ANOTHER VOICE
The rich should never forget how much they are hated
AUBERON WAUGH
`It is going to get a lot of people's backs up,' said Mr Andrew Brawn, 29, manager of the Kiosk store of Winterbourne. 'We have reached in our pockets to mend the church tower and all the time his family had millions. To say that he is careful with money is an understatement. His clothes are pretty scruffy and nondescript.'
Yet presumably Mr Brawn and the other villagers had been quite happy before. What they can't bear is the thought that their rector is rich. Nor should the rich ever forget how much they are resented in this country. In many cases, it would be no exaggeration to describe them as being hated — not by everyone, but with a pecu- liar intensity by an articulate and unashamed section of the country with whom very few people can be bothered to disagree.
It is this element in our national make-up which people should address when they consider our class system, not the pathetic remnants of an earlier arrangement which allowed hacks and failures to blame their lack of success in life on not having attend- ed the right school. It is easier and more logical to hate someone for being cleverer, more industrious and more talented these people come into their share of hatred, too — but it is the element of luck which many Englishmen find unforgivable. Those old-fashioned Tories like Disraeli and Worsthorne who see a natural affinity between the toffs and the peasants, with only the ambitious middle class left outside, are tremendously wide of the mark nowa- days. Toffs are now actively hated by a large majority of the populace, and practi- cally everybody pays lip service to this hatred. There is no distinction in the vulgar mind between toffs and the rich. Without an awareness of these resent- ments, these hatreds, no study of British politics makes any sense at all. There is no other explanation for the emergence of John Major, let alone for his ludicrous commitment to a classless society. Far more important than the consideration of who leads the Conservative Party is the effect of these attitudes — aggression from below, appeasement from above — on our political and social arrangements. No thoughtful person can reasonably accept that the old Whig or free-market approach to employment and social welfare can work in a technological society where only the most employable 20 per cent need ever be employed. There has to be some way of spreading the jam between those who are employed and those who will never be employed, and this has to be imposed by government, rather than left to charity. Beveridge saw this, but as a Liberal imag- ined that the welfare state could be largely self-supporting. The difference between the Liberal and socialist attitude is well set out in Peter Stanford's biography of Lord Longford*, who was Beveridge's assistant in preparing the notorious Report. Of Bev- eridge, he writes.
Politically a Liberal, he and his Labour assis- tant were united in wanting to create a more equal society. For Longford, it was a point of principle. For Beveridge, it was a practical dilemma to harness society's wealth in order to eliminate the extremes of poverty. He did not believe, as Longford did, that an imposed redistribution, taking money from the rich to give to the poor, was the answer. Rather, he aimed at allowing individuals to provide for themselves. They would set aside earnings when in work to provide for the time when they were out of work (during illness unem- ployment or in old age). The pool made from their contributions would be supplemented by funds from state taxation and employers' profits.
It was Longford, as the disinherited younger son of a very rich earl, who saw the welfare state as a means not only of reliev- ing the poverty of the poorest, but also of bringing down the rich from their lofty emi- nence. The principle of robbing Peter to pay Paul is deeply embedded in our social philosophy, to such an extent that robbing Peter is often seen as being no less virtuous than paying Paul.
The only essential difference between the Tory and socialist attitude to the wel- fare state is in motivation, between appeasement and aggression. The old Whig principles of self-help and laissez-faire could no longer be applied without a gener- al massacre of sleeping dogs. But what nobody seems to have taken into account was the effect of all this social security on the resentful masses who benefited from it.
Beveridge, in signing the report which had largely been prepared for him by Long- ford, identified five great evils which he hoped to abolish: Want (give 'em money); Disease (give 'em the NHS); Ignorance (give 'em education); Squalor (give 'em better housing); and Idleness (give 'em work).
Want is now a comparative rather than an absolute term, except for a few eccentrics or incompetents who cannot bring themselves to benefit from the sys- tem, but it is precisely in the comparative element that all the resentments and hatreds fester. Perhaps the collapse of the health service is least attributable to these social tensions (rather than simple incom- petence) except to the extent that every health employee in the land seems delight- ed to bleed the system dry whenever possi- ble. The collapse of education, resulting in large part from teachers' repudiation of elitism and privilege, is almost entirely to be laid at the door of these resentments and hatreds which are all that is left of our wonderful class system, once the wonder of the world. Squalor stays with problem ten- ants no matter how often they are rehoused, while idleness — the abandon- ment of any desire to work— is slowly emerging as the dominant British charac- teristic in many parts of the country.
Few would deny that the welfare state, as it has emerged in all its sprawling, ramshackle ugliness, is the chief obstacle to Britain's emergence in the modern world: destroying the country's education and health at the same time as it destroys its economy and any incentive to improve- ment, nourishing all the rancours and resentments of an earlier age. It would make me very happy if I could believe that my dear godfather, Lord Longford, as an Irishman and a younger son, was responsi- ble for all the havoc it has caused.
*Lord Longford: an authorised biography by Peter Stanford, published by Heinemann on 31 May.
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