Another voice
Year of hope
Auberon Waugh
We want men and women of all ages and in all walks of life to set their hopes high and to carry them through into reality... We want people to succeed so
that they can provide for their own families and so that we, as a country, can afford better health care and improved public ser- vices... Far from losing our way, we are just getting into our stride,' said Mrs That- cher, getting into her stride. The occasion was her New Year's Address to her sup- porters, delivered a day early because there were going to be no newspapers on New Year's Day. The reason for this, of course, was that the printers had demanded too much extra money to produce them. Somewhere along the line, the struggle of men and women in all walks of life to pro- vide for their own families and afford better health care had come unstuck.
But it does not seem to have occurred to Mrs Thatcher's foolish, addled brain that there is no contradiction between the states of having lost her way and just getting into her stride. Nobody doubts that she is walk- ing hard and wiggling her bottom very pur- posefully. Our point is that she is striding in the wrong direction, and probably over a cliff. As she pauses for breath before the next machine-gun burst of cliches, let us try to analyse the hail of rubber bullets already recorded.
'We shall not be afraid to encourage enterprise and reward success.' We' are presumably the Government. It is hard to see why any government should be afraid to encourage enterprise, but what on earth does Mrs Thatcher mean when she talks about rewarding success? Does she plan state bursaries or ex gratia payments to anyone she judges successful? I suspect that she is hinting — however mendaciously that she might be prepared to cut punitive taxes on savings and on higher incomes. Never mind that she is almost certainly lying when she drops this hint. A letter from the Chancellor to Sir William Clark MP, who had written on behalf of the Adam Smith Institute, reveals that Lawson has no plans for reducing capital taxes, ex- cept as a long-term aspiration, and has even been unable to convince his senior civil ser- vants in the Treasury that high rates of capital tax damage productive investment. In such hands as these, private ownership of anything more durable than a video machine is doomed. Look at the poor Harpur-Crewes.
But what really reveals the extent to which Mrs Thatcher has lost her way is the language she uses. What she is effectively saying is that 'we will not be afraid' to reduce punitive taxes. Never mind, as 1 say, that she is lying, and that the Government is much too scared of pilgerish squeals from the Left to do any such thing — it being the distillation of all High Tory wisdom that you cannot seem to 'favour' the rich at a time of mass unemployment. But what she actually said was something quite different, that she would not be afraid to encourage enterprise or reward success. In other words, she is falling into the trap of every socialist tyrant in supposing that by no longer confiscating her subjects' earnings or goods she is actually giving them a present. In the same way every Chancellor I have ever heard has spoken of tax 'concessions', as if by right every halfpenny we earn or own belongs to the Government; we should be grateful for such crumbs as we are allow- ed to retain.
Since the successful and enterprising are always in a tiny minority, it has been easy work for successive governments to clobber them, as the present Government continues to do. By keeping the nation's successful and enterprising citizens poor, politicians also manage to ensure that there are fewer challenges to their own self-importance. It is only now, when some of the 'richest' peo- ple in the land — like newspaper print workers — are simply refusing to do any work at all that governments make patronising noises about incentives, or about not being afraid to encourage enter- prise and reward success.
A more innocent explanation of Mrs Thatcher's remark must be that she simply intends to honour the enterprising and suc- cessful by appointing them Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Knights, Life Peers or even hereditary noblemen. If she has any such intention, she has already had eight opportunities to reveal it. Perhaps we should examine the latest 'Honours' List to see what signs there are of any determination to encourage enterprise and reward success.
Of four life peerages in the 1984 New Year 'Honours', all are what might be call- ed routine in-house appointments. One is a former House of Commons clerk; another, Mr Alastair McAlpine, is a fat millionaire — said by some to be genial — who has been responsible for raising money for the Conservative Party. The other two are Ar- thur Bottomley and Fred Mulley. Bot- tomley, it may be remembered, was an amiable Labour politician, now 76, who was put out to grass in 1967. As Com- monwealth Secretary he is said to have caused consternation among his hosts in Accra when he complimented a Ghanaian guard of honour on being 'magnificent creatures'. Is this encouraging enterprise, rewarding success? Fred Mulley is remembered — to the extent that he is remembered at all — as the Defence Secretary who fell asleep while watching a Jubilee flying display with the Queen in 1977. One hopes he has better luck in the House of Lords.
Most of the other 'Honours' are too bor- ing to contemplate, but one cannot help wondering how Mrs Thatcher reconciles her stern criterion of encouraging enterprise, rewarding success, with the Companionship of Honour awarded to Sir Sacheverell Sitwell. We must all agree it could not possibly have gone to a nicer man. Anyone who has lived to the exalted age of 86 can claim success of one sort, at any rate. In the course of his long life, I think Sir Sacheverell has published nearly 85 books, and that shows a commendable industry. But what of John Wain, who has never written a good book, either, or done anything remotely enterprising or succesful in his 58 years of quite exceptionally boring existence? I can only suppose that he earned his CBE in 1956 when, as a young man down from lecturing in English at Reading University, he once insulted P. G. Wodehouse and no doubt endeared himself to the blood-stained inner circles of the Conservative establishment.
Not all the 'Honours' awarded are as silly as this. Dick Francis may have got his OBE as the only writer most Conservatives have ever heard of, but he richly deserves it, just the same. One must give praise where praise is due. The appointment of Lord Gowrie, Minister of the Arts, to the Privy Council was highly imaginative. If it had been made by anyone other than Mrs Thatcher one would have described it unhesitantly as a very good joke indeed, in the best Harold Macmillan tradition. Knowing that Mrs Thatcher has no sense of humour whatever, one can only gasp at the depths of incom- prehension it reveals.
Which brings us finally to those journal- ists whose enterprise Mrs Thatcher chose to encourage, whose success reward. There is a good case for saying that no journalists should ever be 'honoured' in this way, since the 'honour' can sometimes be misinter- preted. To single out a toady from the Parliamentary Press lobby might seem par- ticularly invidious, but I can see no serious objection to the OBE which Mrs Thatcher awarded to Mr Baruch Harold Wood, chess correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.
I am bored with drawing attention to Mrs Thatcher's hysterical vendetta against Mr Peregrine Worsthorne. As the Prince of Wales said about IRA bombers, God will judge her. But not before others have had their shot at it. Neil Kinnock, commenting on the Honours List, said: 'We have a government which continues to be as out of touch with the creative people in Britain as it has always been with the needy in Britain.' Mrs Thatcher may think she is on top now, but we will get her in the end.
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