ANOTHER VOICE
Perhaps poll tax will once again prove the last Straw
AUBERON WAUGH
'could not help smiling at what I read in my Daily Telegraph last Saturday. Jack Straw, who is an Opposition spokesman on the environment, was expressing his con- cern that the government's plan to replace domestic rates with a poll tax 'would worsen the inner cities' crisis to an intoler- able degree'. In doing so, he apparently called for a 'People's Rebellion'.
It was precisely such a poll tax, intro- duced in 1377 but not enforced until 1379, which prompted his namesake (although Probably no relation) to join Wat Tyler's people's rebellion of 1381. In fact it was Probably Jack Straw's men of Essex who sacked John of Gaunt's palace at the Savoy, burned down the Temple and be- headed the Archbishop of Canterbury, called Simon Sadbury, on Tower Green. We all know what happened to Tyler, but nobody seems certain what happened to Jack Straw. Something lingering, I fancy, With boiling oil in it somewhere.
Although Tyler's rebellion has always been called the Peasants' Revolt, and despite the unpleasant radical rhetoric Which appears to have sustained it — When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?' etc — at this gap of time one can see that it was essentially Poujadiste in its inspiration. Tyler's so- called peasants were in fact small business- men and farmers who were objecting to high taxes and excessive government Spending as well as to the legal and ecclesiastical apparatus which supported them.
Of Jack Straw's original targets, the Present Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have an almost religious enthusiasm for high taxes. He is an obvious candidate for Tower Green. The Temple is as well stuffed with crooked, grasping and incom- petent lawyers as it was in 1381. Only John of Gaunt's palace seems to have dis- appeared. It would be a mistake to sack the Savoy Hotel which stands on the site, since it contains only American and Japanese businessmen nowadays, and we do not Wish to discourage visitors, Even the most Obvious symbol of vainglorious govern- ment extravagance, the South Bank enter- tainment complex and Hayward Gallery, may attract a few tourists and should Probably be spared. Perhaps the most obvious target for the 1988 People's Rebel- lion, symbolising both the extravagance and oppression of our present system, is the DHSS headquarters at Elephant and Castle. No tourist or foreign businessman would miss it in the least. Let it be put to fire and the sword in Jack Straw's new rebellion, its inhabitants defenestrated and its records burned.
Having said all of which, I honestly do not see that the proposed poll tax will have much effect one way or the other on what used to be called inner city problems and is now, apparently, called the inner city crisis. One threat posed by the new poll tax is that a subsequent government may turn it into yet another form of discriminatory and punitive income tax, as is constantly threatened with health insurance, and as Sir Peter Parker nearly achieved with British Rail fares. But if Jack Straw can arrange a decent people's rebellion against the present modest proposals, it should warn the Government against trying to extend the idea even as Mrs Thatcher sets about hanging its ringleaders.
It might help us decide whether poll tax will make any difference to inner city problems if we could all agree what these problems are, where the crisis lies. A little examination would suggest that the prob- lems come under several rather different headings, and that if there is a single common factor it is one which nobody cares to mention.
Let us break it down under five main headings. The first would cover race rela- tions and law and order: muggings, burg- laries, drugs and rape, in perhaps that order of gravity; the second would cover education; the third would cover health; the fourth would cover employment and the fifth housing and environment. Law and order should plainly be given priority, since the present state of our inner cities in this respect discourages tourism, a point I will come to at the end of this article.
Everybody will point out that these inner city phenomena are not unconnected. Some will say that bad housing leads to anti-social behaviour, others that bad education leads to unemployment, unem- ployment to poverty and bad health etc, etc. But the real link is surely that a city's unfortunates — the poor, the unemploy- able, the criminal elements — have always tended to congregate. Where they congre- gate, they destroy the local education and health systems, they create bad housing (even if it is not already there), they discourage employment, create endless problems with law and order and, nowa- days, race. The only thing that has changed is that with the growth of population and the collapse of social discipline there are now many more of these unfortunates.
The ideal solution, of course, is to reform them all, but that, I fear, is uto- pian. The effective choices are to leave them in their ghettoes, to move them to new ghettoes, as in Liverpool's experiment of Kirby New Town, or to disperse them, moving problem families into respectable housing estates and encouraging yuppies to move into Spitalfields.
All these options are objectionable. The injustice of leaving them in their ghettoes is that potentially intelligent, industrious or respectable children born into them have much smaller chance of getting out. Mov- ing the ghettoes achieves nothing except to create dislocation, while dispersing them is bitterly unpopular with those among whom they are dispersed, as well as provoking an exodus and the creation of new ghettoes. At least by encouraging yuppies to move to Spitalfields one is giving them new people to mug and burgle, but that is not what the Prince of Wales has in mind, I feel.
The problem is peculiarly British be- cause we have lost the social discipline that once held our society together. Given the choice between opening Pandora's box and dispersing its contents, or keeping the box shut tight, my vote would go to the second course of action.
My friend George Stern suggests in a letter to the editor of the Guardian (I fear unpublished) that since our future is plain- ly not as a manufacturing nation, but as a provider of services, particularly tourist services, we should make a positive virtue of these slums. Scandinavians, Germans and Japanese, tired of their well-ordered existences, might well thrill to see a drug- gie catch Aids with his shared needle, to count the rats in our public wards, to witness Peter Bruinvels perform his first hanging on Jack Straw, Labour member for Blackburn, after the abortive Poll Tax Rebellion. Even Russian tourists might be allowed out to inspect this aspect of our society.
I don't know. But I am sure that nobody wants to see our city centres rebuilt by the Royal Institute of British Architects, even by its community enterprise section. There is usually something to be said for doing nothing.
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