The Idle Rich
If there is one statement of fact about post-war Britain that may be called incontrovertible it is this : the only kind of riches that incur no popular disapproval are riches obtained by good fortune and chance. People who become wealthy by work, who make fortunes out of industrial enterprises—they are regarded usually with suspicion, often with hostility. But the people who become rich by luck or accident, and who spend their money conspicuously, are liked and admired.
This is not a post-war phenomenon only. Ever since the industrial revolution the common man in England has looked with far more approval, and far less envy, on uncommercial wealth than on wealth obtained from trade or industry. He has always preferred the aristocrat to the tycoon. (This preference. perhaps, goes some way to explain the singular fact that the British businessman—unlike his American counterpart—has never attempted to create an ideal type in his own image; as soon as he has achieved success he has always sought to approximate himself to the uncommercial aristocracy. Like that celebrated personage in eighteenth-century Ireland, every British industrialist is at heart a Sham Squire.) But this popular preference for uncommercial wealth has been sharply accentuated in the past decade. Part of the explanation is the boom in gambling that has accompanied the Welfare State. Masses of people, with social security achieved and with individual advancement on nineteenth-century lines ruled out, have turned with ardour to the lottery. Every week in this country ten millions of our fellow-citizens fill in football pool coupons; and every one of the ten millions is buoyed up by dreams of a fortune next Wednesday morning.
Riches achieved in reality by luck, and spent in reality as the pools entrant would spend them in fantasy—such riches, and the owners of them, are universally popular. So are riches obtained through the accident of voice, or personality, or sexual attractiveness. Messrs. David Whitfield and Dickie Valentine, Mesdames Sabrina and Diana Dors grow richer all the time; and they enjoy the widest popularity. Any one of them would be welcomed with acclamation anywhere in this country—even, I think, at a shop steward's conference called by the Communist Party.
Riches obtained by individual or industrial enterprise are a very different matter. They are regarded with enmity. It is almost true to say that if a capitalist concern is to avoid attack its controllers' names must not become familiar to the common man. I can think of only one exception to the rule that fortunes made from industry are anathema; and that is Lord Nuffield. Like the first Mr. Henry Ford. and for somewhat similar reasons. Lord Nuffield is a blameless capitalist. All the others are either suspect or else prudently anonymous.
Lord Nuffield apart, the only popular personage deriving riches from British industry today is Lady Docker. She is as highly esteemed as a crooner, or a gramophone-record star, or a pools winner. The statement attributed to her recently that she found mink too hot to sit upon has done more—whether or not it was accurate—to endear free enterprise to the mass public than all the efforts of the Federation of British Industries for a generation past.
Previous page
