PERSONAL COLUMN

A letter to my son

SIMON RAVEN

MY DEAR BOY,

Or 'my dear man', I suppose I should say; for although it seems only yesterday that I last wrote to you through these columns in honour of your fifteenth birth- day, within a very few months now you will have turned eighteen, and at eighteen, so they tell me, you must be counted a grown man, as you will then be entitled to the Vote.

Mind you, no one seems very clear about he details; but, as far as I can make out, there is to be legislation passed during this next session of Parliament whereby all mizens of the United Kingdom will be deemed to come of age on their eighteenth birthday, a privilege hitherto peculiar to princes of the blood. The motives behind this proposed reform, which has been asked for by nobody and will entail much work for many, remain dubious in every sense. Myself I suspect that the Labour government is trying to nail together a new bandwagon on which to posture as the champion of Youth.

It is also possible that socialist poli- ticians, relying on the known penury and sentimentality of the very young, have calcu- lated that the eighteen plus vote will tell heavily in their own favour. If that is their slew, they may be in for a nasty surprise, if only because the young dislike being taken or granted; but all this is mere speculation and need not detain us now.

For the salient fact before us is that early next year you will wake up one dank and windy morning (in your narrow school bed) to find that you are legally of age. Quite apart from being able to vote, you will be responsible for your own debts, privileged to come and go when and where you please, and free to marry the first girl that takes your tancy without anyone's permission except hers. You will have become an adult over- night; yet I need hardly remind you that you will still be struggling for your 'A' Levels, and that should you proceed to a university you will be dependent on my support (under the present system of the 'means test') for several years to come.

In one word, then, your emancipation will he phoney . . . or let us say, to save face, theoretical. It will in any case be heavily modified by the financial nexus which must continue to bind you to my authority. This heing so, I think it as well for both of us that I should now make it quite plain where I stand.

First, as to the Vote itself. With your right o vote of course, I shall in no way be able o interfere. Even so, you should know my pinions of the matter.

:The notion appears to be that since you ill be old enough, at eighteen, to die for our country, you will also be old enough

o elect the rulers who may send you to your eath; or, put more gently, that since you ill have to pay taxes (should you actually am any money), you are entitled to elect he administration that will disburse them. it her contention is rubbish: you might just s well claim that if you help to put out a re you are thereby qualified to select the fhcers of the Fire Brigade, or that your sistance with the washing up makes you fit person to appoint the next cook. What

is really at issue is this: do you know enough about the affairs of your country and the politicians on offer to decide which of the latter should conduct the former? At your age I certainly didn't, and I am tolerably certain that you don't. Some people say, of course, that your generation is more 'politi- cally conscious' than mine; but I do not see that 'political consciousness' is necessarily to be inferred from a spiteful habit of parroting imbecile slogans. Although, to do you justice, this is not a habit of yours, your complacency is none the less extreme; I am therefore not sanguine about your qualifications for the franchise, and if I had my way your right would be deferred until you were forty. But since this is not to be, pray allow me to offer two suggestions: I. Vote for the man and not the party. If, by some improbable chance, there is a

man of honour and intelligence standing for your constituency, then vote for him what- ever hi41 declared politics.

2. If there is no such candidate, or if (unbelievably) there are two, then prefer the Conservative. This because the Conservatives try to do what they think can be done, whereas the other lot insist on doing what they think ought to be done thus obtruding an element of zeal as disagreeable as disastrous.

Let us next consider your adult right to come and go as you wish. In fact you've had the key of the door for some time now and always used it quite reasonably, so nothing new arises here. By all means come home as late as ever you please—but kindly have a care who comes with you. In Nigel Dennis's approximate words, `Any fool can get a woman into a house: it takes a labour of Hercules to get her out.' More of this when I come to discuss your right to marry; meanwhile, let me simply require of you to enjoy your vices where you should properly look for them, i.e. a good ten miles from your own front door.

Thirdly, your debts . . . for which, being of age, you yourself will be held accountable.

But I dare say I shall continue to bail you out from time to time, always providing that your requests are not too ruinous; so permit me to counsel moderation. I have to confess, however, that with things as they are it makes excellent financial sense to be in debt right up to your lugholes, since every week which passes reduces the worth of what you owe. Since, furthermore, the Labour party is doing its best to destroy one's independence of action and to dictate to one how one should or should not spend one's cash, there seems little point in maintaining a favour- able balance, all ripe and ready, not for one's own pleasurable uses, but for socialist malversation : one might just as well incur debts instead, thus compelling the socialists to go and pester someone else. Yet another advantage of being in debt these days is that 'soft' legislation over all matters of property has ensured that even the most dishonest debtor will sooner be acclaimed as a martyr than imprisoned as a fraud; which means that you can have a very long run indeed on other people's money.

So, one way and the other, being in debt would seem to be just the thing. I advance only one reason against it: it is undignified. But of course once you are of age you must decide for yourself about questions ot dignity. Perhaps you won't care whether or not you can hold your head up: in which case you will have my sneaking sympathy, my assistance (up to a point) — and my contempt.

Marriage. If you want to chuck your youth away, then once you are eighteen there will be nothing I can do to stop you. Form- erly, I could—and, believe me, 1 would— have prevented you from getting married. no matter what your reasons, until you were twenty-one. Now, if you wish, you can make a beginning of folly and bondage three whole years earlier. If you do, you can rely on me for one thing: when you repent, I'll help you get out of it. I'll not help you get in, or give you a penny while you are in, but as soon as you come to your senses I'll spend what I have to set you free. There are girls enough for the taking: take the lot, if you can and will, but for God's sake don't take just one.

The earliest age to think of marriage is thirty; there is a whole world to be seen and enjoyed first. But I don't think I need worry: for every time you come back from school you show a salutary increase in selfish good sense. A credit to your masters! I'll look to find you improved even further this Christmas.

So all in all, perhaps, the new legislation will not do very much harm as far as you and I are concerned. And yet I am deeply sorry that you will now attain to your majority at eighteen. It means that what was once an important and genuine occasion will have been cheapened and deprived of its meaning.

You will be entering into a fake maturity instead of a real one, for although even at twenty-one you will still be depend- ent, in measure, by that time you will at least be aware what true independence means and be pretty close to achieving it, whereas at eighteen you can be nothing more than a school boy. At eighteen you cannot possibly cope, on your own, with the problems of adult life, and if you cannot cope with the problems you have no title to the privileges. That the Govern- ment should award you such a title is sheer wanton silliness and indeed much worse. For it is all part of a sickening pretence that is becoming daily more common—a pretence which has been got up in order to flatter and cajole certain inferior classes of people— that the ignorant, the incompetent and the idle are somehow 'just as good as' those who clear their own path and carry their own luggage along it.

Thus we see men and women all round us who could not even exist were it not for welfare services and state subsidies, but who are nevertheless taught to regard themselves as free and equal and desirable citizens, quite as deserving as the hard-working man who must pay ever-mounting taxes to keep them and their children out of the gutter. Or similarly we see certain 'emergent' countries, which could not last five minutes without

massive aid from all quarters, preening them-

selves on their 'independence' and claiming full voice and place in a world to which, for the past five millennia, they have contributed precisely nothing. By the same token, my dear boy, your 'coming of age' next year will be a squalid fantasy and your 'inde- pendence' no more substantial than that of a small child who is allowed to choose his birthday treat. What would you like for yours, by the way? A new bat or the money?