ANOTHER VOICE
Only a taste of real poverty will bring us to our senses
AUBERON WAUGH
It has now been admitted that poverty is widespread in the Soviet Union. According to a report in this week's Independent on Sunday the Soviet Prime Minister, N. Ryzhov, last year told the Congress of People's Deputies that 'a staggering 43 million people, some 15 per cent of the Population, lived below the poverty line'. We might be more staggered if we had not been bombarded with statistics in this Country for as long as most of us can remember, proving that an even greater proportion of Britons live in poverty, that their number is (invariably) growing, and that crisis point is just about to be reached. Only the week before, the Child Poverty Action Group issued a Booker-style. 're- Port' claiming that one in five of Britons lived in poverty. `The risk of poverty for children in single-parent families is very high — 70 per cent of children growing up in single-parent families are living in pover- ty, compared with 13 per cent in two- parent families,' it intones. In the same week, Barnardo's, the chil- dren's charity, urging greater state benefits to the poorest families, argued that 'some' families were still left without food at the end of the week and were forced to keep their children away from school because they could not afford shoes.
One does not like to be hard-hearted, but it is surely important to quantify these problems. My own family would be left without food at the end of the week if we ate it all on Friday. Similarly, I have no doubt that school attendance officers hear many ingenious excuses for the non- appearance of pupils at school. Are they really convinced that poverty-induced shoelessness is a significant factor? . More than 10 million people in Britain live in poverty, some suffering absolute Poverty with not enough to eat and lack of adequate clothing or shelter, claimed the Child Poverty Action Group. We are not told exactly how many people in Britain do not have enough to eat. My own impress- ion — from published figures for death by Malnutrition — is that poverty-related malnutrition is almost non-existent. ... But at least we are told what the Child Poverty Action Group means by poverty. For a couple with two children under 11, it Means living on £89.65 a week after paying for housing. Now £89.65 will buy 2,689 roubles and 50 kopecks at the free market rate of exchange in Moscow. This is considerably more than the weekly salary of the Soviet Prime Minister, N. Ryzhkov.
Of course there would be no sensible reason for your British pauper to change his £89.65 into 2,689 roubles and 50 kopecks because there is practically no- thing he could buy with his roubles, in Russia or anywhere else. But I can't help wondering how long our own poverty lobby will be able to keep up its mewling and puking about poverty in Britain, and demanding fatuous socialist remedies for it, while evidence continues to mount of exactly what socialism has achieved in the poverty stakes after 73 years in the Soviet Union, 45 in Soviet-occupied Europe.
Extreme poverty has always been ende- mic in the Soviet Union, although we are told that L. Brezhnev's 'Great Stagnation' is now seen as a time of almost biblical plenty compared to what has happened since. Although many people have tried to explain it to me, I still do not understand why everything should have come to a head now, in the wake of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, or why Gorbachev should have been forced to allow free debate and to open the whole Pandora's box of guilty secrets, suppressed nationalisms, and anti- socialist resentments which had been kept tight shut for 70 years.
I suspect that what is happening now behind the Iron Curtain is the crowning success of President Ronald Reagan's administration He it was who, by keeping up the pressure on the Soviet Union, reversed the tide of history as it appeared to be running under his predecessor. In Jimmy Carter's brief but disastrous tenure, no fewer than five countries fell under Soviet influence. This month, even Mozambique announced its disenchant- ment with socialism and its conversion to the free market. Perhaps one day Ronald Reagan wil be recognised as the saviour of the West — an achievement besides which any temporary setbacks in the American balance of payments and budget deficit will pale into insignificance.
I do not know. But watching the collapse of socialism spread from country to coun- try, one cannot help wondering how long it will be before the crippling weight of socialist prejudice is lifted from our own social and intellectual horizons in this country.
At the end of last month, we read that the problem of homelessness in London had now reached 'crisis proportions'. The numbers in bed-and-breakfast accom- modation had risen to 8,077, the highest ever. The Tory-controlled London Boroughs' Association and the Labour Association of London Authorities com- bined to demand more money for perma- nent accommodation from Mr Michael Spicer, the Minister for Housing and Plan- ning.
Nobody can deny that there are many things wrong with the housing market in Britain, but nobody who thinks about it can reasonably believe that any of them will be solved by the provision of more subsidised housing to a small number of exceptionally lucky paupers. The great lesson of socialism — apparent enough in our own health service — is that supply soon runs out of anything given away free, or at a subsidised price. Yet we seem incapable of breaking out of these welfarist intellectual shackles. Mrs Thatcher tried to convert us, but she failed. What does it need, I wonder, to persuade the British intelligentsia to see the error of its ways? The loss of a brigade group in the Gulf will scarcely achieve it. In fact the defeat and collapse of the United States expeditionary force in the Middle East might well prompt reflections of a contrary nature.
In the course of the next ten years it is reckoned that some 20 million economic refugees from the Soviet Union will be trying to settle in Western Europe. Neal Ascherson has written of a new Iron Curtain, dividing wealth and stability from poverty and political chaos. Plainly some- thing of the sort will be needed. What would it do to the housing situation in London if three or four million starving Russians suddenly descended on us, not to mention the Poles, Hungarians and Czechs, seeking a share in our own modest prosperity?
Perhaps the strain of keeping out these victims of socialism will achieve something for our national consciousness which Mrs Thatcher has failed to achieve. But when one contemplates the serried ranks of all these millions and millions of state em- ployees — in health, education, the social services, local government, the armed forces, civil service, police, the lollipop ladies, parking meter wardens and exciting new dog wardens — there seems little hope. Only a taste of real poverty will bring us to our senses.
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