Politics

Mrs Chalker sinks low

MrsLynda Chalker, the Minister of State at the Department of Trans- port, has already been criticised for her

new campaign to stop people from drink- ing and driving this Christmas. 'Stay Low or you may live to regret it', says Mrs Chalker, and she has been jumped on by

activists in the field who say that, by entertaining the idea that one can drink

and drive, the Government is undoing years of propaganda devoted to keeping the two activities separate in people's minds.

Mrs Chalker seems subliminally to have taken this point. When she spoke at the start of the campaign, she was full of helpful ideas for how to travel safely. People should take advantage of an offer by a company of free public transport in London on New Year's Eve, or of another company's 'get-you-home taxi service' (do normal taxi services refuse to get-you- home?); they should inveigle 'a friend who is prepared not to drink' into driving them. Mrs Chalker concludes, however, that 'if you have no alternative to taking your car, then the only safe way to drive is not to drink', so her subsequent remark: 'As our campaign says "Stay Low, or you may live to regret it" ' seems to be a non-sequitur.

I do not know whether the Department's shift from advocating total abstinence to permitting 'just the one' is ideologically significant. Could it be, perhaps, that it follows a great argument between the Transport Secretary, Mr Nicholas Ridley, the Motorists' Friend, and Mrs Chalker, the cyclist? Did Mr Ridley suggest that motorists should be left alone altogether. this Christmas, Mrs Chalker demand that they be banned from roads entirely, and the two compromise round the suggestion that they should get no more than slightly tiddly?

Possibly a psychologist suggested that it was cleverer to 'get on the same side' as the motorist before settling down to persuade him. The most likely explana- tion, I suspect, is that the men in the design department had thought of a clever pseudo-road sign (a red triangle containing an empty beer glass with a hand blocking its mouth) and managed to persuade the Ideas Men to dream up an accompanying slogan: the civil servants then stuck in their usual views without reference to the new 'concept'.

But whether the Government has con- fused its propaganda is a less interesting question than those raised by the posters going out as part of the campaign. Since Mrs Chalker is after '16-19 year old first time drivers and motorcyclists', the posters depict three characters from this group. There is Steve. The headline is `Steve's Saturday on the terrace'. Steve is slouched in a wheelchair and wearing a dressing- gown. 'Every day a few more Steves are created. One minute they're young and alive and then suddenly they're removed from any form of worthwhile existence' (do I hear shouts from the disabled lobby at this point?).

Then there is Carol ('Christmas for Carol'). 'There are literally hundreds of Carols. She's your sister, your girlfriend, the girl next door. She's every girl you know. No matter who she is or what she's called, she's invariably innocent.' I sup- pose this means that Carol was not driving, though the poster never explains this. Carol, by the way, is lying bandaged on a hospital bed, bruised and connected to numerous instruments.

Finally there is Judy (`Too much punch for Judy'). Judy 'had a great smile and just wanted to have fun. Now she depends for survival on a machine made in Blackburn. Her body crippled beyond repair. For most of us, drinking too much and driving as well could mean a hefty fine and losing a licence. It certainly means a lot of aggro. For Judy and many more like her, it means a young life wasted . . . And of course it won't happen to you. But think on.' etc, etc.

I have quoted enough of Judy's poster to make it clear that it was not written by a thoughtful, literate, or even cunning per- son. Perhaps that is not surprising. What is remarkable, even by the standards of these things, is the accompanying photograph. Judy has quite a lot of the machine made in Blackburn coming out of her mouth and nose. She is covered with bloody cuts and bruises. Her eyes are half-closed, with only the whites visible. The picture is extraordi- narily horrible.

Obviously the poster is intended to be horrible, and presumably no one at the Department of Transport was seriously worried by that intention. Since the 1960s, when photographs of starving babies in Biafra were widely used to raise money for relevant charities, bodies who believe that they are doing good — and the Govern- ment is always the largest and the most self-deluding of such bodies — have not hesitated to play on people's feelings of fear, guilt and disgust for their various ends. A few years ago, it was the danger of fireworks which was the craze, and posters of maimed children appeared. 'Education- al' films of people wrecked by smoking have been going out for years. Attacks on drinking and driving have gradually been rising to the present deafening crescendo of disgustingness.

It is curious how unexamined the whole thing is. Governments come and go, some claiming to be libertarian, others to be socialist, but all seem to think that there is nothing wrong with this sort of terrorism. Some, including many in these pages, have pointed out that health and safety obses- sions have come to threaten people's liber- ties (random breath checks on motorists, for instance), but few have commented on the methods used to grab the attention of the public.

The argument for forcing us to look at the mutilation of Judy is that it works'. This goes with the argument that, since car crash, or smoking, or firework, or elec- trocution, or skate-boarding injuries are horrible, it is 'honest' to depict them. You may not like it, but is the truth, and anyway, there will be fewer Judies the more people see the poster of her.

I doubt whether anyone really accepts the consequences of this argument. Sup- pose, for example, that Mrs Chalker selected a rather worthless person from the prisons (let alone an ordinary citizen), got him drunk, put him at the wheel of a car and then filmed the horrifying consequ- ences, one cannot doubt that this 'snuff movie' would put a great many people off drinking and driving; yet it would still be a bad way to carry on. It is generally agreed that the Victorian habit of forcing children to be good through fear – locking them inside dark cupboards, telling them that they would not go to Heaven – was not an appropriate or admirable form of upbring- ing, but, when the state adopts such methods, there is little complaint. I am not trying to advance a Thin End of the Wedge Theory, claiming that it is only a short step from horror films about drunken driving to virulent anti-seminc propaganda. My point is rather that there is a governmental habit of distinguishing between 'controversial' or 'political' mat- ters and matters on which there is general agreement, and an associated habit of playing fast and loose with people's feel- ings and liberties in all those areas which are considered uncontroversial. This is based on a mistake. Everything that a government does is political, and the int: portant question is whether or not it is honourably so. The way governments behave in the areas which they think are not political. suggests that their instincts, whatever their stated views, are moralistic, dictatorial and propagandist. Governments like that of the GLC are beginning to understand how easy it is to turn the 'uncontroversial' into, a political point (Working for London)' Even Mrs Chalker, who has neither the skills nor, we can be sure, the inclinations of a Goebbels, does not seem to mind trying to give people nightmares in the interests of furthering the aims of her Department.

Charles Moore