Multiplication
Douglas Houghton
People Populating Derek Llewellyn-Jones (Faber and Faber £3.95)
Malthus was proved wrong in many ways because he overlooked technological advances in food production, emigration to the empty lands of North America and (in 1793) recently discovered Australia. He rejected birth control, which he considered to be a "vicious" method of preventing population growth. But now that we have Chairman Mao there is no need to trouble further with Malthus.
• Chairman Mao points the way and receives an accolade from the author of this book: The Chinese," he says, "are very pro-natalist. Children are treasured and tended. Big families used to be a sign of success. In China, the population growth is currently 1.4 per cent per annum, which is no higher than in some affluent developed nations. The Chinese government has achieved this by having a socially motivated people; by officially encouraging people to delay marriage; through the widespread dissemination of information about contraceptives, and through education and emancipation of women; and through the ready availability of all birth control methods, including abortion. It is a remarkable success." That is the recipe for a happy land, far far away. If the most populous country in the world can do it, should the rest of us lag behind? That depends perhaps on whether we want to go communist to save mankind. We might even get pushed into it. Professor Llewellyn-Jones urges us at least to have a look at the People's Republic of China. There are other alternatives of course. One comes from the Massachusett's Institute of Technology, as one would expect. This is "the technological optimists' assumption of infinite technological progress which claims that increased productivity reduces pollution, and increases the standard of living. The higher standard of living, it is assumed, will drive the birth rate down until a stable population is reached." This, says the author, who is historian, demographer, social scientist and gynaecologist, is based not on evidence but on faith. But so long as faith moves mountains North America and Western Europe will opt for it; Asia is already turning to Chairman Mao; in Latin America, poverty and social deprivation is being contained by military dictatorships, and in Africa the wrath is yet to come. The doofn-watch story is becoming familiar. The world is getting the message. It needs to be translated into action for family and population limitation. In the first half of this book Professor Llewellyn-Jones is working hard and Persuasively to bring that about. The "experimental _growth phenomenon" is spelled out Clearly and supporting graphs and tables are easy to follow. The alarming conclusion is that at the present rate of growth the world population is likely to double itself within fifty years from now. Barring war, pestilence, or mass starvation, that period may be significantly shortened by the year 2010. That gives little time. It is impossible to grasp the full impact of existing social and economic pressures, and political tensions and conflicts in the world today as they mount and multiply with compound interest over the next fifty years. For whom will the bell toll? Some of the Children of today's children may witness the beginning of the ultimate catastrophe.
With a final demographic flourish and a salutary warning about the evils of a -Plethora
of People" the author arrives, a little melancholy, at page 207 and the end of Chapter Ten. The curtain comes down on an uncertain future for mankind and humans who may behave like lemmings. And at that point I needed an interval for solitary and emotional reflection upon the human condition, the short-sightedness of man, his greed and cruelty; and the fate of people, wildlife, the forests, the beauty and peace on earth, in the coming infestation by its most prolific and most destructive living species.
In the second half of the book we switch from population to copulation, the "child by choice," avoiding the unwanted pregnancy, contraception and abortion. The transfer from the doom-laden scenario to the intimate details and diagrams of the do-it-yourself birth control kit I found disturbing. I wasn't ready for that. The author is no novice in the strategy of his mission so he may have chosen deliberately to strike while the iron was hot. In the second half I am on home ground.
I was the first MP to broadcast the case for free birth control facilities on the NHS. I had seen, while in the Government (1964-67), the constant fear that this was a vote-loser. A circular to local Health and Welfare authorities to remind them of their duty to give contraceptive advice to women for whom a further pregnancy would be detrimental to their health was held up until after the 1966 Election to avoid offending the "Catholic vote." (The original instruction had been issued by Arthur Greenwood, Minister of Health, thirty-two years previously!) The extension of these services to women for whom a further pregnancy might be bad for them on social and family grounds was brought about in 1967 by a Private Member who was lucky in the ballot for such Bills that session. Professor LlewellynJones says, in Chapter Twelve devoted entirely to "Where England Went Wrong — a study in abortion," that our liberalised abortion laws "were introduced (in 1967-68) prematurely and without sufficient thought and without being part of a programme to prevent unwanted children being born." He appears to be unaware of the hazards and frustrations of the Private Members' Bill procedure. How could any such "programme" be formed when governments refused to touch these matters and left them to the luck of the ballot?
On birth control facilities there is much progress to report. Two successive governments (Conservative and Labour) have more recently shown a remarkable change of social purpose and political courage by putting contraceptive advice and appliances on the NHS on the same terms as other medical services. These steps should, I agree, have been taken before our abortion laws were changed, but one cannot rely on a ballot for Bills to get the priorities right. The plain truth is, however, that by getting liberalised abortion first, the case for more freely available services for family planning was made much stronger, more urgent and more acceptable in erstwhile hostile quarters by the unexpectedly hish level of • terminations under the 1967' Abortion Act. The Professor is strongly in favour of liberalised abortion laws, though against "abortion on demand." For his model rules on the subject he goes not to Peking but to Prague.
His conclusion — "Beyond Birth Control" — is a long-sighted gaze at the distant horizons of human destiny. He refers again to China where a visiting official of the International Planned Parenthood Federation declared, "Under the guidance of Chairman Mao, more than 700 million people . . . are doing an experiment never before attempted in human history, an experiment not only in family planning but also in every aspect of human existence. Mankind awaits the results." Perhaps they will be monitored at the Massachusetts' Institute of Technology.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby is a former Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party
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