ANOTHER VOICE
These are distressing times for gentlefolk
AUBERON WAUGH
What follows is the edited text of a speech given to the Somerset branch of the Dis- tressed Gentlefolk's Aid Association in the Municipal Hag Taunton, on Friday 10 March 1995: Iam asked to address the question: 'Are there still gentlefolk?' The short answer is yes, here we are, one or two hundred of us in this room, gathered from all over Somer- set.
The Association defines distressed gen- tlefolk as being those from professional or similar backgrounds who have fallen on hard times. We may not as yet be distressed gentlefolk in this room, but nearly all of us are going to fall on hard times before we are through. The reason for this is that we are living longer and nothing we can save in our active lifetime can possibly keep up with the atrocious cost of nursing care in old age. Our savings may look very nice on paper, but however much we save, it won't be enough. In the last 30 years, the pound of 1994 would have been worth slightly less than 10p in 1964. The pound of 1900 would have bought £46.12p's worth of goods in 1993, but, being saved, it bought less than what 2.5p would have bought in 1900.
Anybody who saves money gives a large part of it to the government through the normal process of inflation. Quite apart from the Government's seizure of our sav- ings when we die or attempt to give them away to our children, it is quietly helping itself to them all the time through the nor- mal process of inflation. This occurs when- ever a government spends more than its income. It has to bridge the gap by issuing new bonds, which is another way of printing money. We, the nation's savers, will be pay- ing for Mr Clarke's £50-billion deficit in a few years' time.
Even if we manage to pay for our own old age, it will probably mean that we will have spent all our savings (and our parents' savings) and sold our home to pay the nurs- ing fees. There will be nothing left to leave our children. Will there then be no gentle- folk? That is a problem we must face when we come to it. The Association may seem to concentrate on helping people out in their old age, but that is not all it does. On page three of the DGAA brochure, among all the pictures of happy old ladies helped in the various predicaments of old age, we find the photograph of a deliciously pretty young wife with two small children. The caption reads:
Deserted by her husband and with two young children, a West Country lady was stranded in the depths of the countryside and depen- dent on public transport. DGAA-Homelife helped with house and car insurance, tele- phone and television rental.
All of which is fine enough, but we know there are many wives in much worse situa- tions than this deliciously pretty young lady in the West Country. We read every day of middle-aged mothers of six being beaten up by their drunken husbands in Liverpool, London and Glasgow. Frequently, they are left for dead. Their need is greater than the need of this young West Country house- wife, but we choose to help the deliciously pretty one. Why? It is not because she is pretty. It is because she is middle-class. Put as baldly as that, the Association's function might be seen as odious: designed to perpetuate injustice, snobbish and ulti- mately cruel. Is it right that those who have had a protected, privileged existence should expect to have their protection extended?
I would not be here today, nor would anyone else, if we did not feel that it is right. But we have some explaining to do. Before deciding that the whole concept of Distressed Gentlefolk Aid is inappropriate to the new classless society so many people are trying to build, we might glance at the classless society and see what it proposes to do to distressed gentlefolk.
At the very lowest level, when we offer aid to distressed gentlefolk, we are looking after our own kind. Just as Catholics, Jews, even the C of E run their own charities for their own people, so must the traditional middle class be allowed to do so. At a slightly higher level, when we talk about gentlefolk as opposed to other folk, we are talking about a set of cultural attitudes towards education, manners, family loyal- ties, shared beliefs and practices — hon- esty, too, comes into it, although it would be wrong to pretend that gentlefolk have a monopoly of any of these qualities. I distin- guish here between the concept of gently and the concept of gentlefolk. The gentry don't really come into it. Politeness and honesty are not peculiar to gentlefolk, but they are peculiarly cherished by them.
A new classless society is heralded as bringing about an end to class antagonisms, but so far it seems to have brought about a huge increase in envy and hatred. The advantage of the old system was that at least we knew which side we were on. Nowadays, it is hard enough to know which side nice Mr Major is on. Where the new Tories are concerned — Lilley, Portillo, Howard, Redwood — we may be confident they are not on our side at all. They are interested only in themselves.
As an alternative to the class-ridden soci- ety we used to know, we are offered the comforts of a mass culture which comes to us from across the Atlantic: the moronic television programmes, the blaring pop music, the instant junk food. To incarcerate elderly gentlefolk in that sort of environ- ment is no better and no worse than putting them in prison. In both cases, it would be the company rather than the dis- comfort which caused the greatest distress. Undoubtedly, there are people in greater need. If we concentrated all our charitable efforts on this one charity, the Distressed Gentlefolk's Aid Association, or DGAA- Homelife as it prefers to call itself nowa- days for reasons at which we can only guess, we would be neglecting our obliga- tions.
The very fact that Distressed Gentlefolk have thought it prudent to change their name to DGAA-Homelife proves my point that class animosity has increased in the new 'classless' life, where 'classless' leaders set the tone. In 1967 Bernard Levin, who had just discovered the DGAA and the splendid work it does, appealed through the Daily Mail for a new title to take away the taint of snobbery. Many hundreds of suggestions were received but in the end the old name was retained. Those who left legacies did so because they were particu- larly concerned for distressed gentlefolk, however unfashionable such a concern may seem to be. We live surrounded by ene- mies. Let us at least stick together.
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