Another voice

Now let's bomb Russia

Auberon Waugh

T ike many if not most Spectator readers La I imagined that Kenny Everett was a famous footballer, and so was rather shock- ed to learn that he had shouted 'Let's bomb Russia' at a pre-election Conservative rally. Taken at its face value, it was plainly a most immoral suggestion, as well as an impru- dent one. Famous footballers, with their huge following among the impressionable, are expected to take a more statesmanlike view of public affairs. If they are prepared to lend their enormous prestige to one party or another in a general election, they should be sure to do so within the framework o f

i civic responsibility which their situation in life demands.

It was only when Labour spokesmen, at their wits' end for a new scare in the dying days of the campaign, started treating Mr Everett's proposal as yet another leaked Item in the Tories' secret manifesto' that I Inquired more closely and learned that far from being a famous footballer, Kenny Everett was a professional comedian. He h. ad been making a joke. And a very good Joke, too, I would say. Far the best of the campaign. It mocked not only the preposterous at- titudes adopted by Labour as they saw the campaign going against them. Mr Healey, it may be remembered, speaking at Southport, claimed that the the three Priorities of a newly elected Conservative government, intent on creating a breakdown of society and collapse of law and order, would be: `Destroy the national health services: destroy free education: and rob the elderly and mothers and families by cutting pensions and ending child benefit'. Mr Neil Kinnock warned of `Thatcher totalitarianism' while Mr Arthur Scargill, bless him, solemnly warned his moronic northern followers that the Conservatives were 'preparing for war' .

But Mr Everett's joke was not only on these people, or on the unspeakable Gerald Curly' Kaufman, who appeared on televi- sion next morning to tell the wise and good Sir Peregrine Worsthorne to wipe the smile off his face: civil war was imminent among the 22,460 half-wits and dupes who had voted Kaufman in Manchester. The joke was also against the rabbit voices which had been urging that a Tory landslide `could unleash the forces of illiberalism lying not far beneath the surface of modern Conser- vatism'. But above all the joke was a celebration of the fact that Conservatives need no longer discuss their philosophies or hopes for the future in apologetic or petulant tones. The country has had a long, hard look at the socialist alternative — the first time it has ever been offered such a choice, nationally, at a general election and decided, apart from a few backward pockets of northern England, Scotland and South Wales, that it does not want anything to do with it. Praise the Lord and pass the wine. Now let's bomb Russia. Let's hang Shirley Williams. Let's throw 'Curly' Kaufman into the Thames and see if he floats.

Mrs Thatcher has done none of these things yet, but she has appointed Mr Lawson Chancellor of the Exchequer and made Mr Whitelaw a hereditary viscount.

That is not a bad start. In other cir- cumstances, I would have said that she had announced the re-creation of hereditary peerages rather cleverly, slipping it in im- mediately after a general election, during a Cabinet reshuffle on the eve of the opposi- tion leader's resignation so that practically nobody noticed. Mr Foot had no time to say how it reminded him of the worst ex-

cesses of the Fascist government of Ger- many before the war — Hitler was forever creating hereditary peerages — and the Sunday Times did not even have time to compose a damp, illiterate editorial on the subject, at any rate in my edition.

But what a magnificent step forward it is! Need Conservatives, in these new cir-

cumstances, really be so hangdog about

their healthy appetites? Would it not have been better to announce Mr Whitelaw's vis-

countcy with a great fanfare of trumpets, parting high red curtains to reveal the new peer waddling around centre stage in cor- onet and ermine-lined velvet robes? It is an

historic moment, when we must all look at ourselves anew. Which of us are viscon- tabile? Perhaps at 43 1 am too old to start

kissing babies. Lawson was a mere 38 when he started kissing them in Slough. Damn, damn, damn. But it could not have happen- ed to a nicer or more deserving person than Mr Whitelaw whose affability and loyalty in 28 years of service have always been con- spicuous.

Nigel Lawson now becomes the second editor of the Spectator in succession to have

been made Chancellor of the Exchequer.

His editorship was crowned by my own ap- pointment as political correspondent in

1967, for which he rescued me from the Daily Mirror when I was not doing much good. He is unquestionably a man of high

intelligence, although capable of occasional errors of judgment. People complain of an

arrogant manner, although 1 would prefer to call it awkward: there may be a touch of

coldness in his nature, but not cruelty. Is he capable of making the great intellectual quantum leap necessary to scatter plenty o'er a smiling land and read his history in a nation's eyes? All he needs to do is to disregard the snarls and whines of socialist rhetoric to see that there is very little popular demand for the punitive element in personal taxation and none at all among his own people, the Conservative voters. Fiscally, it is irrelevant, but its effect on the morale of the country is enormous and crip- pling; it spreads apathy, despair, cynicism and dishonesty all over the land. It also has the unhealthy effect of destroying the in- dividual social conscience.

Perhaps Mr Lawson is the man to lead the Conservative Party into its new dawn of self-awareness: 'We are here to provide for all those who are stronger and less hungry, less battered and less crippled than outselves. That is our only certain, good and great purpose on earth'.

If Norman Mailer's summary of Michael Foot's political philosophy does not stand on its head very convincingly for the Tories, that is because the Left has conned us into accepting its own recklessness and spite as being somehow admirable. In my wildest moments, I never supposed that Labour would secure fewer than eight and a half million votes last Thursday. The great message must be that socialism now has nothing whatever to contribute to the na- tional debate. It has said everything it has to say and been proved wrong. The only in- tellectual debate of any interest is that among non-socialists, but we may doubt whether the Conservative Party is up to it, especially now they are all angling for jobs and eventual viscountcies.

The rest of the Honours List was describT ed by the Daily Mirror as one of the dullest ever, despite the knighthood award to one of the Sunday Mirror's columnists. We are painfully accustomed on the Spectator to Mrs Thatcher's continuing vendetta against the wise and good Sir Peregrine, but who on earth put it into her head to honour the abject and pathetic Stephen Spender?

Such little mark as Spender ever made on English letters was made in the 1930s, when he was an extraordinarily maladroit pro- pagandist for Soviet communism. In 55 years of writing poetry, he has not written a single line which anybody remembers, but has somehow managed to survive, leech- like, drawing a livelihood from the literary endeavours of his betters.

There is one line of his which is sometimes quoted, and which is said to be in verse: `I think continually of those who were truly great'. The sentiment was more happily expressed in Ecclesiasticus iv, 4: `Let us now praise famous men' — and better adapted to the modern idiom by Kipling in Stalky & Co. But it is a healthy enough subject for the contemplation of Spender and his ilk. I only wish that Mrs Thatcher's Patronage Secretary, whoever he is, could follow suit.