ANOTHER VOICE
The professionals and housewives who could betray us all
AUBERON WAUGH
Ihave never been asked to serve on a jury but my pen-friend George Stern, fearless opponent of the Archway Motor- way, has and so has his friend Michael Nicholson, author of The Yorkshire Rip- per. With such a weight of expert opinion against me, I am beginning to doubt my own wisdom in having advocated for many years that property qualifications should be re-introduced. It usually takes six or seven years for an apparently sensible recom- mendation of this sort to penetrate the minds of our law-makers. In fact one has the impression that no suggestion, however obvious, for the better running of the nation's affairs is admitted until it has been made by a Royal Commission or other form of official enquiry. Of recommenda- tions made by these commissions, tribunals and official reviews, only a comparatively small proportion is ever accepted. On balance, I should imagine this is for the best. While there are people like Lord Scarman and Prince Philip around to adv- ance their fatuous, discredited nostrums whether on race relations or housing — we should be grateful that nobody is likely to pay much attention to them. It is a general rule which has very few exceptions in my own experience that where one is in doubt about what to do, the best thing is to do nothing.
But the Government seems genuinely anxious about what it sees as the excessive level of acquittals in criminal cases, and in this probably reflects a growing irritation in the country at large. What a cheer went up last week when a Chelsea football club supporter was sentenced to life imprison- ment! The conclusion to be drawn from recent judicial decisions might be that murder is only manslaughter if committed in furtherance of an industrial dispute, where the common law on riot does not apply, either, but the statutory offence of inflicting grievous bodily harm (maximum penalty five years, unless with intent to avoid arrest) becomes the common law offence of riot (maximum penalty life imprisonment) if it is connected in any way with football as a spectator sport.
I think that both the Government and the judiciary misjudge the mood of the country on the matter of violence commit- ted in the furtherance of industrial dis- putes. Leniency shown to Yorkshire and Welsh miners has caused very real pain, at any rate in Somerset and also, I suspect, in most areas which have not succumbed to the fatal charm of these people. At least both government and judiciary seem to have the mood of the country right in the matter of football hooligans. But I feel I must warn Mr Hurd, as he sets up yet another review of the jury system in criminal trials — this time concentrating on the defence's right of peremptory objec- tion to any three jurors—that the Govern- ment seems poised on the brink of another serious miscalculation in its commendable desire to imprison as many NewBrits as possible. The best illustration of this error is afforded by the Government's own experience in vetting juries in those cases which were thought to involve national security — the Ponting trial and the more recent Cyprus spy-trial fiasco.
On an average London jury, according to my pen-friend George Stern, who might have got the idea from his old friend Michael Nicholson, you can expect to find two petty criminals, two blacks, a com- munist and a member of the • National Front. Under any system of vetting likely to be approved by the Conservatives and under the system already applied in trials under the Official Secrets Act — all these people would be vetted out. But according to the Stern-Nicholson experi- ence, all these people would always vote to convict. Communists are particularly re- markable for their deference to authority; so, apparently, are petty criminals and most Negroes outside a few areas of London and where the defendant also happens to be a Negro, as Lord Denning pointed out.
But the vetters, with their idiotic and childish view of modern society, tend to stuff the jury with serious-minded profes- sional people and housewives — SDP voters to a person — who will insist on listening to the evidence. Given the high standard of proof required, the extraordi- narily complicated rules of evidence and the incompetence of almost everyone in Britain they will acquit nearly every time.
In addition to this, as I never tire of pointing out, the Conservatives have on their hands a huge potential trahison des clercs. Nobody likes the Conservative Par- ty much, and many — if not most Conservative voters of the middle and professional classes are ashamed of voting Tory and dying for a chance to desert to the SDP. The reason for this may be social guilt, or a hangover of 1960s silliness, as people like to believe, but another reason is surely the feeling of Conservative voters that they have themselves been betrayed, that the Conservatives do not love them.
A majority of voters now thinks of itself as part of a comparatively affluent middle class. Every time Mr Kinnock or Mr Pilger shrieks about the real or imagined suffer- ings of the poor, this feeling is reinforced. When Mr Hattersley — God's gift to the Tories — speaks of squeezing those fami- lies who combined income is more than £20,000 there is no corresponding surge of gratitude from those whose income is under £15,000, only a feeling of sick apprehension among those whose income is over that sum. But the Conservatives Mr Lawson and Sir Keith Joseph, two reputedly 'dry' Ministers, are among the worst offenders — seem incapable of addressing themselves to this majority, let alone embracing it. Their rhetoric con- tinues to be that of egalitarianism — the rich must pay more, the poor must be given still further help — in a climate of opinion which would very much like to believe that the poor are already grotesquely over- cosseted and pretty nasty anyway. Perhaps the Tories are constitutionally incapable of repaying Labour in its own coin. Until they learn to identify with the more genial characteristics of these New Britons — it will mean abolishing all taxes on savings and reducing the maximum rate of income tax to 50 per cent — they Will never win the affection or loyalty of the upwardly mobile plastic bag sales repre- sentative living in Staines on £14,000 a year and reading, no doubt, the Sunday Times. Until then, they will be able to win the support of NewBrits only through terror of the alternative. They will win the next election only if they can arrange a series of black riots in the South and viciously anti-social industrial disputes in the North in the run-up to it. As soon as social tranquillity and domestic prosperity re- turn, a huge number of would-be Tory voters in the South are going to defect to the SDP. This might result in a hung Parliament but might easily — horror of horrors — result in a Labour victory.
I advanced this theory recently and then forgot about it. Last week Mr Brian Walden in the Standard identified it as the key political analysis of our times, so I repeat it. My only new point is that if the Conservatives do not adjust their attitudes, they will soon find it almost impossible to send anyone to prison, let alone flog them or investigate their more intimate orifices. What on earth is the point of going into politics if you can't even do that?
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