ANOTHER VOICE
The man who says that children are his recreation
AUBERON WAUGH
When he was later interrogated about his purpose in keeping this little list of troublesome journalists, convivial police- men etc — liquidation, perhaps, when he eventually comes to power? — he revealed that he did not have any such list: 'When I said "list" it was perhaps a mistake, in the same way that drinking and driving would be a mistake,' he said.
This last admission seemed to me so richly insane — providing classic and com- plete evidence, in itself, of the form of insanity known as monomania — that I joined him with all the other unfortunates in my meditations over a bottle of Fonseca 1963 on Boxing Day, and have been brooding about him ever since. Prima facie, these outbursts might have been evidence of nothing worse than the tem- porary insanity which visits many people before Christmas — chiefly housewives, who are often to be seen dropping their baskets and screaming in department stores at that difficult time of year. Up to now, I have always recommended an aspir- in on these occasions, although friends tell me a daily tablet of zinc is even more beneficial. Further research was needed.
When Peter Bottomley first surfaced a few years ago, I looked him up in my (1985) edition of Who's Who and, finding that he was not there, decided that he probably did not exist — not in the German sense, of being nicht geborn, but in the Dickensian sense that Scrooge, when first confronted by Marley's Ghost, de- manded proof that the apparition repre- sented anything more than an undigested bit of beef, 'a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato'.
Although I was reluctant to believe I had indulged in any such things, the spectre might well have been the product of some mental or moral indigestion brought on by mixing whisky and creme de menthe while trying to read the New Statesman.
Then a learned gentleman in Oxford wrote to say that Bottomley was indeed to be found in the 1985 Who's Who, wisely relegated to a section called 'Errata'. Another erratum, or later addition, in the same volume was his father, Sir James Bottomley, KCMG, formerly of the Com- monwealth Office, who on retirement had taken up a directorship with Johnson Matthey, the merchant bank, a fact which does not appear in the 1986 edition. Sir James was the son of the late Sir Cecil Bottomley, also KCMG, also of the old Colonial Office. So Peter Bottomley did exist. He was not parachuted into the country with snow on his boots, like Cap- tain Robert Maxwell. He was geborn.
So there the matter rested. It did not actually occur to me to read his entry in Who's Who until New Year's Day 1988, at a time when Bottomley stormtroopers had surrounded whole villages and towns in the middle of England and cut them off with roadblocks from the outside world. In- cidentally, I wonder whether Mr A. Dyer,. the Chief Constable of Bedfordshire, who was Bottomley's chief lieutenant in this blitzkrieg, is any relation of Brigadier- General Reginald Dyer, the much mis- understood hero of Amritsar, so viciously libelled by `Dickie' Attenborough in his worthless film about Gandhi.
Be that as it may, the biography of Peter Bottomley which appears in the 1985 edi- tion of Who's Who as an erratum is not that of an ordinary Englishman. In fact I would say that the tensions it reveals are not really those of a well man. Born in 1944, five years after me, he summarises his life before embarking on politics thus: Educ: comprehensive sch.; Westminster Sch; Trinity Coll. Cambridge (BA Econ, MA). Driving, industrial sales, industrial relations, industrial economics.
What does this mean? I thought compre- hensive schools were not introduced until the late 1960s, by which time Bottomley was already over 21 years old. How can he claim to be a victim of Shirley Williams, when he is 43? Why does he not name the comprehensive school, if he really attended one? What is the significance of 'Driving' — that he holds a valid driving licence, or was once employed as a driver? If so, by whom? The list of his later accomplishments is even more worrying: Mem., Transport House Br., T & GWU 1971— ; Chairman: British Union of Family Orgns 1973-1980; Family Forum 1980— Mem. Council MIND, 1981— ; Trustee, Christian Aid, 1978— . Parly Swimming Champion, 1980, 1981. Recreation: children.
There is no time to discuss all the issues raised by these entries: how can he be a member of the Transport House branch of the Transport and General Workers Union and a Conservative Minister? What is the British Union of Family Orgns? Family Forum I suppose to be some television programme. I pass over his interest in MIND, the mental health organisation, as his trusteeship of Christian Aid, the Third World left-wing organisation. But I wish I had the resources to check his claim to have been the parliamentary swimming champion in 1980 and 1981. It is often said that the reason negroes are such bad swimmers is that they do not have enough body fat. I doubt that Bottomley has more. Incidentally, I observe that his wife, the Conservative MP for Surrey SW (Recrea- tion: family), claims to be Vice-Chairman, Council of Carers and their Elderly Depen- dants.
My point is that I don't really care where this madman comes from, or what his wife gets up to. Like the hell-instructed Grocer of Chesterton's poem, Bottomley seems to be embarked on a campaign to close down every country inn and stop people who live in the country even drinking in each other's houses. His purpose is to save at most 200 lives a year. A nation which allows itself to be cowed in this way is not a free nation. Every Lunchtime O'Booze in the country has been sounding off about the benefits of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the toler- ance and constitutionalism we learned from stinking Dutch Billy, founder, after Jesus Christ, Henry VIII, etc, of our wonderful Church of England. I have never been able to establish whether Billy was really an active sodomite, or whether this is IRA disinformation. But it is true that there are freedoms associated with the name of England. A million and a quarter people died in the last war to defend them. Now, it looks as though we are prepared to shuffle them away at the behest of a hysterical, 'comprehensively educated' lunatic in bathing pants who says that children are his recreation.
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