A red-toothed pioneer
Auberon Waugh In the Spectator of 6 March this year I printed an eloquent—but unheeded—plea to the Queen for a free pardon and state pension to be granted to Mr Albert Thorogood, the great British working man, of Southend. Albert had just been sent down by Southend magistrates for refusing to do any work, and in the course of the hearing it was revealed that in the past twenty-five years he had only worked thirty-three weeks, drawing £12,000 in social security benefits in the rest of the time.
Those who followed my arguments then will not wish to see them rehearsed, and those who were unable or unwilling to agree with me at that time that Albert Thorogood, far from being punished, should beappointed a Hero of British Labour are unlikely to be persuaded now. But one of my points was that in the twenty-five years concerned, Albert's income had been extraordinarily modest and his consumption small. His average over the period of £9.47 per week would have been no princely sum even in 1951, when Albert was a lad of twenty-one and setting out on his great career, but presumably he received much less then. The problem, as I saw it, was to convince enough British 'workers' that redundancy can be fun on as little as £25 a week rather than encourage them to clutter up every manufacturing process and service industry in the land at £70 a head. The only effect of encouraging 'employment' in the present grotesque pattern of overmanning is to ensure that no business will ever be viable, no further investment forthcoming.
The same argument does not apply to the case of Mr Derek 'King Con' Deevy, the Liverpudlian who has just gone down for six years after fiddling £36,000 out of Social Security in a seven-year period. Mr Deevy's average over the period would appear to work out at £98.90 per week. Again, this might not do for yoy or me, but, being net of tax and for a man of simple appetites, it is not too bad. If enough of the people I constantly urge to give up the unequal struggle and go on the dole were to prove as enterprising as Mr Deevy, then all my arguments would collapse. Even so, I cannot bring myself to feel very indignant against Mr Derek Deevy.
Of course, it is a shocking and disgraceful thing to see anybody breaking the Law. The Law is the true embodiment of everything that is excellent, it has no kind of fault or flaw and Lord Elwyn-Jones, my Lord, embodies the Law. My own attitude to the Law has always been one of puzzlement tempered with profound respect. I approach it gingerly, as one might approach one of those donkeys drawn on the blackboard at a
church fete to stick a tail in the general area of its rump when blindfolded. Get it wrong and you not only lose your money but become an object of derision; get it right and you win a lovely pot of honey to general acclaim. By coincidence, £36,000 is almost exactly the sum Kojak won from the Daily Mail for an alleged libel the other day. My unshakeable respect for the Law forces me toacknowledge that he has more right to this sum than Mr Deevy, who worked ingeniously over six years to secure it, just as I accept that the man who hits the donkey's bottom has a right to his pot of honey, but I can't find any great anger or indignation rising in me against those who stick their tails on the donkey's nose, or even any great admiration for those who get it right.
Quite apart from anything else, it would be a terrible thing if in the difficult times ahead we were to lose our traditional compassion for lawbreakers: They are often the product of the society in which they live, are they not ? In discussing the Deevy affair the Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, Mr David Ennals, revealed that the State now pays out eighteen million flat-rate and discretionary allowances every week. He added the pious opinion that the 'vast majority of these eighteen million payments were not only proper and according to the rule-book but also desperately needed' —to which the only sane and honest reply is
'codswallop'.
We live in a society which encourages as many people as possible to live off the State. As a matter of deliberate public policy, it IS no longer possible for anyone to make large sums of money legally (except through the football pools, libel courts or, in the rare instance of finding a bookmaker prepared '° pay out on long odds, through horses) and if anyone wishes to keep even the modest £98.90 per week achieved by Mr Deevy he must first pay about £53.96 for the privilege, if he is unmarried. Under present circurn' stances, it may be virtually impossible for all ordinary working man, however enterprising or industrious, to get the sort of job which will bring in £8,000 a year before tax, because all such jobs are within one closed shop or another.
Yet England, as I heard on television the other day, has always bred a minority of people who are not satisfied to sit back and let everything be done for them. They are not satisfied to be the same as everyone else. They are the people prepared to take risks, to chance their arms and even occasionallY to cut corners, if it means that they and their families can get ahead, do a little better. lit previous, unhappier times these peoPle might have founded empires, built great factories, invented new machinery or donee thousand unpleasant and anti-social things of that sort. Today, in our welfare societY, they show us the way ahead with new and ingenious ways to fiddle the system. Most we really perialise them, by sending them all to prison at the public expense, extinguish' ing the few remaining sparks of dynamisIn and self-help left ? Sir Harold Wilson's last Honours List was greeted with unrestrained mirth in every corner of the land but one. The Times, illa, leader, congratulated Wilson on 'honouring a section of the community so often clis' co u raged n owadays—the raw, sharp-clawed; swaggering buccaneers of unreconstructe° capitalism, the risk-takers, the wealth' makers, the men who had once made Britain great, etc etc. At the same time, it expressed, surprise that these people should be single" out by a 'socialist' Prime Minister. I think Mrs Thatcher should return the compliment, if she gets a chance. Who are the heroes of our socialist society, the people who show us all the path of survival through the intricacies, paystops, and other dis; couragements of the Department of Social,. Security ? Why, the welfare fiddlers, di course.
They say that Mr Deevy went to prison with a smile on his lips, content in the knowledge that the State would still be looking after him. Does nobody feel the waste of such talent ? if, as I argued a fev'i months ago, Mr Thorogood should awarded a special Albert Medal and a Ras bursary to save him the trouble of going t° collect his dole every week, Mr Dee' should surely be released from prison, rnade, a Life Peer and put in charge of the Co-OP British Steel at a tax-free salary of £60,0003 year, indexed against inflation.
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