ANOTHER VOICE
Down on the farm, where caring capitalism is to be found
AUBERON WAUGH
This week found me back at Champ- ney's Health Farm, near Tring. The only work I took with me was a volume of my Spectator articles over the past ten years, to be produced in the autumn by Firethorn Press, the publishing branch of Water- stone's the booksellers. They required arranging in some order with new headings and a long introduction. Reading through them, I was at the same time impressed and appalled by the overwhelming message of despair, the unwavering gloom of every prediction: Mr Callaghan was probably going to win the 1979 election; Mrs Thatch- er was almost certainly going to lose the war in the Falklands, with the result of an annihilating defeat for the Conservatives at the next election, if not for ever; there was nothing to be done about the blacks, about the unemployed, or the 'workers', nothing to be done about anything really.
Yet as I sit in my steam bath at Champ- ney's, I wonder if this is an entirely accurate picture of the decade through which we have all lived. In point of fact, surely, it has been rather a jolly time. Many of us have grown richer. I certainly have. Others may have something to com- plain about, but I don't. I have had many interesting experiences and eaten many memorable meals; my cellar has grown out of all proportion and unless 'the commun- ity' seizes it for its own foul purposes, I shall soon have enough good table wine to last me into the next century, when it will be time to think of opening the 1977 ports. . . . Then I look at the headings in my book: Part V — Decline and Fall; Chapter 18 — the Sad State of Britain: 1) Surly, Incompetent, Dishonest; 2) The Laziest People on Earth; 3) Roll on the Wealth Tax; 4) Nothing to be done . . . . , There must be a message of hope some- where, I feel, as I stretch myself out on a high couch in a delightfully decorated room to be massaged by a cheerful, pretty and highly skilled lady called Kathy. If one has to look for little areas of excellence in the general picture of mediocrity and decline, why, surely, one has no further to look than Champney's at Tring. Although I always come to Tring, my friend Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who is possibly the greatest living expert on English health farms, assures me that he has enjoyed similarly memorable experiences at several others. Everything at Champney's works: the beds are comfortable, the rooms are attractive, the staff are friendly and attentive and caring. It is run for profit, and is obviously a huge export earner: French, Nigerians, Italians, Arabs from all over the Middle East, even two Norwegian ladies have flown specially to England in order to be starved for two weeks in the greatest possible comfort. This, I think as I feel myself drifting into a dreamless sleep, is surely what is meant by caring capitalism.
Others, of course, have perceived areas of excellence surviving elsewhere on the English scene; in parts of the National Health Service which have not yet suc- cumbed to the Russian disease; in the armed forces, although I was sceptical about the excellence of the Royal Air Force until I was taken on a visit of bases in Germany two years ago; even, I dare say, in parts of the civil and foreign services, although I have not much experience of that. But all these are public services in which discipline does not yet appear to have collapsed; they are paid for by the productive efforts of the rest of us and add nothing to the nation's wealth. The only productive area which has recently been held up to us as an example of Eiritish excellence is the pop industry.
`I know nothing about pop music. I don't even understand it,' said Mr Norman Tebbit, chairman of the Conservative Par- ty, presenting the prizes at the British Phonographic Industry Awards ceremony last week. 'But what I do know is that this industry is immensely successful. I wish our motor industry would do as well in the States.'
So he handed out a special prize for taking pop music to China to a goofy, sullen brute in a stetson with his shirt open to his waist called George Michael of Wham! who shuffled up to the platform, muttered a curt 'Thanks!' and shuffled away again. The next prize went to Elton John for taking pop music to Russia. Another prizewinner was called Bruce Springstein, a snivelling American midget, named as International Artist of the Year. I am not familiar with the art of Bruce Springstein, but my children assure me that he has no singing talent whatever. He sings rotten songs very badly, and has a follow- ing in the United States by virtue of havinig espoused various left-wing causes, most particularly the cause of insurrection and bloodshed in South Africa.
The fact that an American midget was chosen for this honour, rather than a British one — surely we have plenty of home-grown midgets — makes me wonder whether it might not have been Bruce's espousal of left-wing causes which recom- mended him to the judges. Since the great communist infiltration of the pop industry in the 1960s there has never, so far as I know, been a McCarthyite purge. But that is not my point. My point is that the pop industry — which, according to the Daily Mail, chalked up a record £1.5 billion in foreign earnings last year — is an express- ion of the proletarian culture, that Other Britain which I have been railing against all these years in the Spectator. Apparently even our proletarian culture has, by the standards of other proletarian cultures throughout the world, its own areas of excellence.
Hooray! I would like to say that my bosom swelled with pride to hear that the Chinese masses thrilled to George Michael and Andrew Ridgely of Wham! but the truth is that I take no pride in that Other Britain — its hideous appearance, boring noise and general cult of stupidity. I imagine it was exported behind the Iron Curtain on the same terms as the Common Market 'sells' its surplus beef at 15p a' pound to the Russians, and rather wish the poor undernourished Communists could have kept our pop stars, as they keep our beef, and eaten them if they felt the urge. Let us return to the other area of excellence which I have identified, our health farms. They, in fact, would appear to be at the apex of a great and historic shift in Britain's employment patterns. Since manufacturing industry started clos- ing down in 1973 (according to Lord Limerick, who is chairman of the British Invisible Exports Council) with a loss of 2,300,000 jobs in that sector, 1,100,000 new jobs have been created in the service industries. Left to myself, I would suppose that the lion's share of this was taken up by extra 'jobs' in the Health Service, or by local government bodies in the recruitment of anti-racist inspectorates or Lesbian self- discovery counsellors, but it appears that the lion's share has been in the hotel, catering and tourist sector. Brooding about my Champney's experi- ence, I realise that most of the attractive smiling employees are middle-class. The resort also runs a Health and Beauty School, where daughters of the well-to-do are trained in the arts of massage for fees which are considerably higher than those at Eton. Come the three corners of the world in track suits and we will teach them easy exercises, massage them and help them to shed a few pounds excess weight.
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