ANOTHER VOICE

So it is the punishment freaks who are leading us by the nose

AUBERON WAUGH Ihad thought to devote this entire article to studying the prospects of the South African wine industry, as seemed only polite after being flown to Cape Town and back by South African Airways and taken on a tour of vineyards and tastings by the South African wine industry. One rather hoped to find some useful things to say about South Africa's world predicament too, but something happened to me last week, on my return from South Africa, which may illustrate the point I was intend- ing to make rather well, even if it seems like a digression.

On Thursday 13 September I went to Elstree to record an interview for Channel 4's programme, Clive Anderson Talks Back. Anderson, I was told, wished to talk to me about the Gulf crisis, among other things. Accordingly we talked together about the Gulf crisis and I gave him the benefit of my views, which will be familiar to Spectator readers, that it is none of our business, we have no reason to be there with nothing to gain and much to lose.

When the programme was broadcast next day I was not able to watch it, but those who did tell me that all mention of the Gulf and Iraq had been cut out. One should not become too excited about this, although it is quite a thrilling thing for a journalist to suspect he may have been censored at long last. No doubt the inter- view was too long, and my opinions on the Gulf were judged even more fatuous and repetitive than my opinions on smoking, drink-driving etc. But brooding after- wards, it occurred to me that I had seen no one on television or in the newspapers address himself to the problem of what on earth we are doing with our troops in the area. Obviously, it is something noble and good, but what exactly is it? Apart from the suggestion that Saddam Hussein, at the head of his tiny country of 18 million people, threatens to take over the world

and (according to Dr John Gilbert MP) harm our old people and single-parent families, we have been given very little clue. Even less hint has been given of the case against involvement. If Tony Benn spoke in the emergency debate, I did not

see his speech reported. When the Times printed what I thought was rather a good

leader on the subject on 10 September, it seemed to defeat its own arguments in favour of British military intervention by a factor of about 20. Why, then, is the whole country bursting to go to war with Iraq?

Peregrine Worsthorne supplied the answer on Sunday. While agreeing that our commercial interest was not involved, that we had no relevant treaty obligation and were not militarily threatened, he wrote:

But a rational consideration of the national interest is not enough to determine such matters. National character comes into it as well. It could be that the British people, or enough of them, feel that they ought to punish Iraq, not because it is in their interest to do so, but because it is in their character to do so. . . .

Obviously, we can no longer be the world's policemen on our own [continues this wise and saintly man] but that does not mean that we cannot give invaluable help to America in this role. What is more, the job would enable us to put to good use the skills and experience which history has bestowed upon us.

In other words, we are involving ourselves in the Gulf because we like punishing people. We are being led by the nose into this expensive and possibly bloody operation by the nation's punish- ment freaks, never so noisy in the councils of the nation as they have become since the working class found its true voice. It is all part of our passion for keeping Myra Hindley in prison until she rots into the brickwork, for castrating and hanging child molesters. . . and on this occasion, we are lucky enough to have the Americans on our side to underwrite our enthusiasms, and defend us against reprisals from the punishment-object. We are going to thrash Saddam Hussein's bottom, and nobody is going to stop us because everyone agrees that he has been very naughty indeed. . . . Or it could be that we just want to fight somebody, anybody. In either case, we have a guilty secret, and one which we understandably wish to keep secret.

Oddly enough, I suspect that much the same considerations apply to the world's reluctance to stop persecuting South Africa now it has a government committed to the dismantling of apartheid and the introduc- tion of one-man-one-vote. The anti- apartheid movement is redoubling its efforts to stop people going there, picket- ing travel agents and airline offices. This must be in case people find out for them- selves what is happening, rather than accepting the movement's version of events.

I cannot claim to be an expert on South

Africa, or even on South African wine, after a week spent among cultivated, in- telligent wine-makers in the most favoured part of the Union, tasting only the best wines. But I can surely testify that I saw a happy, prosperous, optimistic society, with the highest wages and best standard of living in Africa, every sign of racial har- mony in the vast areas between the townships, beautiful farmhouses and set- tlements, some of them (like the Meerlust estate) occupied by the same family for eight generations.

The enthusiasm and skill of the wine- makers is heart-rending. Prices would be reasonable if the rand was in parity with the pound. Receiving, as we do, 41/2 rands for the pound, they are a joke. Once the hideous absurdity of apartheid is disman- tled, and educational opportunities for the blacks are improved, the place should be a heaven on earth.

It is not as easy as that. At the huge KWV wine factory in Paarl they employ 1,000 people, many of them to sweep the floors and tend the lawns. At a huge winery I visited in Spain, they employed 40. As soon as majority rule is followed by massive wage inflation, there will be equal- ly massive unemployment and unrest.

But even if, by some miracle, wage inflation could be avoided and heaven on earth established, South Africa would still be a pariah among nations. The world's moralists and punishment freaks will latch onto the enormous — and inevitable — difference in the standard of living between whites and blacks. It is not that the world fails to understand how prosperity cannot be shared out like a bowl of cherries: it must be created and maintained on a day-to-day basis, with all the discipline and effort which such a process requires. No, the reason that South Africa will never be accepted into the community of nations (until it is a smouldering rubbish dump) is that our moralists desperately need a punishment-object. They may come to make the best wine in the world — and I drank some seriously good wine at Rusten- berg, Meerlust, Klein Constantia, with KWV at Laborie and Bergkeider at Fleur du Cap, with Nederburg at Stellenbosch and Tim Hamilton Russell at Hermanus — but the name of the country will always remind the punishment brigade of other pleasures. Let us hope, at any rate, that they have fun in the Gulf.