Another voice
Drink and thrive
A uberon Waugh
Not a day passed last week without some heW and preposterous claim by the antidrink campaigners — most of them as Insulting to the intelligence as they were blatantly untrue — reported by press and television as uncritically as if they were cricket scores or pre-war train timetables. Most of them came from an international conference on alcoholism being held in Liverpool, but the heighi of absurdity was reached, as is so often the case, in the House Of Commons when a new Conservative Member, called Dr Brian Mawhinney, deMended that people who became ill through excessive drinking or smoking should pay for their medical treatment. In the asinine spirit of the times, and with the intellectual vacuity which I am sorry to say is fast becoming the chief characteristic Of official utterance in Britain, the UnderSecretary of State (Sir George Young) replied that while Dr Mawhinney's suggestion. 'has at first sight the advantage of eq, uttY and logic', the Government had no Plans to introduce special charges for alcohol-related or smoking-related illnesSs. He put the cost of smoking-related diseases to the National Health Service at 1,15 million, that of drink-related at £50 mt,Lori to £69 million. We all know perfectly well that these rigures are chicken-feed, ev'en if they are not grossly unreliable, since bronchitis, lungcancer arterisclerosis and cirrhosis of the liver —frequently have causes other than smoking or drinking. Excise duty on tobaccnO and drink pays for the entire Health ,service several times over. If equity or logic tiad anything to do with it, there would be a strong case for charging non-drinkers and non-smokers for a proportion of their medical costs. Moreover if it is true, as is often claimed, that these brutes live longer than either those who drink or smoke, then there is a very strong argument for charging them higher national insurance rates, too. But then nobody has ever really pretended that the Welfare State had much to do With equity or logic. Its chief function may be to support a gigantic administrative structure , its chief characteristic may be its amiable inefficiency, but where the national pension scheme is concerned, the combination of inefficiency and coercion reaches such levels as can only be described as criminal extortion. Everybody concerned With it should be sent to prison. _One might be prepared to forgive Dr olewhinney his attempts to add one further absurdity, one further injustice, to the Whole tottering structure of indiscriminate state. welfare if he were not attempting to discriminate on this occasion, against a group which includes oneself as well as a large proportion of his constituents. No doubt his Ph D at London University gives him even more right to call himself 'Doctor' than Dr David Owen enjoys — I have never been quite able to pin down Doctor Owen's claim to be an MD — but it must not be supposed that Mawhinney's career in radiation biology research gives him much experience in clinical practice, or even necessarily any great enthusiasm for Health Service economies. His motives might indeed turn out to be religious, as so often proves the case on examination — he is a proselytising Ulster Protestant by origin who somehow got himself adopted for the marginal seat of Peterborough at the last election. I imagine the Soke will send him packing next time round.
Among the absurdities to come out of the Liverpool conference was one headline, 'Plight of the gymslip drunks', where 'a survey .of alcoholic abuse among young people revealed that some schoolchildren take an early morning drink to steady their nerves . . . other children claimed that their doctors advised them to have "a hair of the dog" to calm them down.' Several paragraphs down, the sociologist presenting these lurid 'facts' revealed that the survey showed 'that the great majority of youngsters appeared to drink very little.' Most enjoyable of all was the evidence of Dr Anthony Morris, a 34-year-old gastroenterologist, who claimed •that alcohol produced signs of effeminacy in men: 'Any man drinking more than five pints of beer a day (i.e. three glasses of whisky, as poured in a middle-class home) is running the risk of changing his shape and losing his sex drive . . Also male genitals tend to be smaller than those of men who drink moderately.' Among other risks we run, apparently, is that of increasing the amount of female hormones in our bodies, causing us to develop breasts and shapely curved hips.
This would be fascinating information indeed if we could be certain that Dr Morris's concern were entirely scientific, but before long his dismal, propagandist intention emerges: 'This certainly goes against the accepted idea that to drink excessively is masculine . . Perhaps if more people were aware of the effects that drinking had they would be less inclined to drink.'
Groan, boo. What is it to him if we choose to have small genitals, develop breasts and shapely curved hips? Why do these wretched people think they can treat us all like goody-goody lower-class 'kids' on a Blue Peter Outward Bound Course? How dare they tell us such preposterous lies for their own sanctimonious ends?
The only part of the Liverpool conference on which press and television chose to cast doubt was also the part which was unquestionably true — Lord Avebury's revelation that Churchill had been pissed as a newt (as Anthony Howard might put it in his inelegant way) through much of the war, and that Gaitskell had to be carried out of a reception in Russia. This last story not only appears in Philip Williams's official biography, published in 1979, but also in Denis Healey's memoirs (Healey's Eye, Cape £7.50) reviewed by me in Book Choice in January of this year. Healey, who was there, recalls that Gaitskell was too drunk to make any press statement on Macmillan's announcement of the 1959 election so Bevan, of allpeople , had to make one for him.
If Lady Gaitskell looks a bit odd announcing at this late stage that it is all 'an absolute, awful lie', she doesn't look half so odd as Young Winston doing his Lord Goodman act, blowing himself up like a bullfrog to talk of 'a vile and malicious allegation against a man who cannot answer back.' The whole country knew about Winston, and nobody thought the worse of him for it. Can't silly little Winston see that this information — that his grandfather was paralytically drunk on occasions during the war — is not a bad advertisement for his grandfather so much as a good advertisement for drunkenness? After all, old Winston did actually win the war. My own father occasionally had one over the eight during the late Twenties and early Thirties — a time when he was writing novels which were not only good but actually memorable. And what, precisely, has Lord Avebury achieved in his eight years of teetotalling which is remotely comparable?
The English are slightly mad about drink. Many of us are at least slightly drunk for quite a large proportion of the time, yet to suggest that anyone is even slightly squiffy is held to be a 'vile and malicious allegation'. Militant teetotallers are a tiny minority, yet somehow they make all the running. If only we could get rid of the ludicrous guilt attaching to a normal social practice, we might be a happier nation. This guilt led Bevan, Crossnaan and Morgan Phillips to commit perjury, Dora Gaitskell and Young Winston to make fools of themselves; but the real enemies I insist are Lord Avebury and his Liverpool Mafia. Let us concentrate on them.
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