ANOTHER VOICE
Thoughts of the self-destruct factor in extremist politics
AUBERON WAUG H
Throughout the tiny world of English letters, into which I was born, the title `Master' is conferred on only one man, P.G. Wodehouse. In the almost equally small world of the theatre, as I understand, it usually refers to Noel Coward. No doubt musicians, satanists, sculptors in margarine and other minority interest groups have their own objects of veneration, but all these leisure occupations are dwarfed by the great British passion for hunting. Every week in season, I have been told, some 300,000 people follow the hounds, whether on horses, in cars, on bicycles, on foot or, increasingly, in wheelchairs. In any given year, up to two or three million people will have had a day out with the hunt of their choice. And in this huge company of all that is best and bravest in Britain, the title Master was invariably bestowed on Henry Hugh FitzRoy Somerset, tenth Duke of Beaufort. He died at the venerable age of 83 in February 1984, to the great impover- ishment of a sorrowing nation.
Ten months later, according to prosecu- tion counsel at Bristol Crown Court, a gang of Hunt Retributionists tried to dig up his corpse, planning to scatter parts of it among hounds at the Boxing Day meet of the Beaufort Hunt, and deliver its head to Princess Anne. Having failed to dig it up, they sent a message to the Press Associa- tion claiming credit for the attempt. Or so it is alleged.
My purpose in listing these sorry allega- tions, which may already be familiar to readers, is not to whip up anger at the iniquity described, but simply to draw attention to the hoplessness of the enter- prise, as alleged. How on earth did the Retributionists, whoever they were, hope to achieve their end of a ban on hunting (already promised in the last Labour mani- festo) by sending the decomposed head of a popular old gentleman to Princess Anne? If they had succeeded in digging him up, it would have had exactly the opposite effect: Princess Anne would have become more popular than ever, nobody would have judged the memory of the late Duke in any way diminished, all the anger and loathing which Retributionists feel for hunters would have been turned against them.
It is hard to believe that animal extrem- ists are so stupid that they could not see this for themselves. Perhaps it is a neces- sary — or at any rate frequent — charac- teristic of fanatics that they have no reasoning capacity, but in my experience this is not the case; there is usually a blinkered logic which carries them towards the achievement of their purpose, however unlikely it is to be achieved (as in the case of Marxist revolutionaries in Britain) or however peripheral it may be to the in- terest or concerns of anyone else (as in the RSPCA campaign against allowing anyone to eat frog's legs).
The lesson of the Hunt Retribution squad is, I think, more interesting and also more reassuring: that there is within the psychology of most , if not all extremists (Hitler is an obvious exception, possibly the Bishop of Durham and Shirley Wil- liams are also exceptions, but Benn, Scar- gill, Enoch and Keith Joseph are obvious examples) what the Americans call an inbuilt self-destruct factor. The best ex- planation for it is that one half of their mind does not actually want the other half to prevail. This phenomenon can itself be explained either by the workings of consci- ence, or divine grace or residual common sense, as one chooses. If ever these ex- tremists adopt a cause (like the ban on hunting) which is not self-evidently hope- less from the start, they immediately, it would appear, consciously and deliberately try to make it hopeless.
A signal and classic example of this operation of divine grace can be seen in the reaction of the Labour Party's London regional executive to their candidate's vic- tory in the Fulham by-election.
In Fulham, it will be remembered, Mr `Nick' Raynsford, a Labour candidate, turned a Conservative majority of 4,789 into a Labour majority of 3,503, leaving the Alliance's candidate nowhere. You might have thought that London's Labour executive would rejoice. Instead, observ- ing that Mr Raynsford had used photo- graphs of himself with his wife and two children in his campaign literature, they passed a resolution inspired by the women's section of the Islington Labour Party, which said that these photographs were 'unfair to gays and lesbians' because they 'unnecessarily highlighted the fact that he was not a homosexual'. So the party's Greater London Executive Com- mittee is sending a circular to all consti- tuency parties in its region demanding a ban on family photographs as part of its campaign towards 'eliminating heter- osexism'.
Never can this inbuilt self-destruct factor have been so flagrantly revealed: homosex- uality is acknowledged to be an electoral liability; so, in future, the electorate must suppose that all Labour candidates may be homosexual, and vote accordingly. This is their response to the news of an electoral victory — something which plainly troubles them more than electoral defeat. The only positive thing left to them is an agreeable moan about the unfairness of life.
It's the same the whole world over, It's the poor what gets the blame, It's the rich what gets the pleasure, Ain't it all a bleeding shame?
All in all, a thoroughly benign develop- ment, confirming what I have always main- tained, that fanatical ideologues make more satisfactory opponents than unscru- pulous opportunists like the fiend Hatters- ley. And I think the Islington lesbians are quite right to insist their candidates should be discouraged from showing us their sad, neglected wives and hideous, disadvan- taged children. It is rubbing salt to parade these open wounds for the advancement of their political careers.
Instead, they should show us photo- graphs of their secretaries, whom they will probably marry before very long, in any case. The reason so many politicians marry their secretaries — usually en deuxiein.e noces — is quite obvious. Only their secretaries attach sufficient importance to their ridiculous activities and are pre- pared to hero-worship them as they feel they should be hero-worshipped. Try counting the present ministers of Cabinet rank who have married their secretaries. Hurd, Ridley, Wakeham, Lawson, Hail- sham . . . how many more? It is true that Cecil Parkinson did not quite marrY hip secretary, but where is Parkinson now Islington's self-destructive Labour women undoubtedly have a point, even if it is not quite the one they are trying to make.
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