PERSONAL COLUMN
Too much government?
DAVID WILLIAMS
More and more, oppressively more and more, the British are being looked after. Not so long ago I walked across that splendid Roman aqueduct in Provence called the Pont du Gard. The stone coping, flat and perhaps four yards across, was entirely unguarded. No rail, no fence. Not even a notice telling you it was a long way to fall. If there was a Pont du Gard this side of the Channel there'd be six-foot iron railings bordering that top coping—and even with them ques- tions in the House about the wisdom of allowing people up there because iron rail- ings can be climbed. Whitehall has become Nanny Whitehall. She takes her charges by the hand and leads them on prudent walks in a suitably tamed park.
We have developed confusions of thought about this matter of taking risks. Ought we to say: everybody has a right to take what risks he chooses, and if as a result he falls 400 feet into the River Gard that's his own lookout? Or ought we to differentiate be- tween risk and risk? Are there some which are the same for everybody against which, perhaps, it's desirable that we should be defended by all possible means? And are there other risks which are dangerous only to the enterprising (or perhaps foolhardy), but against which a blanket state protection has begun to be thought necessary?
It can be agreed that smoke is dangerous. Smoke from chimney-stacks, from open fires, can kill you little by little. I remember once being at a public meeting and sitting on the platform with a doctor who was there to make the main speech. His theme was the dangerousness of smoke. Did his audience realise that this country had the highest deathrate in the world from bronchitis? Didn't we realise that smokelessness was a condition which could be achieved? Oughtn't we to unite to press upon the Gov- ernment the need for urgent legislation? At the end an elderly man rose to say: 'I sup- pose none of us wants to die from bron- chitis. But we've got to die of something. I think I'd sooner snuff it from almost any- thing than linger on with a tenth of my wits left, waiting for that telegram from the Queen and being a burden to those having to look after me—some unfortunate unmarried female of my family most likely.' The doctor didn't really have an answer to this one. The questions, preserved what for? pre- served what to? hadn't occurred to him as ones requiring an answer. They're awkward ones, but let's agree to leave them alone here, and to say simply, Yes, there are risks which are the same for everybody, risks which it is right that the Grandmother of Parliaments should busy herself with—and never mind the large, ultimate questions.
But what about those other risks, and that blanket protection that is beginning to seem desirable? Here government has become altogether too nosey. It is coming to think of itself as required—even entitled—to look after everything. In the process it has been exhausting itself, and making itself look ridiculous. Governmental megalomania—the `touch-of-the-tiller' mentality—has become prevalent enough to be dangerous.
Taking a walk in the Pennines a long time ago, I fell in with a country postman making his way from farm to farm. It was a crisp autumn day and we moved fast, so fast that it was he rather than I who had the breath for talking. He had his mailbag slung over one shoulder, and in his right hand a thick straight stick that came up to his chest. It bad no handle. He just gripped it in a brown and hairy hand four inches from the top. 'What's that for?' I managed to gasp. 'Bulls', he said. 'Ah meet a too-three now and then, specially taking my short cuts, and they'm chancey at certain times of the year. But with this Ah'm all right. Ah joost knap 'em on't snout when they come for me. They sheer off quick enough then.' In 1970 this would be an impossible situation. Questions in the House, threats from trade unions, would have brought dynamic government cranking into action. In no time electric fences would have been compulsorily and strategically laid.
It's wonderful the variety of methods people can 0** of to do damage to them- selves. Fireworks can burn the eyebrows off, so is it safe to leave the banning, or not-. banning, of fireworks to heads of schools? Shouldn't heads be given instructions by the local authority, or even by the Department of Education and Science itself, that they should place a ban on fireworks in schools or on any open ground surrounding the premises? And aren't there germs by the million clinging to the cloths we use for washing up the dishes? So oughtn't there to be a law forbidding the use of these dirty bringers of disease? And an enactment that shining, antiseptic, automatic dishwashers at £200 or so a time should become obligatory purchases for every home?—with grants-in- aid of course for everybody living in a coun- cil house so that there should be no need for occupiers to worry about having to make do with a smaller car?
Utopianism, instead of being a useful and relaxing exercise for philosophers and students of the social sciences, has been elevated—or perhaps better brought down— to the status of a political system. Govern- ment, there can be no doubt of it, has be- come obsessed by Utopianism. Men on earth in concert shall sing, all tears shall be wiped from their eyes, all hurtful attack from whatever source warded off, through the simple expedient of 'making proper pro- vision', as the phrase goes. It might be salu- tary to consider the White Knight in Alice Through the Looking-glass, and his strangely accoutred horse. These days governors and administrators are getting to think along his lines. 'I was wondering what the mousetrap was for', said Alice. 'It isn't very likely there would be any mice on a horse's back.' Not very likely, perhaps', said the Knight, 'but if any do come I don't choose to have them running all about. You see', he went on after a pause, 'it's as well to be provided for everything. That's the reason the horse has all those anklets round its feet.' But what are they for?' Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity. 'To guard against the bites of sharks', the Knight replied. 'It's an inven- tion of my own.'
The more centralised a state becomes, the more self-important becomes its government, and the more likely to confuse those two kinds of risk: the kind we are all subject to and which may therefore be considered to be the state's concern, and those other risks which we ought to be free to take or steer clear of as we choose. It might be a good idea to recall to mind the Committee of Public Safety, an invention of the French revolutionary idealists of 1793, and at the same time to remember the guillotine, with its basket for severed heads, which became one of its chief instruments of policy.
While we are at it we might also bear in mind that while those in control run busily round shackling accident—designing lumin- ous waistcoats perhaps because all-the-year round British Sunrunertime-makes morning darkness long and possibly dangerous after Christmas—the really important risks, the ones that concern not only all of us now, but all our children's children to the third and thirty-third generation, are made light of without any qualm at all. Radioactive material, lethal gases, very potent stuff indeed and capable of doing mischief over uncounted years ahead; get dumped into the sea. And ministerial technologists all over the 'advanced' world are busy agreeing that all this stuff is as harmless on the ocean floor as a doctored cat snoozing on the rug by the fire. They can even get to talking as if it isn't really there at all.
The Collect of the fourth Sunday after Epiphany goes like this: '0 God who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright, grant us such strength and protec- tion as may support us in all dangers. . .
There were plenty of risks about in the sixteenth century when that was written.
Some of them would now be easily avoid- able. Some certainly still threaten. But Cran- mer and his coevals felt that there were altogether so many that the only One with any chance of coping was perhaps God. Now the omnicompetent ministerial chaps are beginning more and more to take over the role of the Almighty. They like the soothing sound of the words: 'Leave it with us'. From the very first days of their assumption of office the itch begins. The itch to look for ways of protecting us from our- selves and from our venturesomeness. Ank- lets for protection against sharkbite? A gimmick? Or a good idea? Well, everything makes its little contribu- tion towards the achievement of full blanket protection. And when that cosy state ar- rives I wonder what we shall do with some- body who takes a fancy to climbing the north face of the Eiger? Perhaps by legislation will have been put through en- acting that a sufficiency of superannuated railway carriages be stationed in sidings clo.se to large centres of population, and that. al- thea side these there shall be plenty of sterilised upholstery to slash.
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