ANOTHER VOICE
Western Europe ripe to be raped and lowering its defences
AUBERON WAUGH
Ihave often suspected that Mrs Thatcher has a higher opinion of the British electo- rate than I do. In my years as a political correspondent, it was seldom enough that I detected the ancient refrain among politi- cians odi profanum vulgus et arceo — perhaps once or twice, in off-the-cuff or unguarded asides from Mr Hogg, as he then was, or Mr Healey. Others claim to have detected hints of it from Mr Crosland and Sir Keith Joseph, but perhaps these reflected no more than the impatience of superior minds. But Mrs Thatcher gives the impression of actually believing all the soupy noises which Conservative politi- cians have felt bound to make about the average British voter through the ages: his manliness, patriotism, ability to see through humbug, her thrift in household management, overriding desire for security and resolute common sense.
Perhaps Mrs Thatcher is overwhelmed by admiration for the British electorate in acknowledgment of its wisdom in having elected her in two general elections. I confess I was pretty overcome by emotion when I learned that 79 electors in North Devon had used the rare opportunity which our democracy affords them for choosing a new government to vote for me and the Dog Lovers' Party in the General Election of 1979. What splendid people those 79 must be, I thought. Multiply that feeling by a factor of some 164,716 to arrive at the figure of 13,012,602 people who voted for Mrs Thatcher in 1983 and one can understand why she might have an even higher opinion of the British electo- rate than I have.
In urging her to concentrate instead on the 17,658,303 people who voted against her, of which 7,780,587 voted for the dreaded Alliance, I might be accused of wetness, defeatism or a mischievous desire to cause sorrow and anxiety. But I am convinced that if the Conservative Party makes defence a key issue of the next election, it will be making the mistake of its life, and possibly the mistake of all our lives.
Some years ago Professor Michael Ho- ward wrote that the European peace move- ments here 'sent a signal both to Moscow and to the United States not simply that the people of Western Europe are not prepared to defend themselves with nuc- lear weapons, but that they are not pre- pared to defend themselves at all: a signal that would create a quite terrifying degree of instability by presenting the leaders of the Soviet Union with options that hitherto have been firmly closed to them.'
Professor Howard may detect these mes- sages emanating from the European peace movements. I detect them emanating to a quite extraordinary degree from the British people as a whole. People will say I am wrong, and that opinion polls, even among Labour voters, show a fairly solid bias against unilateral disarmament and retreat from Nato. Those, indeed, continue to be the noises most people make when asked for an opinion. But the simple truth of the matter is that until now there has been bipartisan agreement on the subject. No democratic electorate has ever been seriously asked whether it endorses the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (or Mad) on which our security depends, and will continue to depend until the unlikely arrival of a credible anti-ballistic missile system to make war slightly more likely.
The Soviet Union, of course, will never have to ask its citizens for their opinion on the matter. Possibly the Americans, being a more logical nation than ours, would endorse it. But not even the Americans, I imagine, if asked in a referendum whether they would sooner be dead than red would come up with the answer which is essential to the maintenance of the strategic nuclear deterrent. And that is the form the ques- tion will take, I suspect, if defence is made the key issue of the next election.
Of course the question is a dishonest one. The choice is not between being dead or red, but between the remote possibility of being dead against the virtual certainty of being red if we lower our shield. But others would deny this in good faith, 'This device can zap a peace initiative from orbit.' maintaining that the choice was between the virtual certainty of a nuclear holocaust if we proceed with either Mad or Star Wars against the remote possibility of having a government just a weeny bit to the left of what we would actually prefer if we had the choice. Life at any rate would continue under communism: the flowers would bloom in the spring, young lovers would hold hands in the People's Recreational Facility. . . .
The argument that Britain's withdrawal from the defensive alliance against the Warsaw Pact, and declaring herself a 'nuc- lear free zone', would actually increase the danger of nuclear war, with ourselves caught up in it, may be sound enough in many of its aspects, but it is much too sophisticated, I would judge, for the aver- age British voter.
Perhaps my own view of the average British voter is as jaundiced as Mrs Thatch- er's is rosy-tinted. It is based on an intuition more than anything else, I sup- pose, but it is also based on a lifetime of talking to people who have no particular axe to grind — something few politicians can ever do. My own experience suggests that those who most readily declare their repudiation of anything which smacks of unilateral nuclear disarmament will be the noisiest in their retreat from anything which looks like putting the logic of nuc- lear deterrence to the test.
Most rapes, I imagine, are achieved not so much by the application of superior physical force as by an awareness of the rapist's greater strength and the terror it inspires — terror which is obviously in- creased if the rapist has a knife. If I am right in this, it seems to me that Western Europe in general, and Britain in particu- lar, is ripe to be raped. If Warsaw Pact forces advanced through West Germany, it would not surprise me in the least if they met only token resistance, and if the tactical nuclear weapons needed to cut their supply lines were never used. The same thought must occur to the Russians, but they do not quite dare put it to the test, especially since our entire defence strategy is based on the first use of nuclear weapons. Similarly, I have no doubt that a single-issue referendum on the subject would deny our soldiers first use of nuclear weapons. All in all, I feel sure the Tories would be best to leave the subject well alone.
Previous page
