ANOTHER VOICE
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying
AUBERON WAUGH Before leaving for a weekend in Bor- deaux to assess the 1985 vintage, I was delighted to read a speech by Mr Michael Meacher, Opposition spokesman on the social services, which once again sounded the pure, sweet note of the clarion calling us to arms in a resumed class war. Promis- ing a huge increase in state benefits for the old, the unemployed, single mothers etc if only they will be wise enough to vote for him, Mr Meacher explained that these benefits would be paid for exclusively by the 'rich and wealthy'.
All he had to do, he said, was to reimpose the sensible levels of taxation which prevailed formerly, ending the small amount of relief afforded by this Conserva- tive Government to the country's harder workers and more resolute savers. Then, with the top level of tax restored to its sacred level of 98 per cent, state confisca- tion of gifts between citizens re-enshrined, widows and orphans disinherited anew, Merrie England will be here again: old age pensioners will dance on the village green, clutching their bundles of £10 notes or waving them to each other; the unem- ployed will be given lobs'; unmarried mothers will start clucking like deep-litter chickens, strewing the area with bonny new babies of many colours.
Never mind that a kill-joy accountant on the Government front bench immediately pointed out how Mr Meacher's sums were all wrong. Dispossessing the 'rich and wealthy' — by which Mr Meacher apparently meant the top five per cent of wage earners — would not achieve any- thing like the benefits described. In order to scatter cash around in this enjoyable way, Mr Meacher will have to raise taxes quite dramatically at a point much lower down the scale than the 'rich and wealthy' top five per cent.
I fancy that everybody with sufficient intelligence to earn and hold a decent wage realises this well enough. The important thing about Mr Meacher's clarion call to arms in the class war is that it is a war which the poor are bound to lose. You may feel, as I do, although many disagree, that the poor really don't do too badly at all nowadays, when compared to the poor of nearly all other countries, or of all other moments in our own history. It seems to me they have little to complain about, although others feel it would be nice for the Government to give them more money. But it is a characteristic of most animal creation that when it is attacked, it defends itself, and Mr Meacher's clarion call is exactly what is needed to rouse the prosperous, employed majority out of its sentimental torpor.
One may doubt, however, whether the tiny proportion of the country which might truthfully be characterised as 'rich and wealthy' — those with enough inherited money to live on — is capable of being roused. There seems to be an element of hopelessness in Britain's traditional upper class which might be identified as historical despair. Brideshead Revisited, which starts another of its interminable but rather lucrative runs on Tuesday, may be seen as prophetic this time round. It certainly seems more relevant now than it might have done when it first appeared 40 years ago. The drunkenness of Lord Sebastian has its exact equivalent in the present heroin epidemic among so many of the brighter and better favoured of the jeunes- se doree. The awareness of Divine Grace as a possible source of redemption may be missing, but so is the sort of social aware- ness by which heroin can be seen in its proper context; not just a random tragedy or error of moral upbringing, but the product of historical rejection.
Even the less bright or well favoured among the jeunesse doree, the Hooray Henries whose distasteful antics are often seen as one more unacceptable face of Thatcherism — like the Mohocks of the 18th century — are probably respond- ing, in their brutish way, to the fact `If they'd knighted Murdoch, he'd have had to change nationality again.' Eden has been snatched away from them.
At any rate, it seems to me that a distinction should be made between the hopelessness of the young, over-privileged rich and the hopelessness of the young, over-privileged poor. The former despair because they have been denied a role, the latter because they have been denied any reason to exert themselves. People will reply angrily that the poor have no oppor- tunity to exert themselves, even if they saw the need, but my guess is that the lack of need came before the disappearance of opportunity.
At luncheon I sat next to an upper-class Frenchwoman who told me that she had just dismissed her young English nanny because the girl was not up to the intell- ectual level of her daughters, aged four and ten months. 'I never knew the English lower class was so uneducated,' she said. The girl showed no interest in anything, and spoke atrocious English, but the final straw came when her employer had to motor 40 miles into Bordeaux to buy her a copy of the Sun newspaper. The employer was no prude, but she was appalled by what she saw. 'I never knew such vulgarity, such stupidity existed in England,' she said. It was out of the question to keep such a girl in the house.
There is a long tradition of employing English nannies among the more educated of the French upper class, but it looks as if one more job-opportunity for English school leavers is about to disappear. I advised her to employ a nanny from New Zealand or Australia, and she agreed.
Then she told me that her life's purpose in re-establishing one of the best châteaux of the Medoc was to hand it over to one of her children, whichever showed more apti- tude. Perhaps she will succeed. In the face of her boundless energy and enthusiasm, her high intelligence and capacity for hard work, it seemed churlish to place a bet. I do not doubt that she and others like her are more than a match for Mitterrand, or Marchais, or any degree of stupidity and wrongheadedness which might be thrown up by the French political system. She would probably survive an occupation by the Red Army. But I wonder if she will be able to overcome the historical pressure on the rich as it seems to affect the younger generation — even one which has been spared the deleterious influence of English nannies.
Previous page
