Another voice

Times out of MIND

Auberon Waugh

Abig step forward' was how Mr Simon Hebditch, assistant director of MIND, described a new clause which has been added to the Mental Health (Amend- ment) Bill by the Home Office. This, as I understand it, will extend the franchise not only to 'informal' or voluntary mental pa- tients — the vast majority of the country's 120,000 mentally ill or subnormal in- patients — but also to those temporarily de- tained under the Mental Health Act of 1959, whether for treatment (12 months) or for observation (28 days) or as an emergen- cy admission (72 hours). In fact, if I have got it right, this measure will enfranchise all mental patients except those criminal lunatics (as they used to be called) commit- ted under an order of the court or an order of the Home Secretary transferring them from prison.

I may be wrong about these latter cate- gories of voters, but it is hard to see how the new clause marks a big step in any direction unless I am right, since according to Civil Liberty, handbook of the NCCL (third edi- tion, 1978, page 384) informal patients are already entitled to be entered on the elec- toral register and to vote. The only thing which might deter them from doing so under the present arrangement is the risk of their being detained under one of the three categories above if they try to discharge themselves in order to exercise their right.

Let us assume, at any rate, that I am cor- rect, and that as a result of this 'big step' the only mental patients prevented from voting will be the 7,000-odd who are com- pulsorily detained after committing some criminal act. What interests me most in Mr Hebditch's phrase is its sense of direction: forward to what? Perhaps he has in mind some sort of ideal society where mental pa- tients under treatment are not only entitled to vote but also to sit on juries, administer justice, pilot airliners and perform surgical operations. Would any of these steps really justify the label 'forward'?

I suspect that Mr Hebditch has no very certain idea of destination. He is not talking about forward to anywhere in particular so much as forward from a well-remembered past when mental patients were beaten, starved, shackled, deprived of all legal rights and generally treated as sub-humans.

The original justification for denying the vote to lunatics and simpletons (as mentally disturbed and subnormal patients were once called) was presumably that they were thought to be of unsound judgment and could not be trusted to use it sensibly. Has this changed? My impression of the ex- tremely strong drugs given to in-patients in

mental hospitals (I am not talking about out-patients, of course, who have never been prevented from voting) is that they have a profoundly stultifying effect, sometimes to the point of physically in- capacitating patients and removing them from all sense of reality. If the addition of 113,000 or so voters in this condition is seen as a forward step, then it can only mark a progression towards some system where small children, too, have the vote, and even domestic pets are encouraged to register their preferences.

This might well have helped me in my electoral chances as Dog Lovers' Party can- didate in North Devon last time round, but I cannot believe it is really what Mr Heb- ditch or the council of MIND intended. If I read them aright, they are not so much in- terested in electoral reform or in extending the franchise for its own sake. They are solely concerned with the dignity and rights of mental patients. Good luck to them. They are undoubtedly a worthy collection of people. I have heard it suggested by hospital administrators that the effect of this concern for the rights of patients is to add so many difficulties to the administra- tion of the mental health' service as to obstruct its efficient running and prejudice the health of the patients. Even if this is true, which I tend to doubt, one must weigh it against the very real and historically pro- ven risks of callous maltreatment of one of the most vulnerable sections of society.

Similarly, it might be thought that by ad- ding to the electoral roll an easily iden- tifiable group of those least qualified to belong to it, one was gaining more in terms of human dignity, compassion etc than one was losing in terms of electoral efficiency. On this point I am not so sure. How many mental patients, I wonder, really care whether they vote or not? My own consti- tuency of Taunton would be more or less swamped if all its mentally sick or subnor- mal patients were suddenly given votes in- side it; the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill is plainly right in insisting that mental patients who wish to vote must do so in their own constituencies. Presumably they will be given postal votes. How many will bother to use them, or be able to register ac- ceptable indications of their preference? I honestly do not know, and am in any case among the last people to preach on the sub- ject, having exercised my right to vote only once in the last six general elections when I have been qualified to do so.

If I am right, this measure has been push- ed through by a tiny band of enthusiasts, rather like the new law protecting bats, without any consultation with the mass of those whom it is supposed to benefit. The

council of MIND, whose letters apparently stand for the National Association for Mental Health (not even an anagram, lel alone an acronym), has wished this inoffea. sive, possibly meaningless reform upon 115 and upon the mentally disturbed or subnor mal community in accordance with its own ideas of propriety. High Tories may see it as a small step backwards, anarchists as a small step forwards, but mental health ea" thusiasts, at least, see it as a big step aviaY from the horrors of the past. That, at any rate, is my explanation for how this endearingly fatuous piece of legislation came before Parliament. But does not quite explain its parliamentary history, nor the enthusiasm with which MPs of all parties have greeted it. Norma ,1 these 'special interest' measures, as with rya Peter Walker's insane edict for the elev,,,s. tion of bats to the rank of Sacred Anidra come about through the influence of pressure group on the relevant Civil Sella' Committee at drafting stage. They .itistia; pear in the proposed legislation and, unl there is some entrenched party, class ,.`'e ideological objection, are passed on It'd nod, being subject to government seelse thoughts at the House of Lords Committ stage. When the Mental Health (Amendinen1 Bill came before the House of CoMnIelle, last June, there was no mention of any Pro posal to enfranchise the nation's 113'' and non-criminal mental patients ,,as hospitalised simpletons. The new clause "sr been tabled by the Home Office in resP°,,sloit to. an all-party House of Commons re gill which threatened to defeat the entire v unless all lunatics and simpletons were ee,

franchised. all

One might have thought that MPs, people, would be least keen on the measm They, after all, have to go round kisers, babies, sucking up to old age pensitaci, patting wheelchair cases on the ""',rio placating crooked businessmen and ;by show some sort of coherent argurnent 00. they should be preferred to their „c`ri ponents. Now they will have to ei‘eli themselves to pull in the mentally del.°g and subnormal vote as well.

It seems to me that since Sir

Rees-Mogg left The Times the voice A, It sweet reason has been fading in the 10.1"0 is being replaced by the sort of rhetoric not which I coined a name recently (I shaJ1,,,a1 use the description again until certainrp matters have sorted themselves °,°„/001 which falsehood and half-truths are 01,,r0. together in illogical juxtaposition to Yip, Pra electoral roll will do much to ease tit`

blem. righteous, duce a sort of shrill, self- hich

dignantly vehement conclusionThis' ecl norant people may accept as prov or so it seems to me, threatens to br001 the new language of politics. meohi' believe that the addition of 113,0 riltothe ly deranged or subnormal people