Royal Family receive £166,000 a year, and the Royal Palaces cost £781,000 a year—a total bill to the taxpayer of about two million pounds. Is this not, in Mr. Worsthorne's phrase, creating a 'privileged elite subsidised by the State'? If it is true that her personal fortune amounts to £50 million or £60 million, should she not escape contact with these socialist devices and live on the interest? (At 5 per cent this would meet the annual cost, with half a million left over each year against the day Bernard Levin comes to power.) But perhaps the unmistakable sign of a journalist is the habit of taking other journalists seriously.
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