AND ANOTHER THING
Stewed in corruption, honeying in the continental sty
PAUL JOHNSON
If you collate the mass of judicial investi- gations now going on in many European Community countries, a regular pattern of party-political corruption emerges. It springs from a relatively stable political sys- tem which has lasted for half a century, with socialist parties on the left of centre balanced by Christian Democrat (or simi- lar) parties on the right of centre. They have alternated in power or formed coali- tions to keep out outsiders. Their general aims have been similar: in economic terms to create 'harmonisation' and 'convergence' by elaborate systems of subsidies and by huge, state-financed programmes of invest- ment and public works, and in political terms to promote federalism. An elite of professional politicians has run a virtual monopoly of office, and its sweets, for themselves, families, clients and followers. Both the vagaries of party politics and the growth of EEC institutions have been smoothly absorbed into the system. What- ever electorates decide, the same people manage it. The career of a man like Giulio Andreotti, seven times prime minister, holder of innumerable offices and portfo- lios, life-senator etc., is virtually impervious to electoral swings. A Jacques Delors can pursue his ambitions either in Brussels or Paris, oscillating between the two, in accor- dance with the opportunities of the moment.
However, to keep the system stable and monopolistic, the political parties, which ostensibly reflect mass political opinion, have to be maintained at a pitch of efficien- cy which enables them to defeat attempts to intrude by groups or individuals who do not share their overriding aims, in particu- lar the pursuit of 'Europe'. But political machinery is expensive, increasingly so. That is where the corruption comes in, and in the most insidious form. For a man who will hesitate, at any rate to begin with, to use his political office to enrich himself will be more inclined to do it to benefit his party, especially if he still has a residual belief that it promotes worthy ends. Of course once it becomes routine for minis- ters to award contracts in return for contri- butions to party funds, an element of per- sonal corruption enters also, and in the end the entire political-business complex becomes one huge pullulating mass of pec- ulation and crime. No one can say, 'Thus far, and no further.' Corruption, like mag- gots, breeds on itself and takes over every- thing, as it has clearly done in Italy. There, the revolt of the judges against the politi- cians is exposing, for all to see, the process in an advanced stage, in which all the organs of the state have been poisoned by venality, infected, as it vv .me, by tertiary syphilis or by terminal Aids.
Elsewhere, juridical and other evidence reveals earlier, and possibly remediable, stages of the decay. In Spain, for example, the corruption scandals finally focused on the all-powerful Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, who had hitherto been held to be one of the few honest men in the decade-old Socialist regime. The Filesa case concerns fake companies set up by the Socialist Party to send invoices for fictitious work to companies and financial institu- tions. About £6 million was thus handed over to finance the party in the 1989 elec- tions, and afterwards the firms which pro- vided it were given state contracts. The sums uncovered so far are small by Italian standards, where this type of corruption runs at the rate of about £5 billion a year at least. But the mechanisms are essentially the same as those used in the huge network of Socialist Party corruption developed in Milan, and the evidence suggests that Spain, though behind Italy still, is rapidly catching up. French corruption is also accelerating. We now know that the same methods were used by the French Socialists to finance Frangois Mitterrand's 1988 elec- tion campaign. There again, party and per- sonal graft are becoming inextricably 'Sorry son, false start, didn't you see the flag?' mixed: the outgoing Prime Minister has been shown to have benefited from a mil- lion-franc, interest-free loan. In some ways French corruption is worse than in Italy, which has produced nothing quite so dead- ly as the scandal by which politicians caused the deaths of large numbers of haemophili- acs by authorising the sale of blood they knew to be contaminated.
What the last week has revealed is the presence in Brussels, huge and hideous, of these Italian-style methods and possibly of the Mafia itself. The Belgian political sys- tem is awash with scandals involving Italian military contracts. Even more serious are the implications of the suicide of Antonio Quatraro, the man who ran the EEC tobac- co subsidies, and the disappearance of a European Parliament official, Mauro Gial- lombardo. The first seems to have syphoned off EEC money to the Christian Democrats, the second to the Socialist machine run by the disgraced ex-premier, Bettino Craxi. It is clear EEC funds now play an important role in the racket where- by the pro-federalist parties throughout Europe keep themselves in power. How can we prevent Britain being sucked into this vicious system? We have the same party structure of two major groups, both committed to Maastricht and ultimately to federalism. Both, in the pro- cess, are divesting themselves of ideology and so jeopardising traditional funds — trades union cash for Labour, donations from property for the Tories. Both are already heavily in debt and frantically short of money. There is no doubt, alas, that British public standards, though immeasur- ably higher than continental ones, are not what they were even a few years ago: the Major regime has set some lamentable precedents in failures of ministerial accountability. So the dangers of infection are obvious. Across the Channel, public anger and disgust are now threatening the party monoliths. In France, the Socialist Party, repudiated by the electors, is disinte- grating. In Italy, the anti-graft newcomer, the Lombard League, is sweeping Socialists and Christian Democrats alike from their strongholds. Here we need similar preven- tive medicine while there is still time. A National Party is required not merely to oppose the federalism of the Labour-Tory duopoly, but in doing so to ensure that our public life is once more made, in Carlyle, s phrase, 'sea-green incorruptible'.
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