ANOTHER VOICE
Trying not to laugh off the obligations of charity and pity
AUBERON WAUGH
Well, yes, I suppose I could easily accommodate 30 or 40 of them in attics, cellars and out-houses. Others could prob- ably fit themselves into cupboards and drawers without causing too much incon- venience. No doubt they could make them- selves useful in various ways in lieu of rent. Of an evening, we could play Mah-jong together, at any rate until I had taught them bridge. During our recent trip, my wife once had occasion to complain about some waitresses in the bar of a hotel in one of the northern cities of China — tiny, doll-like creatures in pencil-thin slit skirts — who insisted on serving our drinks from a kneeling position on the floor. It was not what she expected in a socialist country, she said. But in those distant days of nearly a month ago, China was trying tremendously hard not to be too socialistic, and, so far as I was concerned, I have always been able to take these quaint foreign habits in my stride. Truth to tell, I have a slight weakness for oriental women. On the road to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play . . . .
Of course it is an admirable thing to urge the Government to open its doors to 3.2 million Chinese from Hong Kong. It is quite right to talk of our 'absolute responsi- bility' for these people. All responsibility ennobles. Absolute responsibility ennobles absolutely. Is my tie straight, my nose set at the right angle, are my eyes sufficiently steely and resolute? 'If we continue on this course we shall be betraying millions.' Slight tilt of the chin, perhaps. It will be `the most discreditable British policy of the twentieth century'.
My only doubt is on the point of whether there is anything useful to be gained by striking these admirable attitudes in front of the mirror. All the best people will cheer, and we ourselves might feel even a bit better than we do already. But there are other, less obviously ridiculous ways of achieving the same degree of self- satisfaction and general well-being, of which a course of aromatherapy is the first which springs to mind.
There is not the slightest chance of the present or any subsequent British govern- ment granting right of abode to Hong Kong's millions, for the good reason that it is not dealing with an electorate of edu- cated folk like ourselves who are prepared to make way for these delightful, hard- working people in our cupboards and drawers — even in our bath-tubs, if appropriate. The Government is dealing with an electorate of New Brits divided between whingeing Daily Mirror readers and brutal, cynical followers of the Sun, neither of whom can tell a moral obligation from a laundry ticket.
Even if the franchise were limited to public school-educated males earning more than £20,000 a year and going to church at least once a month, as I sometimes think of urging, I do not suppose that any unanimi- ty would emerge. It is so easy to think of plausible reasons for not allowing the Chinese to come here. For instance, although they may technically be British subjects, they do not actually pay British taxes nor take any part in British elections. A surprising number of them do not talk any English, and few have any particular regard for Britain. We are not even their biggest trading partners, trailing behind the USA, China and West Germany. We have been able to offer them only a limited protection which could be ended at any time China chose to call in the chips. It was an arrangement which was of advantage to all three parties, and might have continued indefinitely if all three parties had con- tinued to behave rationally. Unfortunate- ly, Chinese nationalism is not a rational force. To see the miracle of Hong Kong handed over to these incompetents and barbarians is undoubtedly a bleeding shame, but short of fomenting a counter- revolution and civil war in mainland China there is nothing to be done about it. To pretend that the Hong Kong Chinese have some mystical right of abode beyond the dictates of charity, pity and possible advan- tage is absurd.
Where the last consideration is con- cerned, the British electorate may be behaving as irrationally as the Chinese gov- ernment, although many would dispute it. Quite apart from moans about the housing shortage, which I do not think apply, there is an idle, Green insect inside many of us, asking whether we really need all the massive production of plastic objects which three million Chinese would generate.
The obligations of charity and pity are less easy to laugh off. It is an unfortunate accident, perhaps, that just as we are all standing in front of our bathroom mirrors to limber up for the Great Debate on whether we have a moral obligation, in charity, to admit these refugees from Communism, the government of Hong Kong should be agitating to be relieved of the charitable obligation to accept further refugees from Vietnam.
I was not impressed by William Shaw- cross's arguments Oinking the boat peo- ple', 3 June) that we all have an obligation to resettle refugees from Indo-China. America might have had such an obligation after the Vietnamese war, but it has already received about 900,000 of them (a little-trumpeted figure) out of 1,200,000 in all, and it could reasonably argue that by fighting the Vietnamese war in the first place it was pursuing virtue over and above any normal interpretation of duty. It is 14 years since America lost the war: the truth remains that whenever socialism imposes its half-witted system on the human race, an enormous number of people are going to try and escape from it.
Free economies, which are infinitely delicate in the balance necessary to avoid unemployment and exploitation, simply cannot survive enormous influxes of re- fugees from wherever socialism rears its repulsive head. The fault must be seen to lie in its cause. Nations must take responsi- bility for determining their own destinies. The worst solution of all is the one prop- osed by William Shawcross, that we should pay enormous sums of guilt money to the socialist government in Vietnam in ex- change for the policy of keeping its citizens more efficiently imprisoned. What he eventually says is that suet)" subventions would relieve the suffering caused by socialism's incompetence, oppression and inevitable corruption, and thus reduce the incentive to escape from it. What would effectively happen is that the regime would be bolstered and prolonged in its incompe- tence, oppression and corruption. Of all responses to the problem, that is the one that strikes me as most cynical and least charitable.
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