Lest we forget
Auberon Waugh
The great temptation now is to forget all the aggravation and insults of the last 15 Years – I ignore Mr Heath's brief and disastrous administration as being of no historical significance – and fall back into the rhetoric of national unity. Conserva tive politicians would like nothing more than to think they lead one nation, scat tering plenty o'er a smiling land as they step from their official motor cars to make fat-reaching decisions in front of their scrambler telephones, with telex Machines and computer print-outs showing curves, loops and parameters. They even have the occasional satellite passing overhead from which they can bounce their urgent thoughts and observations about life to each other in different countries. It would be easy, in their newly exalted positions, to forget the bitter, brooding resentment of the nation's Calibans – its ward 'supervisors', its dwarves, Ugly women, young men with squints and Crooked minds, victims of broken homes or comprehensive education with impassive faces and staring eyes, its hunchbacks, sexual incompetents, militant feminists', baby-bashers, trade unionists, teachers, lesbians, drunks, freaks, idlers, social workers, New Statesman journalists and Islington housewives who make up the other side's front line in the class war.
It is traditional, of course, for Conservatives to deny the existence of the class War even in opposition. In origin, this absurdity dates from the landowner's natural desire to live at peace with his tenants and estate workers, not to mention his domestic servants. Its continuation may be explained in terms of the factory owner's similar feeling towards the Poor, dehumanised slaves on his workbenches. These grands bourgeois were Perhaps unable to distinguish between their workers and that small, hard core of malcontents and troublemakers (young men with squints and crooked minds etc) at every level of society who might be identified as the class enemy. That was the mistake made by Mr Matthew Parris, now the Madame de Sevigne of the Conservative back-benchers, in his celebrated epistle to Mrs Evelyn Collingwood. Otherwise we must agree with Mrs Shirley Williams in her somewhat garbled Speech acknowledging defeat when she said what a tragedy it was that the 'haves' now outnumbered the 'have-nots'.
All that has really happened is that the dwarves and hunchbacks have been iso lated, but it was not the Conservative °PPosition which isolated them. Labour's government encouraged these Calibans to crawl out of their caves and holes in the ground so that we could all see them. Very frightened they were, too. In fact, they came within a whisker of taking over the government of the country. It was a narrow escape, and not one which we should forget in a hurry. For the first time, the whole island would have had to dance to Caliban's music in its various manifestations, whether the brutal, flatfooted Rumba of Mr 'Mossy' Evans, the Hammer Films beat of 'Dracula' Benn and his staring eyes or the seductive mazurkas and balalaika rhythms of Ian Mikardo's Eastern Europe.
We should not forget this, because the danger is by no means removed. It is no good pretending that Mrs Thatcher's team is particularly attractive. Practically no politicians are, of course, or they would not need to be politicians. When I urge the Conservatives to continue the class war during their period of office this is not simply the mischief of an idle commentator who happens to find the class war rather fun. Its purpose in drawing attention to the moon-calves, breastfeeders etc is partly to remind the public how disgusting they are, partly as a means of distracting attention from the Conservatives' own shortcomings in physical beauty or personal attractiveness.
The only way a government can draw unfavourable attention to political oppo nents, despite formidable powers of news management and patronage, is by goading them to reveal themselves in an unfavourable light. From now on the terms of the debate are of the Conservatives' choosing, and they would be mak ing a great mistake if they did not throw into the general witches' cauldron of the decision-making process a large ingre dient of this desire to enrage, humiliate and disadvantage their political opponents.
Weightier commentators than I have pointed out how roles have been reversed, and how Conservatives are now the vqices of optimism in our society. But theirs is not like Labour's optimism which, at its best, is the optimism of the holy fool, seeing sufficient goodness in mankind for him to give of his best for the benefit of the community. Theirs is the optimism of the ostrich. They ignore their hunters at their peril. Unless this Conservative government is to be seen as no more than a lull in the process of socialist takeover and proletarian ascendancy, the war must be taken into the enemy's camp.
One of the most obvious areas where the Calibans are at a popular disadvantage is in the field of law and order. For myself, I am a little nervous of this one, and refused to vote for my Conservative candidate, Mr du Cann, largely because he promised to hang terrorists. This was not so much because I sympathised with terrorists as because I feared I might be mistaken for one myself, and I have a child's terror of being hanged. Events over the election in North Devon rather confirmed this terror. I saw my role there as being akin to that of the porter in Macbeth, introducing a little grim humour and bathos at a fraught moment. I can quite understand Macbeth deciding that a reasonable reaction to the play might be: 'Hang the porter!' but I was alarmed – I might as well admit it – when our judicial system reached the same conclusion.
But although I am strongly opposed to hanging, I see no reason why it should not be debated. Again, if the debate is to be carried into the enemy's camp, as I constantly urge, it might be thought tasteless if Members of the House of Commons were to debate hanging each other. But two Labour MPs have just retired from Parliament who might well provide subjects for such a debate. I refer, of course, to Mrs Shirley Williams and Mr Michael Stewart.
It would be easy to feel sorry for Mrs Williams now she is out of a job and reduced to appearing as the Daily Telegraph's pin-up day after day, but through simple pigheadedness and thinking she knows best she has personally supervised the destruction of all secondary education in England, and there may be those who feel hanging is too good for her. Where Michael Stewart is concerned, we are for tunate in having as our new Foreign Secretary one of the few politicians of either party who flew into Biafra during the Nigerian civil war and saw for himself the consequences of Mr Stewart's assistance to the Federal blockade. A long impeachment process which informed the world of Labour's role in that war might wipe the sanctimonious smirk off a few faces.
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