Another voice
Anyone for tennis?
Auberon Waugh
Colour television was not available on St Crispin's Day, 25 October 1415, so gentle- men of England then abed could not see what they were missing at Agincourt; the screaming hordes of garlic-crazed French cavalry cut down by English archers, the Constable of France himself struck by an arrow lying in a pool of blood while half- digested frogs jumped our of his mouth upon the sodden Flemish turf.
It is a sad but I suppose inevitable factor in the great set-piece battle being fought at Willesden that only those with colour tele- Vision could appreciate the full poignancy of Police Constable Trevor Wilson as he lay in a pool of his own blood outside the fac- tory gates. On my set, his blood was rather orange in colour, but I am sure that it was the fault of whatever Japanese craftsman assembled the machine rather than a reflec- tion on PC Wilson's haemoglobin. count. But if his blood had come out bright green, as it sometimes does in American thrillers, my reaction would have been the same, and I couldn't help wondering what was the reaction of the bourgeois (or infantile) revolutionary left, most of whom are in the happy position of owning colour television sets.
Mr Dennis Skinner, the much-loved Labour Member for Bolsover, described the Battle of Willesden as the fight for a socialist society. By the same token, it must be the fight against a socialist society, too. For my own part, sitting comfortably in Somerset, I could not help thinking myself accurs'd I was not there to bash a miner or garotte a student from the North London Polytechnic. The battle lines are now clear and unmistakable. Why on earth aren't all the youth of England on fire?
One reason for the national torpor might be found in the tennis championship, and I must admit it was strangely agreeable to be able to transport oneself at the touch of a button from the ugly, struggling masses in Willesden to the green centre court at Wimbledon, from the hideous, idiotic, pro- letarian countenance of Mr Albert Booth, Secretary of State for Employment, to the pretty face of Miss Sue Barker. Seldom can Disraeli's two nations have been so con- veniently juxtaposed.
But even at Wimbledon pretty Miss Barker was playing against a tiny Asian lady, which. brought us straight back to the other Agincourt being fought at Willesden: `When we have matched our rackets to these balls We will in France, by God's grace, play a set Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.' It is exactly this spirit which seems to be lacking. When Mr Mark Carlisle, Tory MP for Runcorn, complained on Thursday that democracy was giving way to mob rule, the Attorney-General appeared to agree that this was indeed the case, but on the matter of the postal workers who were illegally withholding thirty-five bags of mail addressed to Grunwick's, argued that Opposition MPs would change their tune `if, as a result of action taken in a hostile way by myself or anyone else, the whole mail of this country was brought to a standstill.'
In other words, the present Government concedes that it is in no position to govern even in such an elementary matter as keep- ing the peace and administering its own laws. However, nothing could be more bor- ing or inane than calling upon it to resign, and a similar spirit of defeatism infects the Tories who appear to have no idea of how they would deal with a similar situation beyond praising the police. Anybody can see that our traditional police force is inadequate to this sort of lark. 1t has the quaint and unenviable function of winning. public sympathy whenever one of its mem- bers is seriously injured, but even this role is of diminishing usefulness as the unions increasingly exist within a bubble of their own, where left-wing rhetoric becomes con- fused and eventually identified with public opinion. But it is absurd to pretend that by temperament or training our existing police force . is equipped to contain, let alone defeat, the rising force of militant unionism which has already shown itself stronger than the elected government and now threatens to consolidate its position as the chief executive power in the land. As the Sergeant of Police sings in Pirates of Pen- zance:
`For when threatened with emeutes And your heart is in your boots There's nothing bring it round Like the trumpet's martial sound Tarantara-ra-ra-ra.'
Unfortunately, the army is scarcely better equipped to deal with civil riots than the police, but almost every other country in the world has its own specially trained corps of riot police, and it is plainly time we had one, too. Even if the army's loyalty could be guaranteed in the sort of circumstances which might arise, the dispersal of riotous assemblies is a highly skilled business which requires dedication and special training as well as a certain generalised misanthropy on the part of the dispersers. Although I do not doubt that there would be an abundance of volunteers for the job, my experience of the British army does not lead me to believe that existing units would be much good at it., In France, the CRS (Compagnie Repub- licaine de Securite, I think) is bitterly unpopular with almost everybody. It lives in its own barracks dotted all over the country and only emerges to attack students, work- ers, press photographers and innocent passers-by, indiscriminately spraying them with tear gas and clubbing them with twenty-four-inch batons. In special helmets and protective clothing they look more like Martians than human beings, and few peo- ple would shed a tear if one of them fell to the ground in a pool of green blood. But they are also extraordinarily effective at dispersing riots and capturing even the most experienced agitators. I do not think it any exaggeration to suppose that a squad of forty CRS would have gone through Mr Scargill's miners like a knife through butter and sent them back to Yorkshire with the firm purpose of staying there.
All that remains to be decided is whether this is what we want, or whether we really feel in our heart of hearts that pickets from outside have a right to close down any bus- iness they choose and dictate their own terms for allowing people in. The rights and wrongs of the mass picket can be endlessly argued within the context of Mr Foot's dis- graceful Trade Union and Labour Rela- tions Act of 1974, but that is not, I suggest, the real point at issue.
There are hundreds of ways of avoiding the real issue, whether by concentrating on the details of Grunwick's particular case, or seeking a general formula of reconciliation. But themilitants are in no doubt about what the real issue is, and things have now gone too far for us to pretend that we are left with anything but the simple choice between sur- rendering or confronting and defeating them.
The second choice involves a clear deci- sion to keep such people in their place, and it is a disagreeable one for anyone with his country's easy-going tradition at heart. For my own part, I am quite prepared to stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood and dis- guise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage. But is there anyone else for tennis?
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