ANOTHER VOICE
The bolshie bishop fights the bottle
AUBERON WAUGH
Some years ago I was reading my copy of Somerset Farmer, the organ of the Somerset Branch of the National Farmers Union, when I came across a message from the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Rt Revd John Bickersteth, urging us to develop relations with Russian farmers. This puz- zled me. As a conscientious Somerset farmer, I was anxious to do my bit, but I could not understand quite how to obey these instructions. Was the Bishop not aware that there is no such thing as a Russian farmer? Nowadays, there are only farm workers in the Soviet Union. Farmers were abolished by Stalin in the late Twen- ties an early Thirties. In the course of abolishing the class, he is said to have murdered some 20 million of them. Surely the Bishop was not referring us to our ouija boards? After some thought, I put the cutting in my file labelled Possible Soviet Agents, along with cuttings on Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Lord Mount- batten etc and forgot about it.
This week, reading my Somerset County Gazette, I found a new message from the Bishop, taken from his own diocesan news- letter. 'Churchgoers are being urged to try to help combat the growing problem of alcohol abuse in the community,' it started. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It has been a function of the clergy since time immemorial to urge their flock to go easy on the stuff. It is the sort of thing one goes to church to hear, in those tantalising hours on a Sunday morning before the Bloody Marys can decently make an appearance. If the choice is between listening to a sermon and reading the Sunday Times colour section, give me a sermon every time. But the Bishop was not, apparently, urging his flock to go easy on the booze. There are several ways in which Christians can meet the 'crisis in our country',
Christians could press the Government for similar restrictions on advertising as there are on cigarettes. They could work with managers of supermarkets to ensure a much tighter control against under-age buyers of alcohol drinks. And they could encourage the police in their quest for powers of discretionary breath-testing.
This image of the Christian as busybody, bossy-boots and general nuisance in a predominantly secular society does not appear to be tied to any particular injunc- tion to lay off the booze himself, let alone to spread the gospel of Christ the Moder- ate Drinker. What the Christian must do is to go to the Government and say: 'Hello, I'm a Christian, may I press you?' He must go to the manager of his supermarket and say: 'I'm a Christian, may I work with you to ensure • a much tighter control against under-age buyers of alcoholic drinks?' He must go to the police and say: 'I'm a Christian. May I encourage you in your quest for further powers to make a nui- sance of yourself among private citizens, stopping them when they are about their lawful business to humiliate and inflict your loathsome ideas upon them?'
The modern Christian, you see, must be `involved', and he must be involved 'With the community as a whole', rather than with his own concerns or those of his fellow-Christians. This may be in direct contradiction to about half the New Testa- ment, but it is the other half, the 'social gospel', to which he must now give prece- dence. It is only when one examines the apparent reasons for the instructions that one begins to have doubts.
`Alcohol is Britain's third largest killer,' says Bishop Bickersteth. 'For a country where £200 million is spent on alcohol advertisements, where £600 million comes into the Treasury from drink, and only £10 million a year is spent on alcohol educa- tion, we have a long way to go.'
Let us examine these propositions one by one. 'Alcohol is Britain's third largest killer.' Well, diseases of the circulatory system killed 278,849 people in England and Wales in 1984; cancer killed 140,101; diseases of the respiratory system killed 56,828 (an extraordinary and inexplicable drop from 1983, when the figure was 86,633. In 1983 pneumonia alone killed 55,513 people against only 24,687 in 1984. But I digress). Where is the figure for death through drink? Well, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis combined accounted for 2,280 deaths. Perhaps the Bishop refers to the ever-decreasing number of road deaths, down to a total 5,090, of which a proportion is certainly attributable to drink. Or accidents in the home, or mur- ders? However one massages the figures, one cannot come within a hundred miles of claiming that alcohol is a major killer, let alone Britain's third largest killer.
Next he says that £200 million is spent on drinks advertising. This seems a fairly small amount, if true, given the size of the industry. 'Only £10 million is spent on alcohol education.' What on earth does this mean, and where does he get the figure from? But his suggestion that 1600 million comes into the Treasury from drink' is grotesquely wide of the mark. In 1983, the figure was £4,500 million, and I am not even sure if that figure includes VAT, exacted on the price of drink plus excise duty. The question we must ask ourselves is why, if the Bishop's apparent reasons for taking this line are a load of nonsense, he should bother to go on talking through his hat in this way. Is it of any significance that his hat is a mitre?
I do not know, but I cannot help noticing that on this occasion he does not press, encourage or offer to work with the Gov- ernment to increase liquor taxes, which every other Temperance activist demands first. A possible explanation for this is to be found in the Church Times report on the Budget, dated Friday March 20. The Church was not pleased by the Budget. Of course not, you will say, it believes in increasing Government expenditure to make a more compassionate society. So they constantly tell us. But the lead story in the Church Times is slightly different.
Churches hit by cut in tax rate: The Church of England faces a loss of over a million pounds as covenanted giving is hit by the 2p cut in the standard rate of income tax. On a quick estimate based on figures from A Sharing Church, the Church Commissioners reck- oned on Wednesday that the amount of tax recovered could fall by between £1 million and f 1 1/2 million in the new tax year.
I am not saying this is the only or even the main reason why the Churches are so keen for us all to pay more direct taxes. Mr B. M. Thimont, Secretary of the Churches' Main Committee, points out: 'This is just part of a constant process of worsening Church finance. We brought this issue to the attention of the Chancellor because any more from direct to indirect taxation affects the Churches . . .
Even so, I feel we should bear it in mind when we hear the Church pressing for higher direct taxes. And of course the more alcohol we buy, the less the Govern- ment has need of income tax. So we must be stopped drinking. If the Bishop could learn to turn water into wine, the Govern- ment would have to add 5p to the standard rate. Then he could order champagne for his palace and stop whimpering about our non-existent crisis of alcoholism.
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