22 JUNE 1985, Page 8

ANOTHER VOICE

Further implications of Mrs Thatcher's appalling dream

AUBERON WAUGH

Two grovelling letters in Monday's Times, both on the subject of Mr Paul Getty's promised gift of £50 million to the National Gallery, provided more food for thought than one expects to find in that dismal newspaper nowadays — certainly more food for thought than most people would be able to find in its first leading article about the Beirut hijack, EVIL IN THE AIR:

This violence is in us all. This hijack, that football tragedy, murder, bombs, child- beating. They kindle something evil in our hearts which we must address before we can hope to approach the profound moral crisis which afflicts the modern world and strains our understanding when confronted with such atrocities.

I do not propose to address anything evil in my heart kindled .by the Beirut hijack. There is certainly much less violence in Britain today in proportion to numbers than at any other time in our history, and I do not believe there is any profound moral crisis. The only problem, as I constantly point out, is that we are in danger of allowing the lower classes to gain the upper hand. Any society, however small, ruled by its `workers' is utter hell. They are indescribably brutal to each other, and even fouler to everyone else. In our efforts to avert this we suck up to the loudest and nastiest who push themselves forward as spokesmen, whereas these are just the people we should be putting in prison. To allow Scargill to go free while imprisoning for life the two Welsh pickets who mur- dered a taxi-driver is both absurdly unjust and a tremendous waste of money. They should serve five years each, Scargill should be kept in for life. The only real crisis around is one of cowardice.

The first grovelling letter came from Lord Normanby, who as chairman of the National Art Collections Fund asked the editor's permission to `express the greatest pleasure and delight at the wonderful generosity of Mr Paul Getty to the Nation- al Gallery', ending his letter, rather oddly, `Mr Getty is indeed a friend of us all in Britain.'

Of course it is normal good manners to thank a fellow who has given you a present, and I suppose that if anyone gave me £50 million I might even feel inspired to write to the Times about it. But I cannot agree that Mr Getty is a friend of mine, at any rate. So far as I know, I have never met him. I do not think it at all a good idea that the National Gallery should be en- couraged to go on buying pictures. It has quite enough already. After a certain point, I am convinced that every work of art transferred from private to public own- ership represents a diminution in the total sum of human happiness. Techniques for reproducing works of art have improved enormously, and those with a genuine interest in art — rather than those who enjoy gaping at something for its alleged commercial value — would surely be hap- py with reproductions to hang beside the enormous number of originals already in public ownership.

Last week a madman in Zurich burned Rubens's portrait of the Spanish King Philip IV at the Kunsthaus Museum — it was alleged to be worth more than £11/2 million — because he wished to protest about pollution. All of us feel strongly about something, even if it is only Mrs Thatcher's continuing refusal to honour Mr Peregrine Worsthorne. Perhaps, after Mr Worsthorne's wild demand for a special, punitive levy on youths and young persons of the middle class who attend university, he may have attracted some of this violent fringe to his banner. But it needs little imagination to see that in the present growth of the protest industry it will not be long before these great public collections become hecatombs.

Whichever way one looks at it, Mr Getty's generosity is well-intended. Perhaps it will encourage the sort of local patriotism we saw deployed at the Euro- pean Cup Final in Brussels to prevent works of art going to the other Getty museum in California, but it will certainly force prices even higher and make private ownership more difficult. And it is in this context that we turn to the second grovel- ling letter, from Mr Brian Morris, chair- man of the Museums and Galleries Com- mission.

After the usual spaniel-like gestures of self-abasement — `gifts of unparalleled munificence. . . . These great benefactors have earned the everlasting gratitude of the whole nation. . . — Mr Morris gets down to the nitty-gritty:

But one good turn deserves another. We now expect a reciprocal gesture from the Government. What is needed is for the annual limit of notional cash . . . for accept- ance of heritage items in lieu of capital tax forgone to be raised from the current paltry f2 million to £50 million or better still for the ceiling to be removed altogether.

I can quite see that for people like Mr Morris the more money they have to spend, the more works of art to catalogue, measure and protect from lunatics, the better for them. But this calm assumption that such works of art as he and his colleagues choose to designate `heritage items' should be seized by the government and placed in maniac-haunted public gal- leries is indeed part of the British sickness — the moral crisis, if you like, among our upper and middle classes.

In what other country would people accept that a Conservative government has the right to help itself to 60 per cent of a citizen's property for no better reason than that he has died or wishes to give it away? Robber barons in the early middle ages might have attempted such acts of piracy, and left-wing extremists from the polytechnic hothouses might attempt them today. But what, in the name of God, does a democratically elected Conservative gov- ernment suppose it was elected to do if not protect us from such people?

We praised Mrs Thatcher when she appointed three Jews and a black man to her Cabinet. It seemed vaguely progres- sive, conciliatory and liberal in the best sense of the word. It was a particularly happy idea to appoint a black man as Minister of the Arts. I remember remark- ing at the time that in a perfect world all black men would be Arts Ministers, but for the present we have to make do with Lord Gowrie. It also seemed eminently sensible to appoint the daughter of a Grantham cornershop to do our dirty work for us. Then we could sneer as we pocketed the benefits, and assure our frightfully good friends among the working class that we did not approve. Now, after hearing about Mrs Thatcher's wet Marxist dream of a classless Britain, we are in a position to see that our cowardice has made fools of us yet again, that we have taken a serpent to our bosom. The Cabinet is as much concerned to destroy family pride, private ownership and historical continuity as any grudge- obsessed anarchist.

My only advice. in the face of what has happened, is to invest everything in 1983 vintage port, declared by Taylor, Fonseca, Cockburn and most other shippers at around £85 the case, f.o.b. It is not quite so hard as the '77. whose price has already gone through the roof — £22 the bottle from Berry Bros for Taylor's — but it should see most of us through. The gro- cer's whelp has beaten us.