Another voice

A beast in view

Auberon Waugh

Asmall gathering in Doughty Street recently celebrated the publication of a book from John Murray at the slightly discouraging price of £15: The Man who was Greenmantle, a life of Aubrey Herbert by Margaret FitzHerbert. It is reviewed on page 20 — by Patrick Leigh Fermor, the traveller and wartime Cretan resistance leader. Many of those attending the party were descended from one or other of those heroic figures who accompanied Herbert on his travels and into battle often in strange foreign wars which few people living today even remember. The rest were invited as representing the bravest and the best of modern England, the spiritual if not the physical heirs of Herbert, T. E. Lawrence, Leland Buxton, Raymond Asquith.

My own presence at this gathering is ex- plained by membership of the first category. Aubrey Herbert was my maternal grandfather. The second category included such legendary heroes of our time as Chancellor, Ingrams, Wheatcroft, Marn- ham, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, Jeffrey Bernard ... These are the people, I decid- ed, who 69 years earlier would have been leading their troops over the top into a hail of machine gun bullets, walking from Baghdad to Damascus with only a faithful Albanian butler, armed to his teeth, for protection, negotiating improbable truces between implacable warring tribes in remote caves of the Hindu Kush. They, too, may yet be commemorated by their grand- children in magnificent biographies written with what Mr John Jolliffe (a grandson of Raymond Asquith) described in the Times as 'hilarious precision'; and sold by Mr Murray's grandchildren for whatever sum the market can stand.

It was at this point in my reflections that I was visited by the sort of melancholy which is quite common, I believe, among hosts. If this was true, if Chancellor, Ingrams, Wheatcroft, Marnham, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne and Jeffrey Bernard were the true inheritors (as I believe they are) of the world of Aubrey Herbert, what on earth were they all doing there? What were any of us doing? What on earth, for that matter, will our grandchildren — with the best will

in the world, and always assuming they can still read and write — find to say about us in their biographies? — 'In September 1983 he went to a party at the Spectator offices in Doughty Street, where he again saw Chan- cellor, Ingrams, Wheatcroft, Marnham, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne and Jeffrey Ber- nard'?

It would obviously be absurd to argue that we need another world war. Even to urge a civil war — as I have sometimes been accused of doing — is somewhat otiose now we have all the Kaufmans and Hattersleys in our society on the run. Our problem is that nobody seems to pose a serious threat to our lotus-eating existence. We bask like so many seal-pups in our happy ignorance.

Then, on Friday of last week, I suddenly understood Guy Crouchback's feelings when he read of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact: 'Now, splendidly, everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguises cast off ... Whatever the outcome, there was a place for him in the battle.'

The enemy which Crouchback spotted, of course, was the Modern Age in arms. This enemy is more clearly defined. It emerged on Friday of last week, with the launching of what was described as a 'new pressure group' called Action on Alcohol Abuse (AAA). The group is apparently led by one Professor John Strong, described as a former president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and is said to be 'privately funded'. It is advertising for a director and hopes to be in action by the end of the year. Its priorities will be higher taxes on alcohol, curbs on advertising, more rigorous application of laws on drink- ing and driving and 'research' to link alcohol with accidents at work.

'The scale of this problem almost defies description,' cried Professor Strong, in- troducing the usual patter of 'statistics' which have been echoing down the cor- ridors of the DHSS in plaintive Edinburgh accents ever since the foundation of Moral Rearmament, if not since the return of the accursed John Knox from Geneva in 1559:

'Alcohol intoxication is involved in the deaths of over 500 young people each year.

Alcohol abuse is also responsible in Britain for 80 per cent of deaths from fire, 65 per cent of head injuries ... 35 per cent of fatal accidents, 14 per cent of drownings,' he said: one in five male patients in hospital medical wards is there because of excessive drinking, he estimated; if alcohol abuse were curtailed it would save the health service £500 million, he guessed; eight million working days a year are lost through drink problems, he declared. About a million people in Britain were ex- periencing serious problems because of alcohol, he opined.

I suspect that, like the DHSS-inspired rumours of an epidemic of venereal disease last year, most of these 'statistics' showing a significant increase in alcoholism are a pack of lies, but I lack the evidence to prove it. A little research with Social Trends (HMSO) showed anyone interested that the incidence of VD has been more or less con-

stant, with a huge decrease in syphilis since the war and a small decrease in gonorrhoea more recently. But the most significant

truth about alcoholism is easy to establish from figures supplied by the Addiction

Research Foundation of Toronto, the World Health Organisation, the Brewers Society and Hugh Johnson's World Alias of Wine.

They show that Britain has the lowest consumption of spirits and one of the

lowest consumptions of alcohol out of the major seventeen industrial nations of the western world. Where crude consumption is concerned, the latest figures are that the average Briton drinks 221/2 pints of alcohol a year, against 24 pints in France, 23 in Spain and 22 in West Germany. Where alcoholism is concerned, being defined as the proportion of drinkers who consume over 6.3 fluid ounces of absolute alcohol a day, Britain comes twelfth out of seven" teen, with 2.8 per cent of drinkers in this category, compared to 9.5 per cent In France, 8.2 per cent in Italy etc. In France. nearly one in ten of the population iS reckoned to have alcoholic tendencies, ill, Italy one in twelve, the US one in 27 and Britain one in 35. And so it goes on. Most of Professor Strong's figures are demonstrably rubbish' Far from costing the government anything,', drinkers provide £4,500 million in VAT an' excise duty. How many of these eight million lost man-hours have ever heell directly attributed to drink? It only needs one crazed Presbyterian fanatic in the DHSSto produce a figure like this out of the top of his head for all the newspapers treat it as an official statistic. Another trutn is that Britain already has the highest rates of duty on whisky (73 per cent of the f1.5, price or £5.55 a bottle) of any mai.% whisky-drinking country. In the US Set/t,e3. whisky pays £1.79 a bottle, in Italy El.' r Even in France it only pays £3.23 or 51 Pe

cent of the bottle price of £5.67. of

Britain has very little problem alcoholism, and already pays higher tax ii than anywhere outside Scandinavia. Blithe was not the transparent mendacity a t''„ AAA's case which persuaded me w c'f't 'Pilger!' and let slip the dogs of Waugh' „e was Professor Strong's unctuous assuran',, that the AAA is not opposed to alcohol, only to its abuse. Tell that to the 30 001W:a moderate drinkers in this country who have to pay the Professor's higher axes, have will join me in an Alcoholic cc!"_ sumers Association, an Anti-Presbyterianr. League? Step forward Chancellor. Step ward Ingrams, Wheatcroft, Marnham, Berna.tmt.

Peregrine Worsthorne and Jeffrey

But already I hear murmurs of fain,,„ heartedness. Ingrams has dropped out, t".1'e the grounds that he does not constialiirs alcohol. The great lesson of the 60 Ye, to since Aubrey Herbert died is surelY mere get involved in any public cause. 15 tilling, not perhaps something rather app

even heroic, in the role of the seal OP'