ANOTHER VOICE
Some family advice for the editor of the Sunday Times
CHARLES MOORE
City still in grip of Jews,' said the Sunday Times front page this week, and the `Style' section led with the announcement: 'The . . . kiss and tell saga may be shock- ing, but it's no less than we have come to expect from our decadent Jews, says JONATHAN MARGOLIS.'
Well, of course, that was not what the Sunday Times said. The word `Jews' did not occur. I have substituted it in place of `old school tie' in the first headline and 'upper classes' in the second. This is an old trick to play, but I think it works .
The Sunday Times proved to its satisfac- tion or, rather, its dissatisfaction, that of `the City's top 100' 16 went to Eton. `The best calling-card a banker, broker or advis- er can have is the Old Boys' tie of Eton,' it declared, and spoke of `the hold of the pub- lic-school mafia on our financial institu- tions'. It could have done the same thing with Jews, to make a similar point. I do not know, but it would be surprising if there were not roughly the same number of Jews in that list as there are Etonians. Would that prove that a 'Jewish mafia' had a `hold' on our financial institutions?
Jonathan Margolis's article was about Major Ronald Ferguson, who is alleged to have had an affair with `the 34-year-old daughter of a Cambridgeshire dinner-lady and founder of a company called Platinum Polo International'. Just as anti-Semites make one bad man typical of his race, so Margolis decided that Major Ferguson's purported conduct was characteristic of every Lord Lieutenant and High Sheriff in the land (`gauche rutting', 'disgusting taste' etc). He turned up a surprisingly Jacobin quotation from P.G. Wodehouse: `If you took a pin and jabbed it down anywhere in the pages of Debrett's Peerage, you would find it piercing the name of someone with a conscience as tender as a sun-burned neck' — as if you would find anything different if you started jabbing the London telephone directory.
And just as, in myth, it is never the fault of the Gentiles that they have not paid what they owe and so have fallen into the hands of the Jews as a result, so Margolis exonerates everyone who is not `upper class' (which is how he describes the Fergu- sons) from blame in their dealings with that class: Americans like Steve Wyatt and John Bryan are justified in 'pulling on the udders of such a generous milch-cow as a gormless British royal', and the Cambridgeshire din- ner-lady's daughter turned polo entrepreneur is `feisty' in selling her secrets.
It may have been a desire to placate such feelings which induced Buckingham Palace to announce last week that in future single people invited to the Queen's garden par- ties should be allowed to bring a `partner', but I think a better way of silencing Andrew Neil would be for him to get mar- ried and have children. It might then dawn on him that it is heredity, and the affections it promotes, rather than equality, and the rancour which it engenders, that inspire most people's lives.
This might lead him to reflect that the dominance of Etonians — or Jews — in the City is not an unmixed curse. It could be that some of these City families have built up an expertise and a way of doing things which makes them good at what they do. The spur of family loyalty might conceiv- ably make them aim high, and the desire to see their children prosper in the same line of business might encourage them to deal honestly and plan far ahead rather than take the money and run. Everyone under- stands this principle in other fields. No one complains if a son follows his father as an actor, or a jockey, or a miner. Why is it dif- ferent at a grander level — in politics, City or monarchy? Jews provide some of the best examples of the operation of the hereditary principle: family is the driving force, but it reinforces rather than contra- dicts effort and merit. The Rothschilds would not run Rothschilds if they were not Rothschilds, but Rothschilds would not exist if they were not good at running it.
In fact, the City strikes me as being one of the most meritocratic areas of British life, being concerned almost exclusively with finding the best way of getting its work done. It is because it is so meritocratic that it is so public school. Public schools, by tra- dition and by the wish of the people who pay their fees, tend to cultivate people's abilities, whereas comprehensives tend .to mistrust them. That is why City families send their sons to Eton. Indeed the tenden- cy of public-school boys to do well is so marked that there has to be discrimination against them to keep them out — as there now seems to be in admission to Oxford and Cambridge, ordination to the priest- hood and election to the leadership of the Conservative Party. The equivalent in the United States is the argument that Jews . and orientals are 'over-represented' 01 academia and that their numbers must be kept down by positive discrimination in favour of blacks. If Andrew Neil had a son, he would start thinking about where he would best be edu- cated and, being an intelligent man, he would probably conclude that the WY would learn more at Eton than at his local London state school, and so he might, by extension, come to see some merit in all the other institutions of British society wbreh have traditions and standards and pride le their purpose. He might even recognise the extent to which an entire nation and Cul- ture depend on such institutions. Until that happy time, however, he will go on pressing his nose against the window and making faces at the people inside. The excuse of the Murdoch press for their position (for, with the partial excel). tion of the Times, their views are much of a muchness) is that they are fighting for poP: ular emancipation against entrenched prey udice. Possibly that was true ten years ago. Today they seem only interested in destr0Y- ing. Their identification of class enemies., such as the monarchy and public schools, is completely left-wing in its theory of , exploitation, but their papers are mile," more successfully populist than the old Len because they also hate altruism and inter- nationalism and favour fierce punishments' dislike foreigners and so on. The Sun vn,u take what appears to be a Thatcherite line about the welfare state (cut welfare spend' ing) but justify it on the grounds that the rich should be hit: `LET WELL OFF L00" AFTER THEMSELVES,' said a leader last week. Make the public school gits/Jews paY' is the cry, and it has particular appeal in! recession. If the Labour Party wants to 0.11 next time it should forget its 1980s hostility to the Murdoch press and throw its lot in with their strident, populist policies. Whia.t is the best phrase to describe those po"' cies? National socialism?
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