ANOTHER VOICE
Time for all good men to climb on the Band Aid bandwagon
AUBERON WAUGH
The 1980s will be culturally defined by Band Aid,' pronounces Ms Julie Bur- chill, the post-teenage Thinker of the Sunday Times's Look pages: 'Philanthropy is a classical virtue; self-help an American perversion, New World neurotic non- sense.'
Somebody, somewhere, must imagine this is a clever sort of thing to say, I suppose. Never mind that philanthropy and self-help can go hand in hand, or that America's contribution to the Live Aid concert last weekend seemed just as noisy and as generously inspired as Britain's. From the evidence of last weekend, it would seem that philanthropy and self-help go hand in hand rather better than philan- thropy and socialism. None of those twang- ing and yupping noises optimistically beamed by satellite from Wembley Sta- dium, Philadelphia and Sydney towards the Soviet Union were actually received there, nor was a single rouble collected to buy food for the starving Ethiopians. Even the Russian contribution to this world-wide festival of goodwill was banned from the Soviet viewers; no mention of it was allowed in any Soviet newspaper.
Only the Sunday Telegraph gave any prominence to the way the Soviet Union had tricked the world into believing that it was participating in the Live Aid appeal. Other newspapers, so intoxicated by the idea of a more or less spontaneous and popular world-wide initiative to help the starving Africans, either chose to ignore Russia's non-participation or, by emphasis- ing its Potemkin village of a contribution — a tiny concert shown to a hand-picked audience in a Moscow studio — gave the impression that the vast, groaning mass of the Soviet Union was swinging along in its clogs with the Princess of Wales in Wemb- ley Stadium. Bob Geldof himself spiritedly attacked the Russian meanness, but was skimpily reported.
This is not the occasion to sneer at the horrible, boring noises these people made or to shudder at their dreadful appearance. If a single African life is saved by all this caterwauling it is obviously a good thing. Even if no African life is saved, it is the thought which counts. I suspect that Ms Burchill does not understand what is nor- mally meant by `self-help'; she has prob- ably never heard of Samuel Smiles, and imagines 'self-help' to be some sort of psychiatric therapy which encourages Americans to take a deeper interest in themselves. But it seems to me there is one sense in which the ghastly Ms Burchill may have a point. What is significant about Band Aid and Live Aid is not that some African lives may be saved, or that it matters much in the longer perspective whether they are saved or not, but that the whole pop music scene, with its huge following which includes a large proportion of all the stupidest people of every age in our society and some young people, too, has actually decided to be good. It is this outbreak of goodness which is impressive, even if it lasts only nine days and stays restricted to the single issue of the African drought.
I doubt whether it will quite define the 1980s, which are already more than half- way through. The next five years have already been defined, by America's attempts to contain Soviet expansion after Russia's huge successes in the Carter years. Now the recovery of American self-esteem has been set back a bit, I should guess that the craven episode of the Beirut air hos- tages might define the second half of the decade rather more accurately than Band Aid — even if Band Aid represents every- thing which Christianity (a swear word to Ms Burchill) has been heading towards since Pope John XXIII.
But the Band Aid phenomenon is im- pressive, whether one likes it or not, and I was impressed, too, that no clergymen or CNDers managed to muscle in — like the ridiculous Dr Jenkins at the Durham Min- ers' Gala — to steal the show or pervert it to Soviet ends. It remained, as I say, a more or less spontaneous popular phe- nomenon, dedicated to wholesome ends. Now the great question must be to decide how the politicians can cash in on it.
Mr Tom Torney, Labour MP for Brad- ford South, has tabled a Commons motion demanding that Mr Bob Geldof, of the Boomtown Rats, should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He expects scores of his colleagues from every party to sign his motion, and no doubt they will. Students of our democracy, knowing that the sum- mer recess is nearly upon us and that Nobel Prize winners are nominated by a Swedish academy rather than by motions in the British House of Commons, will no doubt savour this particular exercise in democra- tic leadership. Ireland's Charles Haughey and Dr FitzGerald have made gestures in the same direction.
But where the Conservatives are con- cerned, a more determined effort to jump on the Band Aid wagon seems to be afoot. Up to now, or at any rate up to Brecon and Radnor, the Government had tended to keep rather quiet about the fact that it has all along been doing exactly the opposite of what it has been saying it was doing, and what it was elected to do. It told us it was cutting public expenditure and cutting taxes, while in fact it was increasing public expenditure, in real terms, at a spanking rate (16.5 per cent, or 9.1 per cent in real terms, over six years) and increasing taxa- tion (from 36 per cent of GNP to 42 per cent — an increase of 16.666 per cent, recurring, not six per cent, as mathematical innumerates might decide) to the point where, in order to reduce the burden of tax on the average couple to the level applying in 1979 it would be necessary to knock 7p off the standard rate of income tax. What a hope!
It would be absurd to pretend that philanthropy inspired these increases, rather than the fact that very few of Mrs Thatcher's ministers have managed to get a grip•on their departments and force spend- ing cuts through. They enjoy being minis- ters far too much to risk unpleasantness. But, until now, the Government has reck- oned there was more electoral mileage in the rhetoric of self-help than there was in the rhetoric of philanthropy — and two general elections confirmed it.
Brecon changed all that. There they learned that the people — or at any rate a few local sheep-shaggers — were disturbed by plummeting standards in health, educa- tion and social services, and attributed them to these non-existent government cuts.
Now Mrs Thatcher says Conservatives should proclaim the Government's record with price: they have increased current expenditure on nearly everything, and even increased capital expenditure on hos- pitals, roads and waterworks. The Labour record was appalling — it spent practically nothing on anything. Philanthropy is the order of the day, self-help out of the window.
To that extent, the gibbering Ms Burchill may be right when she proclaims that the next few years will be influenced by Band Aid. But the Tories will need more than goofy noises and damp eyes to explain why the public services are deteriorating. They will need a hate figure — the greedy generation of public employees: the grabby drabbies in teaching, social work and public administration. And that part of the campaign should be rather fun.
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