Another voice

Doctor Who?

Auberon Waugh From time to time, like many people of my class, I find myself tempted to the view that British workmen might be slightly less—ah —competitive than some of their foreign equivalents. It is not a view we can ever air Publicly, of course, in the strained atmosphere of social relations in this country. Nor would we want to do so. Such criticism comes very badly from those of us who !nerdy have to work with our brains when it IS directed at the massive dignity and selfrespect, not to say majesty, of those who work with their muscles. But it was a shock When I was watching a programme about the Japanese shipbuilding industry recently to learn that Japanese Workers are not one and a half times as productive as Britain's workers in this field, or even twice as productive. One can take such suggestions in one's stride. The figure claimed was that Japanese workers were between eighteen and twenty times as productive. • Perhaps mercifully, the present recession in shipbuilding has left their wonderful Machines idle for many hours of the day. It seems a good time to take stock of what is haPPening to the British worker. He can reasonably point out that he could not work very productively even if he wanted to, because he has no machinery to help him. He has no machinery because there is no i nvest!Tient, and there is no investment because an investor would have to be mad to invest in a situation where any profit will immediately be grabbed by the unions, whether in higher 'vages, over-manning agreements or other idle practices. Not being a businessman myself, but seeing how the Inland Revenue wipes out all unearned income, I do not understand why anybody with money invests it in anything except off-shore commodities and low-yield s.hort-dated gilts. But if the Inland Revenue lies like a great shuddering blancmange on top of all British initiative, the unions sm. other any hope of foreign investment, either. Through a mixture of stupidity, cowardice and partisan opportunism, our politicians have effectively destroyed British foreseeable both for the present and for the 'oreseeable future. The present government, relying on wages restraint through its social contract to contain inflation and preserve competitiveness miiztiotiveness, is now faced by the in'

union leaders to restrain pay union leaders to restrain pay

cletnands. The logic of the social contract r equires that in the absence of wage restraint, the government first threatens then .111Plements the alternative measures: a.restluction of unemployment benefit by a third, _IMIlar reductions in supplementary benefit, twelvemonth of all benefit to strikers' families, a `welve-month delay on income tax rebates, legal enforceability of wage bargains and removal of all unions' privileges in civil law —and picketers' apparent privileges in criminal law—so far delivered as the government's part of the contract.

Needless to say, the government not only shrinks from any such measures; it would actually denounce them as intrinsically evil. So the social contract is revealed for what we all knew it to be—a shabby little exercise in procrastination by some frightened politicians. The government is cooked, British industry is cooked, the country is cooked, we are all cooked.

How did it all happen ? One can quite understand that politicians may not be people of very high intelligence or exceptional moral fibre. Frequently they come from very humble backgrounds, and have no particular qualifications for the job, except that they put themselves forward for it. But why did the Civil Service not warn them ? I s there not a Civil Service think-tank to point out contradictions and idiocies, to co-ordinate policies and suggest things that need doing ? Is there not a senior civil servant, unpolluted by the party system or by the need to be elected himself who, for a substantial Civil Service salary, advises the Prime Minister when he has set the country on a disaster course?

All these duties are within the orbit of the head of the Downing Street think-tank, the Senior Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister. This post has been held since 1974 by someone called Dr Bernard Donoughue.

Who?

Dr Bernard Donoughue.

Who?

Oh, shut up.

Few people in this country have heard of Dr Bernard Donoughue until.recently and even fewer know anything about him. We learn a little more from Haines, whose vastly entertaining book The Polities of Power is reviewed by Alan Watkins on page 19, and a little from Marcia's dignified apologia in the Observer; we learn, for instance, that his boyhood home had been in Northamptonshire, a few miles from where the Field family (Lady Falkender, Peggy CBE, Mr Tony) lived; that Marcia knew him as a small boy; that he was once a secretary of 'the highly suspect Campaign for Democratic Socialism—the engine room of Labour's right wing during the 1960s—and a hard man' (Haines).

He does not give the date of his birth in Who's Who, which always strikes me as sinister, but reveals that he was married in 1959 and has four children. Otherwise, he is a man of mystery who has been spared the sort of democratic scrutiny which quite properly attaches to those with political ambitions. Is he a faithful husband, or does he sometimes let his eye wander over the flatter tummies and firmer breasts of younger women ? If his eye never wanders, why not? Does he pay his taxes? If so, how, when so many honest citizens nowadays can't even begin to afford them ?

From Who's Who, his career before this sudden elevation to the very summit of political power would appear to have been a strange mixture of journalism and academic economics, mostly at the LSE. Neither Who's Who nor Haines mentions its previous crowning moment, when he was at one time investment adviser to an institution called the Jersey International Bank of Commerce.

This appointment intrigues me. The name `Donoughue' does not suggest any very close connection with the Channel Islands unless, perhaps, it is a corruption of the earlier form 'de Nohen.' On the other hand, while we must all accept by now that Lady Falkender is of the Blood Royal, I can't quite reconcile myself to the idea that the family Donoughue ever bore apartieuk. No, the explanation for his sudden interest in the Channel Islands must lie elsewhere. It remains shrouded in mystery. When the magazine Private Eye tried to make some guesses on this matter of legitimate public interest, it immediately received a libel threat and had to pay Dr Donoughue a substantial tax-free sum by way of compensation for any injury he had suffered to his reputation. This seemed a curious way for a senior Civil Servant to supplement his salary, which was then in the £13,000 bracket, having just been increased from the £9,175 bracket under the Boyle recommendations, if figures supplied by the sanctimonious worm Haines are anything to go by, which, of course, may not be the case.

If we ask ourselves whether his appointment has been a success the answer must be no, it has been a disaster. Either his policy advice has been ignored, or it has been atrociously bad, or we would not be in our present mess. In either case, his temporary appointment should surely have been ended by now or, if confirmed, he should have been sent off to govern Leeds Prison. Unless, of course, he sees his job as preserving Labour in power, in which case he has been rather successful. The oddest thing about the mysterious Dr Donoughue is that whereas Haines, Falkender, Lord Murray and the rest of them are now one with Nineveh and Tyre, he remains. One of the least remarked scandals of the Haines book is the light it throws on Dr Donoughue's activities in the October 1974 election, when he seems to have interpreted his job as that of an assist ant party political speech writer, prompting the comment from Lady Falkender that 'civil servants' had involved themselves in matters in which they ought not to be involved. Not for the first time, I think Her Royal Highness has hit the nail on the head. One wonders just how long the Tories are going to let this continue.