ANOTHER VOICE
Report from behind the front line in the class war
AUBERON WAUGH
Five or six summers ago I spent an entire night lying on my back beneath a cloudless sky in the Languedoc, staring at the heavens on the recommendation of the Science Correspondent of the Daily Tele- graph, He announced that there would be a celestial fireworks display such as one could see only once or twice in a lifetime: whole nebulae would explode, shooting stars and meteors would race icross the sky, thousands of tons of space debris would burn itself out in our atmosphere, quasars would give out incomprehensible radio signals and even the imploded Black Holes, those mysterious entities towards which our entire universe (all poetry, all art, all human endeavour) seems ineluct- ably drawn — even they, according to the Daily Telegraph, might have been ex- pected to put on some sort of festive apparel. So I lay on my back and stared at the stars. And I stared and stared. I saw many bats, an owl or two, three or four aeroplanes and even what might have been a shooting star. Nothing more. I had been had for a mug.
Perhaps it was as the result of this experience that I did not go to Henley over the weekend, where the Daily Telegraph had promised a great explosion of the class war, with hundreds (if not thousands) of young anarchists planning to invade and break up the Regatta. In fact I have never been to Henley, and do not even know anyone who has. Somehow, through read- ing the gossip columns of the down-market newspapers and magazines, these anarch- ists had decided that it was a smart thing to do, and planned to descend on the place and terrorise all the Berkshire dentists and their wives who patronise it. It was to be organised by the same people as had 'organised' the great 'Stop the City' de- monstration a year ago, we were told. But that demonstration undoubtedly occurred; at least one niece of mine actually joined it, in the public-spirited way of the young. On this occasion my elder daughter volun- teered to go to Henley disguised, no doubt, as a dentist's assistant — and reported that nothing occurred. About a thousand policemen testified by their presence that they read the Daily Telegraph, too.
Perhaps the anarchists lost their nerve. This seems to me a pity. Last year, a few anti-hunting activists, frustrated in their attempts to dig up the grave of the great Duke of Beaufort, paraded at the Badmin- ton Horse Trials and were lucky to escape with their lives. There can be few opportu- nities for these anarchists and revolution- ary socialists to learn how deeply and sincerely their own hatred of the comfort- able, well-to-do majority is returned. It is easy for them to come up against the police, as they did in the 'Stop the City' demonstration, and console themselves that these timid, overpaid lackeys of the capitalist system represent the chief obsta- cle to the realisation of their confused and often contradictory aspirations. They have no impression of the extent to which the police protect them far more than they threaten their existence: remove the thin blue line ' which prevents law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms or other offensive weapons for the protection of their property, and these anarchists would be wiped off the face of the earth. They would be hunted down with packs of Dobermann pinschers and their entrails would be thrown around to shouts of 'Tally-ho' and the blowing of horns.
Which is rather how I feel about Miss Janet Fookes, Conservative member for Plymouth Drake. The blue-print for the disruption of Henley Regatta appeared, according to the Daily Telegraph, in a magazine called Class War, but I have been unable to secure a copy. I had hoped the editors might be interested in a few articles written from the middle-class point of view, describing where the class enemy can best be found — chiefly in trade union headquarters and queueing outside the DHSS offices nowadays, I imagine — and how attacked, whether by bombs or buck- ets of offal. This is apparently the sort of thing which Class Wars prints. Those who follow the press laws in this country may be surprised that such things can be published without criminal prosecution for seditious libel, or at very least for incitement to a breach of the peace. If we want to change the law of the land, as we are often told, there is a perfectly good way to do it in a democracy: first you join one of our great political parties, and get yourself adopted as parliamentary candidate; then you go round kissing your quota of babies and encouraging total strangers to call you by your Christian name until you are elected to Parliament. You do not demonstrate against the existing law — there is no need, is there? — and above all you do not break the law yourself or urge others to do so.
This correct source of action was adopted by Miss Janet Fookes with her fatuous and oppressive Sexual Offences Bill against kerb-crawlers, which returned to the Commons last week for its final stages. We may disagree profoundly with what she has done, but we must admit that in this instance she has behaved entirely properly within the law and constitution. I, for one, am not prepared to grow a Beatle hair- style, pad out my bottom and apply for a Conservative nomination to be elected to Parliament and introduce a Private Mem- ber's Bill to repeal her foul Act. And I will try to remember not to proposition any woman for the purposes of prostitution when seated in a motor vehicle, or having just got out of one.
But in the week of her triumph Miss Fookes was asked for a statement about the will of a rich 77-year-old spinster who had died, demanding that all her pet animals, including seven pedigree red set- ters, should be destroyed. Miss Fookes said: 'If I were an executor, I would find it terribly difficult to carry out these orders.
The thought makes me shudder. I would do something illegal rather than see the animals put down.'
So here we have a woman who has just inflicted an unnecessary and oppressive law on the rest of us, announcing that she, personally, would propose to break any law which does not coincide with her own predilections towards pet animals. As it happens, the only time I stood for Parlia- ment was as the Dog Lovers' Party candi- date in North Devon. It would never have occurred to me to urge law-breaking; as chairman, national agent and only surviv- ing member of the Dog Lovers' Party of Great Britain, I feel I should not only disown this woman publicly, but demand that she be drummed out of Parliament.
My point is that Miss Fookes is just one maggot waving around on a stinking moun- tain. Last week, also, the lead singer of a pop group whose name had been borrowed by a new group led by the Duke of Rutland's youngest daughter commented: 'These snobs have nicked our name. And if they carry on using it, we can't guarantee to control our followers.' Perhaps that was Jeremy Thorpe's problem, that he could not guarantee to control his followers (three of whom would have pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to fright- en Mr Norman Scott, the male model).
Nobody who followed that trial through to the acquittal at the end can doubt that there is a climate of illegality in the air, which Miss Fookes confirms. The law is no protection. If the Class War is to be reality, we should start girding ourselves for it.
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