Another voice

Never shall be slaves

Auberon Waugh A subordinate error in the case for détente with the Soviet Union lies in the assumption that there is profit to be made from trading between socialist and free countries. One reason why this is nth the case is fairly well-known: that in a controlled economy, where bookkeeping disciplines are entirely different, unit-costs become meaningless, pricing is arbitrary and all goods sold abroad are goods dumped. Even so, of course, there might be pleasure and profit in shopping around Comecon for dumped raw materials of an exotic nature just as the Russians kindly relieve us of our butter mountains and even, on occasion, our surplus wheat. The main reason why trade between East and West can never really develop into something which will make us both richer and fatter than before is quite different, or so it seems to me, and this is because there is some unfortunate hang-up in the Soviet bureaucratic mentality by which they can only trade on terms which are fantastically advantageous to themselves.

Last week we learned that while Portugal was hovering on the brink between Nato and the Warsaw Pact, when it really began to look as if Russia had achieved a foothold, the Russians agreed to buy a huge quantity of Portuguese wine. The sale was desperately needed by Portuguese farmers, who Paced bankruptcy. It might well have bought Russia friendship and respect in the • Conservative, wine-growing north of the country. Unfortunately for any such hope, the Russians were only prepared to pay five pence a litre for the wine—about half the production cost. So the Portuguese farmers are left still facing bankruptcy and without even their wine to comfort them.

This paralysing meanness and determination to drive the hardest possible bargain may be characteristic of socialists, but more particularly, I think, they are characteristic of working-class negotiators. There is this concentration on a narrow sector of,selfinterest which is as rigid as it is self-defeating in the long run. In prosperity, the working class has none of our flabby old feelings about noblesse oblige. Profits must look after themselves while the last possible penny is screwed out of employers for the

working man. On top of natural and healthy feelings of avarice, there is a strong element of moral righteousness in the negotiating posture: it is the workers who create the wealth, is it not? Anybody who doubts this simple proposition is invited to observe the

consequences of a withdrawal of labour. Ergo, the argument runs, workers must be

entitled to enjoy the full fruits of their labours. Well. yes. When you ask the

workers what they feel about the investors —I. am sorry to bore on about this, but I have been doing a lot of talking to workers, recently—the more reasonable ones say that the investor can receive his,investment back in instalments, an annual profit, and subject to punitive taxation on behalf of old age pensioners, until the loan has been repaid.

The stupidity of the unions should never be examined in isolation from the stupidity of the workers they represent. It is this mistake which frequently leads commentators to suppose that Britain is being destroyed by some sinister conspiracy of politically motivated men. No doubt the conspirators are there, but I cannot believe that their role is an important one. The • shift of power to the workers is plainly a consequence of technological development, and will remain with us until one of two, things has happened: either the workers have succeeded in destroying the technological base which gave them their power; or the power has been usurped by the workers' leaders for the establishment of a police-state slave economy on the ,eastern European model (I use 'slave economy' not in reference to the actual employment of slaves in the Gulag but to the socialist system whereby labour is rewarded by an imposed estimate of need rather than a 'freely negotiated' estimate of its withdrawalrating). Neither is a consummation which anybody particularly wishes (outside a handful of social and emotional cripples on the Left), but one or other strikes me as inevitable for the reason that I have given.

If, as I believe, one or other of these fates is inescapable, then it only remains for us to choose which we prefer. For my own part, I have no doubt whatever that I would prefer to see the end of all technological investment and the destruction of workers' prosperity that way than I would see the imposition of a socialist tyranny.

No doubt there are some people who will disagree with me, but on this occasion, alas, I shall have to leave them by the wayside and address myself only to those who do agree. The important thing is for us to

decide on tactics. There must be more effective ways for gentle, middle class people

like ourselves to assist and hasten the collapse of the economy than we have yet discovered. The initiatives I have spotted

most commonly are: (1) voting Liberal; (2) taking the miners' part in dinner-table conversations about the past 1974 election; and (3) buying foreign cars.

The doctors, it is true, arc setting a robust example by throwing themselves into the wages battle. But I am not sure that is the best tactic. The most important thing to remember at this stage is that it is only our greed which will make slaves of us all. A more useful contribution might be if doctors did not withdraw their labour to secure better pay and conditions for themselves, but simply withdrew their labour. Nobody could accuse them of avarice or self-seeking. Unfortunately a politically" motivated general strike of the middle class is not something which can be organised and will have to emerge as a tendency resulting from many millions of individual decisions. But I think I see it coming. ,

There must at least be some sort of class awareness in the background, some middleclass solidarity. It is the absence of this feeling of shared interest against a hostile world which distresses me so much in the present squabble between librarians and writers. Of course, there are those who will argue that librarians aren't middle-class at all, ranking somewhere between male hairdressers and fashion photographer. Certainly, their selfishness and shortsighted stupidity suggest the humbler classification. Masturbators to a man, they may well have lost all ability to communicate with their fellow human beings, and most are probably half-blind by now. But I was delighted to read last week of a new horrible punishment being visited on them for their disgraceful behaviour over the Public Lending Right. The Arts Council is to send them. free and on a regular basis, copies of all the unsold and unsaleable literary magazines subsidised by the Council, starting with Ian Hamilton's preposterous New Review (£19,000 of public money last year), Alan Ross's sad little London Magazine (£5,000), all the way down to Bananas and Fireweed —'of particular interest to working people and others interested in the arts'.

In time, I hope, the new Minister for the Arts, Lord D'onaldson of Kingsbridge, will order Lord Gibson to clean up the Augean stables of the Council's Literary Department under penalty of withholding its entire subvention. It is certainly one of the

ugliest public scandals around. put I shall return to this at a later date. For the moment, one can only praise the Council for choosing to punish libraries in this way. There must be discipline in the ranks. Again, now that we have an educated and civilised Minister for the Arts, it is tempting to urge the Arts Council to take an interest in my idea of the strike as an abstract art form. It might well be the one medium in which our national genius could assert

itself. But I think this is yet another temptation to resist. For myself, I am happy simply refusing. offers of extra work,

especially if they are to be paid in dollars. Last month, for the first time, I even refused an offer from Germany to be paid in Deutschemarks, pointing out that they would all be grabbed by Mr Healey for the lower classes, who have done nothing whatever to deserve them. As I say, it Is only our greed which will make slaves of us all.