Another voice
Not mad, not mad
Auberon Waugh
In the same week that Mr Christopher Booker asked us to consider whether local authorities had gone mad because they were spending so much money, the Daily Telegraph ended a rather lugubrious leader — `The Road to Penury' — with the same suggestion: `To budget for another two per cent increase in the volume of such spending in the year ahead is not profligate but mad.' Pedants will be unhappy over this wording, although probably not so unhappy as they were a week before, on 3 March, when the main Telegraph leader discussing the results of the two referenda on devolution ('shattering body blows') was headed; at any rate in my edition:
MR CALLAGHAN'S DESSERTS
Americans, of course, use `mad' to mean `angry'. Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus offers, as synonyms: acrimonious, choleric, heated, indignant, ireful, waxy, wrathful, wroth; and, as related words: sore, worked-up, affronted, offended, outraged.
Neither Mr Booker nor the Daily Telegraph appears to feel that our political leaders have suddenly become waxy, sore, worked-up or affronted. What Mr Booker thinks is, as always, anybody's guess, but I can't believe that he seriously invites us to consider that various Town, Borough, County and City Councils from Southwark to Kingsbridge, South Devon, have suddenly been visited by a collective mental illness. Put like that, his question — have local councils gone mad? — answers itself. No, they have not. Plainly, both Mr Booker and the Daily Telegraph are using the word 'mad' in a rhetorical sense suggesting that our political leaders are behaving in a fashion which is so ill-advised as to be repugnant to reason. It is this suggestion, that there is something irrational in their behaviour, that I would like to examine.
Obviously, if one is to suppose that our political leaders are primarily inspired by the simple wish to do good, then we may well decide that they are either of subnormal intelligence, or actually suffering from some psychosis. To squander resources, to over-spend income to the point of bankruptcy, to debauch the currency, to destroy productive capacity, discourage investment, impose industrial anarchy by act of Parliament, penalise thrift and effort and intelligence, deliberately destroy secondary education and substitute, at enormous expense, something much worse — none of this can conceivably be described as good management except by the tenents of some revolutionary creed to which nobody in Government, not even the absurd Mr Benn, actually subscribes. But one can only suppose that our political leaders are mad, or mentally subnormal, if one supposes that their main reason for entering public life was to do good.
Many nice people are reluctant to believe that this is not the case. Because politicians frequently tell us that their only motive is the general good, and because nice people are unwilling to attribute oblique or unconscious motives, there is general acceptance that their atrotious performance is to be explained by adherence to some sinister, alien philosophy which, however disastrous in its application, is nevertheless wellintended. Alternatively, that they are stupid or mad.
Some politicians undoubtedly feel quite benevolently towards their fellow-men. Mr Callaghan is among them. So, I dare say, is Mr Healey. So, for all I know or care, is the absurd Mr Berm.. But it cannot be said too loudly or too often — and any political commentator who fails to preface his every commentary with this warning neglects his duty — that human benevolence is not the main motive in politics; many less introspective MPs believe this to be the case but it is not. If they wanted to do good and knew how it should be done they wouldn't be prepared to submerge all their fine ideas and conclusions within a party system. They might join a Churchor become a teacher or, like the admirable Peter Cadogan of the South Place Ethical Society, carry on a lone struggle for public debate and personal enlightenment. But the chief reasons for going into, party politics and staying there are, in the first place, selfassertion; next self-aggrandisement or the exercise of power; finally, survival.
Once those three constituents of the political motive are understood — and the more that politicians like Lord Hailsham deny them and suggest purer motives, the more certain you can be that they apply — then one can see that nobody in public life need be thought mad, unless delinquent or anti-social behaviour is held to be proof of mental illness. It is just that they are bad.
Take Mr Callaghan. A perfectly decent, easy-going, benevolent sort of man. Perhaps he is even better disposed to the working class than he is to the middle class, but nobody can seriously suppose he wants to destroy our bourgeois society and substitute a proletarian state. Yet in order to achieve office he has been 'prepared to betray Parliament to the unions; in order to stay there he is prepared not only to bankrupt the nation but also to dismember it and take it out of Europe — out of NATO, too, I should not be surprised. The same applies, to greater or lesser degree, to every local and national political leader who has brought us to our present state. As a commentator, I have never made any secret of the fact that when I come to power I am going to send Healey and Heath to prison for ten years, Callaghan and Wilson for five years (although son may face other charges, too). I am going to hang Michael Stewart, put Peter Walker in the pillory, Eldon Griffiths and Leon Brittan in the Kennels, Roy Hattersley in the boot-hole of the Savoy, Gerald Kauffmann in the aquarium etc.
By the same token, I will never come to power. This is because the leaderstuP urge is lacking. Since whoever replaces the present crew will be inspired by much the same motives as they are, it is safe to suppose that these sensible and idealistic measures will be ignored: Peter Walker will remain unpilloried, Eldon Griffiths unkennelled, Michael Stewart unhung.
A correspondent in last week's Spectator asserted that 'mental illness is not something at which people now scoff.' He is probably right, although I visit mental patients from time to time and must admit I sometimes find it hard not to giggle. But I can assure all who are interested that in 12 years of visiting the House of Commons and 15 years, on and off, of visiting mental hospitals I have never seen a Front Bench with fewer signs of emotional stress or mental derangement than the present one.
If there is an irrationality around in Britain such as might give rise to these anxieties, it is not to be found among the politicians, who are just bad, or among the workers, who are just stupid, but among the intelligentsia. I have already complained about right-wing intellectuals who glibly decide that wrong-doers are mad, but what about left-wing intel lectuals who earnestly affect to believe that wrong-doers are right?
It would be tempting to invoke madness as the explanation for these people.s behaviour but I suspect that once again It is intellectual laziness. Unhappily, they provide a justification for the wickedness of the politicians and the stupidity of the) workers — no matter what disaster befalls as a result of these two influences, the intellectuals can greet it as another nail in the coffin of capitalism. Having once adopted the Marxist explanation, they are now too lazy to see another. It is for exactly such people that the South Place Ethical Society (Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1) exists. If the Inland Revenue succeeds in closing it, these intellectuals may never discover that a, precondition for democracy is the voters ability to recognise and pursue their own self-interest.
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