ANOTHER VOICE
Runcieballs revisited, or what to do with the Beveridge boys
AUBERON WAUGH
SIR William Beveridge would be 106 if he were alive today. This month, which marks the 43rd anniversary of his report on Social Security, as the Times pointed out rather mysteriously, also marked the publication of the Church of England's report on deprivation in the 'inner cities' as the new, post-war slums are called. Its conclusions appear to be rather similar, if more overtly Marxian and anti-religious in tone.
We must all be grateful to Mr David Hart for supplying the passages which nail down both these tendencies in the report; grateful, above all, to anyone who has taken time actually to read the dismal document. The overtly Marxian passages, welcoming what has become known as `liberation theology', need not detain us long. Liberation theology might be defined as any revolutionary rhetoric, justifying violence and murder in pursuit of the traditional appetites, grievances and grudges of the urban mob, when uttered from a pulpit or in a religious publication. The document's argument would appear to be that since practically nobody in the `inner cities' is remotely interested in any- thing the Church of England has to say, why not give liberation theology a whirl?
Liberation Theology opens up the possibility that new priorities, as well as new methods, can restore to us a theology that is truly relevant to the needs and aspirations of people today.
It may not have anything to do with converting the heathen or administering the sacraments to the faithful, but at least it will give the clergy something to do, give them a role. I have often wondered why they do not try giving instruction in Morris or Limbo dancing. Many people seem to enjoy it — rather more, I dare say, than really welcome riots, strikes, terror gangs and the other trappings of liberation. But the most interesting aspect of the Archbishop's explicit adoption of Marx 'it is against the background of the exces- sive individualism of much Christian think- ing in the 19th century that we must place Marx's perception that evil is to be found, not just in the human heart but in the very structures of economic and social rela- tionships' — is that it should be accompa- nied by a resolute denial of belief in the human soul, Mr Hart adopts the Shorter Oxford Dictionary definition of 'soul' to mean 'the principle of thought and action in man, commonly regarded as an entity distinct from the body'. He then draws attention to two passages from the Runcieballs Report. Here they are: 1. 'Philosophy has moved far beyond Descartes and has finally exorcised the Ghost in the Machine: few philosophers now allow for a separate component or "soul" with which religion can be uniquely concerned.'
2. 'Everything tells against the notion that there is a "soul" independent of social and economic conditions, to which an entirely personal gospel may be addressed.'
I entirely agree with Dr Runcie and his panel that if people inhabiting the inner cities have no souls, it is a waste of time for the Church to try and administer to them. The cure of souls in these parts has become like the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hun- dreds, a sinecure. Before recoiling in hor- ror from such an idea, which may be as repugnant, in its way, to liberal humanists as to traditional Christians, perhaps we should have the humility to ask ourselves whether the panel may not be right. Its members have more experience of these `inner cities' than most of us have. It may be true that they are beginning to breed a degenerate, detribalised sub-form of hu- man life with no morality, no conscience, no awareness of good and evil. In modern parlance, they would be called a genera- tion of psychopaths.
Reading a short biography Of Lord Beveridge recently, I was interested to learn that one of the things which inspired his original concern for social reform was a `physical deterioration' scare towards the end of the Boer War, when it became fashionable to believe that poverty, mal- nutrition, urban pollution and bad housing were beginning to produce an inferior type of Englishman such as could no longer be relied upon to defend the Empire's fron- tiers. When he was asked, in December 1942, whether his proposed Welfare provi- sions would sap individuality and adven- ture, he replied: 'My answer is an unhesi- tating "No". I do not think that adventure comes from a starving people. The adven- turous people are those who are properly fed.'
Social security has extended its frontiers since his time, and there is every reason to suppose he would not approve of many of the directions it has taken. Few now remember his passionate defence of the role of the voluntary sector in provision of social welfare (Voluntary Action, 1948). Individuality is now a swear-word, and the Churches have decided that the best way they can exert such energies as they possess is in urging government to do something, rather than do anything themselves.
Time has shown that Beveridge was quite simply wrong. By offering people the Welfare option, the government may have done much to arrest the physical deteriora- tion caused by hunger and disease although given the perversity of inner city appetites for drugs, junk food and sodomy, this is by no means certain — but it has done nothing to combat the other three giants against which Beveridge struggled (idleness, ignorance, squalor) and it has created an entirely new dimension of moral deterioration, which may well end up by making even the defence of the realm unthinkable.
Those who are irritated or bored by my constant assertion that the problem of the inner cities is not caused by unemployment so much as by the unemployability which Lord Beveridge's Welfare option has brought about may be interested to learn that even the army now finds city youths virtually unemployable. Colonel Charles Potts, whom God preserve, is chief recruit- ing officer for the South West; he has revealed that recruits from the City of Bristol have three times the drop-out rate from the army as those from the rest of Avon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire. The drop-out rate from Man- chester, London and Glasgow is even worse, he says, blaming the 'inner city syndrome' — laziness and lack of motiva- tion.
One would have thought that the army would offer the last remaining chance of undoing the damage done to British society by Mrs Shirley Williams and her supporters in the Department of Education. But the truth would appear to be that these Be- veridge Boys are prepared to consider only those jobs which are either grotesquely overpaid (like the police) or requiring least self-discipline. Perhaps the Church com- mittee is right in urging that we should give them more money, make their lives more comfortable, to keep them quiet for a time. The problem requires some solution which is less expensive than keeping soulless psychopaths in prison, less morally repre- hensible than killing them. Give them more money and they will buy more drugs. That is at least one approach to the problem, if one accepts that they have no souls.
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