The compassion industry

PERSONAL COLUMN AUBERON WAUGH

Nobody who watches television or reads a newspaper can be unaware that there are pockets of dire poverty in this country. In- quiries, exposures, insights, all offered with compassion and skill, ensure that the poor are never forgotten. Nowadays, in fact, they pro- vide one of the staple ingredients of our national entertainment.

What we like as a nation is to see some- thing that will pluck at our heartstrings while also providing an obvious focus for those feel- ings of guilt which we traditionally associate with our pleasures. One of the more useful functions of government in this socialist age is to provide such a guilt-focus. The present Government, for reasons which I shall try to analyse later, welcomes and encourages this role. Its Ministry of Social Security has oblig- ingly published a report—Conditions of Families—which claims that no fewer than one million children in this country live be- neath the poverty line. Previously, the most gloomy figure produced by the Child Poverty Action Group, a voluntary body of unusual energy and drive which had been devoting itself exclusively to this problem for some time, was half a million. Needless to say, the larger figure has now superseded the smaller. Not to be outdone, a team of social scientists from London University has produced the theory in Medical Officer that there are 630,000 children in England today who are not getting enough to eat.

One does not wish to appear cynical—and if a single child in our affluent society is short of food, something is plainly wrong—but this exuberant enthusiasm for social injustice is bound to breed a certain caution. One left-wing commentator recently suggested that seven and a half million people were lurking below the poverty line in England. Presumably he was just flying a kite to test his readers' credulity, but I should not be at all surprised to see this figure pass into general acceptance.

School medical officers, however, insist that overeating is a much greater danger, and that, paradoxically, children from the poorer homes often tend to show the higher incidence of obesity and dental decay, two symptoms of this indulgence. Moreover, deaths from arterio- sclerosis and embolism, both frequently asso- ciated with obesity, make up an extremely sig- nificant proportion of total mortality. If it is a function of government to prevent people from eating too little food for the good of their health, which is a generally accepted proposi- tion,it must also be a function of government to prevent them from eating too much. Yet nothing is done. We do not see fat children with rotten teeth gaze appealingly out of our television sets in mute demand for government action, for the good reason that they would probably fail to excite those feelings of compassion and vicarious guilt which we have come to expect from such programmes. Yet nearly every class- room (or 'home bay,' as we must now call them) in the country could produce a specimen.

Which may go to show that the two ways in which the poor are exploited nowadays— for political purposes and for entertainment value—are largely overlapping. Of the two, the second seems infinitely the less dangerous. Populai taste in entertainment has always been a trifle bizarre, but I think that if a thread runs through it, the European races have always had a penchant for sentiment. When Christians were being eaten by lions in Rome, I do not think that the crowds were drawn by blood-lust, or even by secular enthusiasm, but by exquisite feelings of compassion. Certainly this is true of bullfights. Since cruelty to animals has been ruled out as a means of exciting these generous emotions, we have to fall back on our own resources: the poor. Even here we have a problem nowadays. Where reasonably adequate supplementary assistance arrangements exist, we have to dig for our greens, but the enter- tainment industry accepts the challenge.

If there were no poverty left at all, we should have to invent it. Fearsome, lean young radi- cals from the political front and well-fed compassion leaders from the entertainment side are ready to charge off at the drop of a hat to capture an eviction in Bermondsey or an old lady living off Kit-e-Kat in Newcastle. Few people pause to reflect that for the cost of assembling the cameras, technicians and equip- ment, not to mention the well-fed young man and his attendant troupe of producers and assistant half-producers, the old lady could have been fed on steak for the rest of her life. Indeed, if a tithe of the compassion industry's turnover were spent on the objects of its com- passion, there would scarcely be a poignant scene left to record, and the whole apparatus would have to move to India.

But at least the entertainment industry does nothing to make things worse for the poor, or to create poverty. Its exploitation is of the most harmless kind. Since most of the poor have television sets the antics of the com- passion brigade may even bring some enjoyable sentiment into their bleak lives. The political exploitation of poverty, I suggest, is far more serious because it perpetuates the condition.

I It would be absurd to pretend that the Labour movement as a whole—or even a single member of it—consciously relishes the idea of poverty. But it would be equally absurd to pretend that the Labour movement could hold together without the knowledge of poverty to

provide its moral impetus. In its curious rag- bag of contrary motives, the only common denominator is a hatred of poverty. Perhaps the movement has a corporate existence with its own instinct for sirs i% al outside the aware- ness of any member. One can understand that

an organisation which sees in the war against poverty the only justification for its existence might be tempted to play up the magnitude of

the problem in order to bolster its own self- importance. But only something much more

sinister can explain how the Labour party, in order to present any sort of coherent front, must deliberately choose every single policy which is most calculated to aggravate and per- petuate the condition of poverty.

Of course, anything which actually helps the poor, is liable to be electorally unpopular, since, however much one tries to establish the oppo- site, more voters are not poor than are poor. Let us take a planner's dream, the absolutely typical community of one hundred families. Each has 2.13 children. Twenty-six and a half of these families have no bath (but there are seventy-three and a half who, whether by virtue of superior industry, intelligence, initiative or luck, do have their own bath). thirteen have no lavatory (but eighty-seven do). four have no television set (ninety-six have one) and two earn less than £12 a week after deductions (ninety-eight earn more). No doubt these majorities are aware that with less industry, intelligence, initiative or luck they would be among the unfortunates, but the fact remains that any government action which raises the deprived families to the majorities' own level deprives thent of the benefit of their particu- lar qualities. The only answer for a government which does not want to court unpopularity in this way is to give everyone the same benefits. And since any notion of poverty which pre- cludes the absolutes of homelessness and star- vation must be comparative, the poverty remains.

My wife at present draws I8s a week in family allowances. It is by no means unwel- come, and probably goes a long way towards her hairdresser's bills. After April, through no extra effort of our own, it goes up to 32s a week. Then, of course, we will have the added satisfaction of knowing that by our acceptance of this sum we are protecting the susceptibilities of the poor, who are spared the indignity of having to ask for what they require. Here is a compassionate government indeed!

That the existence of this comparative poverty will continue to provide the Labour party with the radical fervour it needs to keep going is a fortuitous accident. So is the fact that its rent legislation has effectively ensured a housing shortage. So is the fact that its con- cern for lower-paid workers will ensure that these workers stay in the industries which pay them poorly. Similarly, the trade union move- ment, by its dedication to the principles of overmanning and work-sharing, ensures that poverty will remain.

but by far the greatest evidence of the Labour movement's dedication to poverty lies in its continued acceptance of the discredited tenets of socialism. I agree with those political psychologists who say that most of our troubles stem from our rulers' traumatic memories of the unemployment and means tests of the 'thirties. Their youth must have been most dis- agreeable; but I would go further than that. Below the level of their consciousness, in the hidden recesses of their souls—deep, if you like, in the milk from their mothers' nipples —they want to bring it back.