ANOTHER VOICE
Prospects of a Haitian balm for People Like Us
AUBERON WAUGH
In the summer of 1987, for some reason, I addressed myself to the unfamiliar sub- ject of penal reform, proposing a form of prison for violent or exceptionally un- pleasant prisoners which was precisely the opposite to Bentham's Panopticon. Benth- am's idea, it will be remembered, was that prisoners should be under constant sur- veillance, open to moral instruction and guidance 24 hours a day. My own proposal, through Waugh's Udenopticon, was to seek the same ends — punishment, deterr- ence, prevention and reform — by more libertarian (and cheaper) means. Essential- ly, the idea was that they should be cut off from all contact with the outside world and left to their own devices on a deserted island, being provided only with food and the occasional blanket and clothing by means of a chute. They could arrange their own society, whether to terrorise and murder, or whether to co-operate for the common good, but they would be unsuper- vised, out of sight and out of mind, answerable only to each other.
For the details of this ingenious scheme, how the prisoners are to be delivered and removed at the end of their sentence, how food and blankets are to be delivered, all with no contact between captors and cap- tive, it will be necessary to turn to the original article (The Udenopticon: a libertarian direction for crime and punish- ment,' Another voice, 4 July 1987) but the whole idea was posited on the assumption that violent or exceptionally unpleasant criminals formed only a small part of the population. My idea was that the intelli- gent liberal, humane, educated bourgeois society we all knew and loved would be better protected if the antisocial elements inside it were consigned to some sort of oubliette where they could reform them- selves, if they chose, without brutalising the prison service, police or judiciary, and without terrifying our aged relatives.
As time goes by, however, it becomes increasingly apparent that the intelligent liberal, humane, educated, bourgeois ele- ments we all know and love are becoming an ever smaller minority in our society possibly soon to be overtaken in numbers by the criminal minority — and are no longer its dominant voice. Even worse, they have lost control of large and impor- tant parts of society — most noticeably the police, the politicians, many of the main outlets of 'public opinion' in press and television, quite possibly (I do not know) the administrative and executive classes of the civil and foreign services, and certainly some parts of the judiciary.
I certainly do not wish to suggest that the New Britain which has emerged after nearly 12 years of Margaret Thatcher is dominated by violent or exceptionally un- pleasant criminals. The Andrew Neils and Gary Bushells in our midst are nothing of the sort. My point is that in any profession- al, or business, or above all social context, they are almost equally to be avoided. Moreover, their unbudgable and in- creasingly active resentment against what remains of the previous intelligent, liberal, humane, educated bourgeois .dispensation threatens to make life more and more difficult for People Like Us.
I say 'People Like Us' to embrace all readers of the Literary Review, most read- ers of The Spectator, many members of the Garrick and so on, but the truth is that where I am concerned, it has always been my natural instinct to fight it out, to torment, persecute, annoy, and, where possible, frustrate the invading ranks of New Brits. I have little doubt that the sport will see me out. But most PLUs lack my sanguine temperament, having no appetite for the class war. Their efforts at self- effacement may be compared to the retreat of the Grande Armee from Moscow, end- lessly harassed by troops of ferocious Cossacks, beset by wolves, reduced to cannibalism, occasionally challenged to set battles (like the great Neil v. Worsthorne libel action) which they invariably lose. The savagery with which the Murdoch pack sets upon anyone in public life sus- pected of having been to public school the Sun's recent treatment of Lord Gowrie is a good case in point — might well frighten those of a more gentle disposition into something approaching despair. Which is how I come to the point that what may be needed in the future is not only a chain of Udenoptica for violent or exceptionally unpleasant criminals in our midst, but also some sort of system of Udenoptica for the intelligent, liberal, humane, educated bourgeois. Reviled and constantly assaulted by the dominant New Brits, rather as the Watutsi were set upon by the venomous, midget Burundi in dis- tant Ruanda, the gentle Ibos by the ignor- ant Hausa-Fulani in northern Nigeria, the East African Asians by native Ugandans, the Chinese in Indonesia . . . the time has come for PLUs to gather together for their own protection.
Quite apart from their qualities of super- ior intelligence, competence, education and humane liberalism which so much enrage the New Brits, People Like Us must learn that as a result of the envy and hatred encouraged by the new lower-middle-class ascendancy, Britain will soon be no place for the comparatively rich. America, of course, has been here before us. There, they have estates called condominiums, where the better off can hide behind security guards and barbed wire against the envy of the poor, voting to exclude any Neils or Bushells who propose themselves as sharers in life's feast. But these are necessarily small, rather claustrophobic redoubts in a hostile world. European redoubts like Nice or St Tropez or the Royal Enclosure at Ascot have long since fallen. Those habitues who are not interna- tional criminals are as likely as not to be freelance journalists scouting for Murdoch.
But I see the way ahead in a recent article in the Independent by David Adams, describing the delights of a new holiday resort called Labadee which is situated (although few of the Americans who go there are aware of it) in an enclave on the coast of Haiti. It is protected by a ten-foot wall from the rest of the island, with its voodoo, its Aids, its civil wars and its endless killing. The holidaymakers, who have no idea of what is going on outside the wall, imagine that they are in paradise.
As the emerging Third World learns about politics and promptly reverts to pre-colonial savagery, such protected en- claves could well offer a clue to the future. They may start like Club Mediterrane encampments, but there is no reason why they should not evolve into something like the Chinese Treaty Ports of 1897-1939, places where People Like Us can go and be ourselves — places 'where the best is like the worst, where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thousand' — places, in fact, from which we can blackball Andrew Neil, run over each other's kiddies when drunk, and shoot each other in moments of sexual frustra- tion. Eventually, of course, the whole process of colonisation will have to start again. Let us hope there are still People Like Us around to get it under way. Meanwhile, there is hope in Labadee.
Previous page
