POLITICS
Ask not what you can do for History, ask what History can do for you
MATTHEW PARRIS
Agnosco — I do not know — has ceased to be an answer we dare offer to questions of politics or morality. We feel ashamed not to know 'what Britain ought to do' in any important modern circumstance. There was a time when most people knew how to mend a wheelbarrow or bandage a wound, but, asked whether the government should raise a loan or the country go to war, would have replied without apology that they did not know. It was not their province. It was not a decision they would be required to take. The burden of having an opinion on it could be left to those who would.
Today, few know how to remedy even the commonplace disorders and breakdowns of daily life, having been advised by Esther Rantzen to stay in bed and summon expert help from a registered technician; but most feel not only qualified but duty-bound to offer an opinion on affairs of state. There are people who cannot change a plug but who hold firm opinions on the advisability or otherwise of engagement by Nato ground troops in Bosnia, and who would look with scorn upon a neighbour who saw the issue as beyond his competence to decide. A self-respecting journalist would admit readily to his inability to iron a shirt but regard the production of pronounced views on the bombing of Serbian supply- lines as a matter of urgency. That there remain a few members of the public who reply 'don't know' to questionnaires on these matters is a cause of private baffle- ment both to MPs and journalists.
MPs and journalists, you see, are on the same side in such issues. We are all impo- tent together. We are all, at root, commen- tators. It is a false distinction that we draw between, on the one hand, the politicians — 'those who act' — and, on the other, the public and its news media — 'those who watch'. For most politicians are only watch- ing too. They don't act, and cannot. Presi- dent Clinton can certainly act, in the for- mer Yugoslavia, if he wishes — and, within limits, as he wishes. It is a moot point whether Prime Minister Major has any such scope for active judgment, but let us give him the benefit of the doubt and say that a British premier's opinion could weigh significantly. Perhaps the view on Yugoslavia of our Foreign and Defence Secretaries matters, too. We may even allow the whole British Cabinet a claim to be decision-makers here. But that leaves more than 600 MPs whose influence is, at best, utterly marginal. True, great waves of parliamentary opinion do occasionally shake governments, but only when they threaten the continuance in office of an administration. In the Bosnian question there is no such threat. Mr Major is listening more closely to Mr Clinton than to Conservative backbenchers or Opposi- tion spokesmen, as he settles or alters course. He is not listening to British jour- nalists. Heaven forbid that he should. So who are we talking to, we MPs and colum- nists? Why are we talking at all? Who is lis- tening? We are talking mostly to each other, and listening, mostly, to each other.
Some will bridle at this analysis. 'Rightly or wrongly,' they will say, 'politicians and journalists, paid chatterers though they are, believe themselves to be opinion-formers and see as the object (though indirect) of their endeavours the achievement of justice and the alleviation of suffering in the Balkans. For the sake of Bosnia they are urging what's best for the Bosnians.'
I reject this. Most MPs and journalists do not, as a matter of fact, believe that what they write or say will have the least effect on Bosnia. If a desire to speak for foreign- ers was what drove us, then why are we not declaiming on the horrors that have been occurring in Rwanda and Burundi for years? Where is our opinion on the possi- bility, or otherwise, of intervening to resolve the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan? Why have we forgotten the Kurds and the marsh Arabs? What was our attitude towards the ghastly civil war in Liberia? Do we agree that in Northern Somalia, our ex-colony, Britain really could help? Whom do we support in the Western Sahara? Nobody is talking about these things, not because people are not suffering or have not suffered there in huge num- bers, or do not crave our attention. No. We are not talking about them because, ah yes, because nobody else is talking about them. I have not been asked my opinion on East Timor this week. East Timor is not the thing to be having an opinion about. Nor can MPs honestly claim to be under pres- sure from constituents on the Balkan issue. The public are, it is true, a little upset — a little, not a lot — by what they have seen on television, but it is fatuous to pretend that they are demanding action, or even noise, from their MPs. The recent mutilation of horses will have stimulated greater con- stituency correspondence. If, as I submit, the intended audience for advice from MPs and journalists over Bosnia is other MPs and other journalists, then what is the aim? The aim, I believe, is to impress that audience — and specifically that one — and, in impressing them, to advance one's status in their eyes. It is upon the approval of MPs and journalists that the careers of MPs and journalists mostly depend. Having, in the Bosnian question, estab- lished the nature of the audience and the reason for trying to impress it, I come to the trickiest question: how is this audience best impressed? Both style and substance are important. Quite regardless of the conclusion one reaches, to write well about Bosnia, or to speak well in the House about Bosnia, brings favourable attention. Some of Lady Thatcher's friends in the press wrote well in favour of ignoring the Muslims, and, now that she has called for a change of policy, are writing well in favour of assisting them. Whichever alternative is finally judged to have been the right one, an MP will have done his career more good by speaking movingly in favour of the wrong policy than badly in favour of the right one.
But substance matters, too. Here, I sug- gest, shrewd chatterers have a beady weath- er eye always fixed on what they would call `the likely judgment of History'. The bur- den of History weighs heavily on our shoul- ders wherever our words will become a matter of public record. Who does not wish that he saw the Nazi threat before Chan?' berlain did — and could point to text of his remarks? Which of us does not regret we made so little fuss about Katyn, during the years the Foreign Office was sitting on the files? Who would care to have taken, in print or in Hansard, a light view of allega- tions of the Holocaust, before they were substantiated? I should like to believe We are anxious about what we may do to Hi' tory; but I think we are more afraid of what History may do to us. Did those MPs who predicted catastrophe for Desert Stoop entirely welcome the easy victory? Each of us craves the big I Told You So. Something is going to happen in the for.: mer Yugoslavia which is going to make hall, of us appear unwise. More than the lives or the Bosnian Muslims rides on this.
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