Another voice

In the trough

Aubeion Waugh

In order to set the background to this piece, which is largely about those peo- ple whom the saintly Peregrine Wors- thorne has described as 'bourgeois pigs with their snouts in the trough', I had better describe a meal I ate with a number of other wine and food hacks in the White Hart Hotel, Sonning, a short time before Christmas. It was presented by Deinhard, shippers of armagnac from the Château de MaIliac, but I am afraid it will shock many readers, and make others feel rather queasy in this lean period of the year. Stand by, Alice. Here it is:

Petit nage de langoustine et coquillage aux herbes Foie gras frais de canard en terrine et sa salade l'huile de truffes St Jacques au coulis de poireaux et sa mousse de legumes Le sorbet Aile de canette au gin gembre et citron vert Marquise au chocolat — sauce anglaise au cafe Le café aux amarettis

After the lunch, which I am afraid to say was absolutely delicious, the company set- tled down to the serious business of the day, which was to discuss whether we preferred the 1944 vintage armagnac from Château Mailiac, or the 1934, or the 1928 or a comparative newcomer, the single grape 'Folk Blanche' bottled after a mere 20 years in cask.

It was a well-conducted debate among reasonable people. There were no York- shiremen present. We did not come to blows. Brooding about it afterwards, it occurred to me that others might have been puzzled, even disapproving, that reasonable people could concern them- selves with such a comparatively unimpor- tant point when there are so many other things which might have concerned us more: the miners' strike, the class war, university tuition fees . . . .

Christmas was traditionally the time for worrying about such things: the spectre of Ethiopia dominating even our anxieties about striking miners' families eating themselves to death on all the Christmas puddings and turkeys which had been showered on them by the Soviet Union, by Mr John Paul Getty II, by Doncaster Council and everybody else; then there was poor Taki clanking his chains in the dungeons of Pentonville, or enslaved Poland, those in peril on the sea . . . .

Christmas was also the time for tax demands. In the two weeks before Christ- mas I paid a cheque for £8,500 to Inland Revenue, being the second half-yearly income tax assessment, another for £5,083, being a preliminary assessment for capital gains tax on objects sold to pay last year's income tax, another to Customs and Excise for £2,850, being the amount raised for the Government in value added tax in the three-month period, after all expenses were deducted. I also received demands for over £4,000 in further capital gains tax and over £2,030 in further income tax, but as I did not understand why these sums were demanded I did not pay them, sending them instead to my accountant.

So in fact I paid slightly less than £16,500 to the Government in those two weeks. I do not wish to complain — it is a privilege, of course — and these particularly heavy payments come only twice a year, although VAT comes round every three months and innumerable supplementary income tax demands arrive throughout the year.

But at least these payments gave me something to brood about in the New Year, returning me to the ticklish intellec- tual paradox of why I was less than delighted when Sir Keith Joseph proposed that the Government, in return for these payments, and having made no contribu- tion to my children's education, should cease to provide them with free university tuition either. 'Not put up with paying a higher proportion of the cost of sending their children to university, indeed! The cheek is well-nigh incredible,' wrote Saint Peregrine. 'Who but a bourgeois pig with his snout in the trough would not have appreciated the invaluable benefits to the Tory Party of being seen, at this stage, doing something to hurt the better-off more than the worse-off? . . . Thus is brought into disrepute the whole moral basis of Thatcherite conservatism.'

Although I am as anxious as anyone to bring invaluable benefits to the Conserva- tive Party, I feel this moral basis idea needs closer examination, not to say costing out, before I will buy it. The error, I suspect, may lie in the tendency to add the suffix of -ism to a political attitude and then glorify it into a philosophy, even a moral code. Many years ago, when Nigel Lawson was

editor of the Spectator and I was his political correspondent, we discussed the political attitude of the then proprietor, an enterprising, rather bald Scottish business- man whom everyone called 'Harry'.

'You can always tell which way Harry is going to jump,' said Lawson. 'Whichever way will make him richer.' At the time we both reeled back in astonishment at such a bizarre attitude to politics, but I hope the intervening years will have convinced him that this attitude, which I shall call Harry- ism, is not only the most prevalent but also the most sane one for a private citizen in a democracy to take. There is nothing re- motely inconsistent in urging the Govern- ment to reduce taxes and cut expenditure at the same time as demanding some benefit from the huge taxes one is still obliged to pay. It is simple common sense.

But political philosophers do not live in the world of common sense, so much as in a world of -isms. One must be either a Thatcherist or a socialist — it does not seem to occur to Saint P that the Labour vote is no less Harryist than the Conserva- tive vote has always been — or among God's company of saints as an Old- Fashioned Tory, believing that those whom the good Lord has seen fit to bless with the inestimable privilege of poverty should rejoice in their state. It is God's will that the poor should be poor, the rich, rich; poverty is part of the natural order, like human fecundity, and one interferes with it at one's peril . . . .

I now realise it is not the fact that this saintly man should produce such rubbish from all his noble cogitations which upsets me, but the fact that he should seek a philosophy at all. Political philosophers exist only to be made to look foolish by politicians and people alike. Even as we read about Old-Fashioned Toryism, Law- son is driving the Curzons out of Kedles- ton, where they have lived with their quaint motto 'Let Curzon holde what Curzon helde' for the last 800 years. There is no benefit to anyone from this, since in return for the £2 million of vindictive capital transfer tax the Treasury will have to find £12 million to buy the place.

The enemy is not Thatcherism, nor socialism, not even statism nor any -ism, but politics. The massive, suffocating in- stitution of the state can no more be wished away than can the resentments of the poor. The class war, which he decries so much, is not the product of Thatcherism or social- ism so much as the inevitable product of our party system. None of us asked for it, but once it has been joined we would be unwise to lose it on purpose. The only course for the sane man is to pick his way through the hideousness and absurdity of modern industrial society to find his plea- sures and survive as best he can.

Which is why my New Year's resolution is the blackest I have yet made. In the eight years of writing this column, I have only once offered a word of advice to the Prime Minister, when I advised her to award Peregrine Worsthorne the public honour which his sanctity and dignity seemed to demand. Needless to say, she paid no more attention to this than she did to demands by Mrs Claire Tomalin, literary editor of the Sunday Times (the paper that has got to speak with authority) that she should appoint Larkin as Poet Laureate. In any case, I now realise I was wrong and Mrs Thatcher was right. I shall continue to refer to him as Sir Peregrine, the honorary title being conferred in recognition of his ad- vanced years and sweetness of character. But my advice to the Prime Minister is withdrawn. Conservative intellectuals arc not people who should be encouraged.