Another voice
Not a happy one
Auberon Waugh
Last week Mr Alan Watkins was musing in his Observer column about why, if the Conservative government is as worried as it claims to be about the prospcets of a Gaddafi-style Labour government, it does nothing about it. After all, Labour proposes unilaterally to abolish the House of Lords. Why should not the Tories propose unilaterally to reform it into a respectably elected Second Chamber which might provide, in a formal constitution, the necessary checks and balances against an all-powerful and apparently insane House of Commons?
Mr Watkins's genial conclusion was that of course even under Mr Benn a Labour government would do none of the things it proposes to do. There is much to be said for this. After an immediate collapse of the currency — or at any rate within the first month of a Labour government taking office on the policies proposed by the last Labour conference — even Mr Benn might be forced to forget all that taradiddle.
Mr Watkins may be right, but I don't believe the Conservatives think so. He does not make sufficient allowance for the nervousness and general insecurity of the rich. Two considerations, it seems to me, prevent the Tories from taking measures to restrict the scope of any Socialist cataclysm. One is the bloody-minded politicians' attitude that while they are in power they are not going to take any measures to restrict that power. Bills of Rights and written constitutions are the sort of things one discusses in opposition, not in government. They would need to be much more frightened of losing the election than they are yet. Until that moment of truth, the spectre of an `extreme' left-wing alternative enhances their prospects of re-election, and if ever the moment of truth arrives, it will be too late to do anything about it.
But there is another consideration at work which I have not yet seen discussed, and which manifests itself only in the slightest shrug of the shoulders at the end of a conversation. One might call it democratic fatalism, or one might call it a feeling of national despair; but I prefer to typify it as the Goldsmith Response: if the British don't want to buy my news-magazine they must be so corrupted by the welfare state and by the drip-drip-drip of Marxist pus into the system that I really don't care to trouble myself with their affairs any more.
In a quiet way, this Goldsmith response has been operating for the last 20 years or so. Look at the Old Boys lists of any respectable public school, and you will find that between half and two thirds of the boys who left school in the last 20 years are now living and working abroad. Even among less exalted social groupings, there has been an emigration of some 1,600,000 British citizens in the last ten years if I read my Social Trends 1981 (HMSO £16.50) aright. What is left is the sour residue at the bottom of the barrel: the inadequate, the unambitious, the old, the mentally deficient or otherwise disabled, and a largish sprinkling of power maniacs, mostly left-wing.
This analysis explains much that is puzzling about contemporary Britain: the almost total unemployability of the north east, the failure of most of our heavy industry, even the fact that one party in our two-party system is preparing to face the country on a programme which any child of six should be able to recognise as disastrous and unworkable. But while this analysis may go some way to explain the inadequacy of the modern Briton, it does not explain his nastiness: the behaviour of our football fans abroad; the extreme acrimony which accompanies any suggestion of 'work' among the urban manufacturing classes; the readiness to go on strike in the public services and inflict as much suffering as possible on the general public.
All these things might suggest a national character which is not only mentally subnormal but also criminal. Even if one attributes the behaviour of football fans to that ancient journalistic cliché, 'a small minority', and explains the behaviour of industrial workers (and London GLC voters) by lead poisoning, which leads to mental deterioration, encephalopathy and severe brain disorder, one is plainly still talking about a fairly sizeable minority of the population. And if one then measures against this the things in which Britons can still take a pride — the apparent skill of our footballers, the amazing restraint and discipline of our army in Ulster, the general amiability of our comparatively incorruptible police force, the excellence of at least one of our weekly reviews — it is not always easy to see where the balance lies.
But the most frightening evidence of our deteriorating national character comes from the courts, where the ancient concept of a jury —12 good persons and true — is now quite plainly inapplicable. When the abolition of property qualifications for jury service was first mooted in, I think, 1963, I wrote in the Catholic Herald that the idea was unlikely to find favour since fancy theories about human equality were unlikely to take precedence over the basic requirements of a fair trial. But I never foresaw the present situation, where it has become difficult for the police to secure conviction in any prosecution which relies on police evidence.
Perhaps last week's acquittal of Stuart ('Sunshine') Blackstock and Leslie Cooke, two Hell's Angels, on the charge of having attempted to murder PC Philip Olds will prove a watershed, although I very much doubt it. I was not in court, but from reports of the case it could not have been clearer: there was PC Olds, looking exactly like David Owen and paralysed from the waist down for the rest of his life as the result of a bullet wound. Nobody disputed that Blackstock had shot him, or that he had been carrying a loaded pistol in the furtherance of theft. PC Olds testified on oath that he had warned Blackstock about the consequences of shooting, he had seen Blackstock take careful aim, Blackstock said he had not intended to hit PC Olds when he pulled the trigger, and was only carrying the pistol as a 'frightener. . . to stop people becoming too brave'.
No newspaper mentioned it, but News at Ten on Thursday reported that the judge, in his summing up, said that an acquittal on the attempted murder charge would mean that PC Olds was either lying or imagining things. Even if the judge did not say that, he plainly should have. But the jury preferred to believe the word of the Hell's Angel.
PC Olds, being wheeled out to a lifetime of Social Welfare Visitors and Disabled Persons' toilets, commented that the verdict might influence other policemen's view of the public's attitude to them. I don't know. The only glimmer of comfort I can offer is that London juries are not typical, being recruited in large part from the unemployed riff-raff of the East End. Although I do not necessarily subscribe to the view of the police as the thin blue line which is all that stands between us and the envious hatred of our social inferiors, I have always found them quite exceptionallY pleasant people to deal with.
As I say, I don't know, but I earnestly believe that the Conservatives will be re-elected next time even if unemployment stands at 3.5 million. If so, and if Mrs Thatcher fails on her second chance to restore at any rate educational qualifications for jury service, as well as ending the closed shop and punishing union intimidation, restoring secondary education and giving us some form of constitutional protection against the Calibans in our midst, she will have betrayed the voters who elected her. The real lesson is that we are a divided nation and one part — I hope and honestly believe the smaller part — has simply got to be kept in its place.
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