AND ANOTHER THING
Doing good by stealth and doing evil by debauching charity
PAUL JOHNSON
Here is a true tale, told to me on excel- lent authority. Some years ago, a senior civil servant died suddenly, probably as the result of years of conscientious overwork. By one of those bureaucratic anomalies arising from wartime service, his widow found herself very badly off. She decided she would have to remove her two sons from their boarding school. She went to see the headmaster to explain her predicament and in the faint hope that some eleemosy- nary solution could be found. The head- master said, 'But there is no problem. The boys' fees have already been provided for up to the time they finish school.' He said he was unable to disclose the benefactor. But the lady, by dint of detective work, dis- covered his name. It was Edward Heath. He was not at all pleased to be thanked; distinctly gruff, in fact. My informant tells me it is part of a pattern of Heathian behaviour.
I must admit that the tale has led me to see Heath in an entirely new light, and it has had the same effect on everyone I have told it to. So I think it should be published, even though it may annoy old Ted. Doing good by stealth is a heroic form of charity, sometimes perversely practised by those who are popularly reputed to be hard- hearted. There is the case of the deputy chairman of a big international corpora- tion, notorious for driving merciless bar- gains with firms on the financial ropes. His wife told me that, just before they were married, he obliged her — under threat of calling the whole thing off — to sign a mat- rimonial contract of exceptional severity, just to keep his hand in, as it were; he has never since referred to it and has proved a model husband. Many years later, she dis- covered, by chance, that he has his own list of secret charities, all of them sad cases of desperate people who have no idea where the help is coming from. She mentioned it to him and he flew into a rage, shouting, `Do you want to ruin my reputation?'
An even more interesting case is the late Earl Cadogan, owner of one of the biggest London estates. An anonymous donor pro- vided a large sum for a worthy London charity, on condition that another rich metropolitan matched it. Various people were tapped, including Cadogan. He declined to give the money and flatly refused to explain his reasons to the press. It was none of their business, he said. This got him some unfavourable publicity, and one vicious and ill-informed organ made him the winner of its 'Shit of the Year' competition. Cadogan made no protest. Nor did he sue. His contempt for the press was such that he refused to have any con- tact whatever, even hostile, with its min- ions. Only after his death did I hear that he himself was the anonymous donor. Now that is heroic virtue of a high order, which should make every journalist feel small, for real digging could have unearthed the truth in the first place.
Once or twice I have done good by stealth, but on the whole I don't believe in it. It is not quite fair to the recipient. And I don't like mysteries. I never lend money, on Polonius's principle, but now that I have more than I need or want, I sometimes give it to people who get into messes. It is quite true, as the Bible says, that 'it is more blessed to give than to receive'. As you get older you discover that helping people who really need it is the greatest of human plea- sures. But it has its dangers. Only this year I discovered the sad truth of the adage 'No good deed ever goes unpunished'. However delicately it is done, some recipients resent their dependence, brood over it for many years, and then lash out with irrational, pent-up fury. Perhaps that melancholy fact is a collateral reason why some philan- thropists guard their anonymity like a state secret. Sir Paul Getty, the sweetest man in England, who has made more public gifts to good causes than any other man of his age, also helps many individuals, but has the prudence to keep quiet about it. That is true of other generous folk I know.
Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, before he met Mrs Burdett Coutts, the top philanthropist of her time, and discovered what it was like, in practice, to give away money. So the story could have been made much better. It was out of character for Scrooge to turn overnight from being a secretive miser into a noisy public benefac- tor, embarrassing poor Bob Cratchit with his ostentatious attentions. Scrooge would have been uncommunicative, devious and surreptitious even in his charities, and got his reward from enjoying the bewilderment he caused. But Dickens still had a lot to learn in 1843, when he was barely 30. By 1860, however, when he wrote Great Expec- tations, he was a more sophisticated student of humanity, and this story of the secret benefactor presents a riveting moral prob- lem. Of course, the real theme of the book is snobbery. Pip is a snob, despite himself. It is entirely acceptable to him to be the beneficiary of largesse from Miss Haver- sham, the romantic mystery-figure of his youth; quite another to be beholden to the convict Magwitch. And it was a further shock to the fastidious Pip to discover that Magwitch's only motive for secrecy was the fact that he is an undischarged transport, just as much on the run from the law as when Pip first came across him in the graveyard in chapter one. A grand dilem- ma, that, Dickens at his best.
The worst kind of charity is that conduct- ed with a specific view to material reward. It is not merely devoid of merit, but may be positively evil. Honours, including the high- est, are now openly awarded to rich men who go through the motions of contributing to public charities, but whose real purchase price is paid into party funds. It is worse under New Labour than at any time since the last days of the Lloyd George regime. We all know that Britain is becoming a very corrupt country for the first time since the 18th century, the police and media being the prime examples. But the corruption starts at the top, with the honours system, and if the so-called 'reform' of the Lords goes through, it will become worse. It not merely enables ambitious, snobbish and sometimes dishonest men to buy them- selves a seat in the upper house of Parlia- ment, but it soils the spirit of charity itself. The Honours Scrutiny Committee has proved totally ineffective, and if I were Lord Pym, who heads it, I would resign in disgust.
I also blame the Queen for allowing the fountain of honour to become polluted. She still has an absolute right to reject any- one proposed for a peerage by the Prime Minister. The next time Tony Blair comes to her with a dubious name, she should look him coldly in the eye and say, 'Has this man contributed to party funds?' And if Blair is obliged to stammer out 'Yes', then she should strike off the name. Perhaps she should have a word with Ted Heath, who evidently knows a thing or two about hon- our.
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