Another voice
The way ahead
Auberon Waugh
The Spectator is shortly going to appear in a dazzling new format. The pages will be smaller and crisper and the design will be more attractive to the eye. As the appalling Hunter Davies might say, can you wait? When that great day dawns, a few people might even start reading The Spectator again. The knowledge that nobody is ever going to read a word of what he writes might well have a discouraging effect on some writers. In part of the Gilbert and Sullivan canon — I don't remember where and can't trace it — the chorus comes on singing words to the effect that it really doesn't matter what they sing since nobody can make out the words in a chorus. For a writer who knows that nobody is going to read him there is a similar tendency to fill his lines with double-dutch, gibberish or rude noises: Oof Plop. Fart.
But even this is surely preferable to the opposite tendency by which journalists assume not only that they are read but that they are read by People Who Matter: that their opinions and judgments are weighed up and taken into account before important decisions of state are made which alter all our destinies. As soon as journalists start imagining that it matters twopence what they decide about the great issues of the moment it affects their prose-style in the most deplorable way and their newspapers deteriorate into boredom and unreadability. If there is a more pathetic or ridiculous spectacle than the writer who knows that nobody reads him it is surely the writer Who imagines people read him who don't.
I was glad to see last week that Mrs Thatcher has finally woken up to certain dangers in the murderously stupid policy of détente with the Soviet Union. I and a small number of others have been patiently warning about these dangers ever since poor dear Alec Douglas Home announced détente as the first priority of British foreign policy in the early 1960s. Of course it doesn't really matter very much Whether Great Britain wages détente or not, but that is not part of my argument. All we have
been doing, as journalists, is to make our own little noises — unorganised, unorchestrated and largely ignored — to which Mrs Thatcher has now added her slightly larger noise. In the
eternal contest between the "Oohs!” and the "Ahs!" the "Oohs!" seem to have gained a tiny
Point. But it would not surprise me in the least
to learn that Mrs Thatcher had never heard of me or read a word I had ever written, let alone followed my tortuous arguments over the last twelve years on the vexed question of détente. But I must admit it is nice to find a Conservative leader who occasionally talks a little honest sense in place of the dishonest pap we have been given for so many years. If I had any confidence that she would be able to beat the unions I might begin to think she had the makings of a good Prime Minister.
It is one of the advantages of writing a column which one knows will not be read that one doesn't have to employ euphemisms or subtleties. My decision to tell Mrs Thatcher what her strategy should be for the next two and a half years is undoubtedly influenced by the knowledge that she will never read it. I just think it should be said, committed to floppy paper in illegible inK on a filthy type-face and thrown away, a ritual, propitiatory gesture to some God or other who might otherwise feel neglected.
She must make it her first and only priority between now and the run-up to the next general election to see that she is in a position to smash the trade unions after it. Any energy spent on electioneering between now and the immediate campaign is wasted and might easily be counter-productive to the first priority. No humane Conservative wants unemployment any more than most population control fanatics really want a return of the Black Death, but I do not see how Mrs Thatcher will ever be in a position to smash the political power of the trade unions unless Labour have been allowed 'to let the unemployment figure top the two million mark before she comes to power. As I say, the reduction of the trade unions must be her first priority, since it is a sine qua non of economic recovery. So, to the extent that an opposition party wields any direct influence — and it can only be in extra-parliamentary directions, which means, in this case, with foreign holders of sterling — it must be directed to ensuring that Labour achieves this figure.
It is a humbling thought for any parliamentary leader that the only effective influence she wields is outside Parliament and outside the British electorate, but it is an awareness which is long overdue. All these fine and admirable noises about the inadequacies of our defence budget won't make a blind bit of difference to Labour government policy, nor will they win
any votes. The British lower classes, who form the bulk of the electorate, have a fine, feckless indifference towards matters of Defence in peace-time which has always persuaded unscrupulous politicians to direct defence resources to areas of greater electoral appeal, and honourable ones to realise that Britain can only be defended by stealth. There is much useful work to be done in fiddling the inter-departmental allocations — transferring army medical services, etc, to the Social Security vote — but all this pales into insignificance when compared to the first priority of smashing the unions. The only effective result of exposing our defence inadequacies under Labour is to make the Russians cockier than they already are.
No, the one effective area for Opposition manoeuvre at the present time is in exposing the deleterious inflationary effect of any Labour measure calculated to relieve unemployment at the present time. This won't make any difference to Labour policy by first effect, and the electorate probably won't even notice it is happening, but it will frighten foreign creditors and holders of sterling who are the only people in a position to force Labour to desist from their policies.
Meanwhile, Mrs Thatcher must shelve the temptation to describe Labour as the Party of Unemployment in favour of calling it the Party of Inflation — at any rate until the actual election. She must resist all pressure to take Mr Heath back into her team in any capacity whatever, and congratulate herself every day on her cleverness in having got rid of the disastrous Robert Carr. She must draw up a new Industrial Relations Bill of which the more appetising elements will be revealed to the eJectorate at the time of the next election and written into the Manifesto. Her answer to the question: "What will you do to beat inflation and unemployment" will be: "Why, I shall smash the unions." But for the next two and half years she must concentrate on letting Labour be the Party of Unemployment.
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