SPECTATOR'S NOTE BOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Apocalyptic developments at the Treasury have had the side-effect of making the present tinker- ing with the role of the Department of Econo- mic Affairs appear a little pathetic. There is, of course, a strong case for winding up this oddity of a department altogether, possibly with the redeployment of its minister, Mr Peter Shore, as Governor of Mauritius in place of Mr Len Williams. But Mr Wilson, having fathered the DEA, and having more recently assumed personal overlordship there, could hardly pack it up just now of all times. Per- haps he will devise some window-dressing arrangement which will link the DEA still more closely with Downing Street. This would con- veniently revive the Prime Minister's old claim that he would make No. 10 'a power-house and not a monastery.' Various dispositions are con- ceivable. Meanwhile Mr Wilson must be keen to get his hands on the report of the Fulton Committee, which will recommend reducing the rreasury's hegemony over the rest of the civil service in the matter of appointments and personnel. This, though, is a blow which the Treasury has by now reconciled itself to.
Whatever happens there, however, the most interesting political spectacle in the coming months is still likely, by a wide margin, to be that of Mr Jenkins endeavouring to maintain his newly acquired glory untarnished once the unpleasant truth about his Budget sinks in. I dare say Mr Jenkins has already recalled Walpole's famous words: 'They now ring the bells, but they will soon wring their hands.' He may even have remembered the occasion on which they were uttered. It was the outbreak of the War of Jenkins's Ear.
Rearguard action
George Orwell said that one distinguishing characteristic of the British (or was it the Eng- lish?) was their dislike of killing each other. He was referring to the comparatively small amount of violence in British political history, something which is frequently misinterpreted. This week, for example, although I am im- pressed if not persuaded by Malcolm Shaw's arguments against a written constitution which appear on page 399, I note that he introduces the conventional notion that Britain has a 'deferential' culture (contrasted with the Jack- sonian individualism of the United States) in which people 'know their place.' I would like to raise a murmur of protest at this assumption, which seems to me to disregard most recent and fairly recent history. The nineteenth cen- tury, after all, was one long defensive battle by the wealthy and privileged, a battle in which they gave ground stage by stage in face of grow- ing forces. It is true that not a great many people were killed in the process; but essen- tially that was not because the lower orders deferred to their social superiors, but because those on top generally had the sense to defer to the pressures from below, however reluctantly. Peterloo was followed by Reform.
And even after many decades of unwilling concessions, the present century opened with a period of unrest and tension which could have culminated in a violent explosion had not the greater violence of the First World War super- vened. The myth of a tranquil, sunlit England in the years before 1914 has precious little general foundation. Indeed, it was believed in' Germany then that the British population, far from being deferential and docile, was so seeth- ing with unrest as to jeopardise the country's capacity to make war. Modern British society is very largely the creation ot popular pressures, aided by allies among the ruling classes and a prudent habit there of yielding in the nick of time. The Conservative party today embodies much of this history. Look at the trouble it ran into after making a well-intentioned fourteenth earl its leader.
Escape routes
One manifestation of contemporary culture which might seem on the surface to go against my argument is the cult of bogus nostalgia. But the pop-commercial use of Union Jacks or old prints or even old advertisements as decorative motifs has more to do, I suspect, with the ugli- ness of the world we inhabit than with any subconscious yearnings for a defunct social order. I've this week seen a copy of This Eng- land, a curious new quarterly- dedicated to cap- turing 'the true spirit of England.' This it seeks to do by pictures of windmills, sundials, follies, thatched cottages, and the like. I imagine it will please some suburban or urban spirits bruised by the life of the anthill. 1 find it very sad to imagine a typical reader, immured in some vast housing estate, poring over its images of a dream-England where (I quote) 'splendour and peace' reign.
I've also visited an exhibition of 'British souvenirs' at the Design Centre. There our past is mined in a more briskly commercial fashion, with portraits of ancient kings reproduced on cocktail-mats, bits of history transmuted into egg-cosies, brasses in memory of mediaeval knights reduced to the status of ornamental bookmarks. All these are meant to gratify the tourist, and no doubt do so. Nevertheless this . relentless eXploitation of the past implies a powerful aesthetic criticism of the present. I was made uneasy by one exhibit. A souvenir for children, it consisted of a toy post office, with toy paper coins (poor old sterling!) and a set of toy applications for licences—licences to run a pram, a tricycle, and so on : a fine satiri- cal souvenir of modern England, perhaps, or more alarmingly not satirical at all? At any rate, the Duke of Edinburgh will possibly be relieved to know that so far as I could see there was no application form for a breathing licence.
Surplus of lilies
There is no copyright in book titles, and nothing in law prevents pachydermatous authors from putting Tristram Shandy or The Naked Lunch on their dust-jackets if they fancy the idea. On the other hand, the comparisons thus invited might be unflattering and writers generally think it safer to choose something original. But how is a writer to know that someone else hasn't hit on the same original title aJ the same moment? Unlikely, admittedly, but demonstrably not impossible. Thus, this month, Consider the Lilies, a new novel by lain Crichton Smith, has appeared; next month Consider the Lilies, a new novel by my col- league Auberon Waugh, will be published. A galling coincidence for all concerned.
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