AS I WAS SAYING
Now we know what the Blairites' game is, do not despair!
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE
For populist purposes the goal will be described as modernisation, or the creation of a classless society, which sounds good — i.e. a society in which everybody thinks of themselves as middle-class. But don't be misled. This does not mean that everybody will enjoy a middle-class income or even that everybody will enjoy more of a middle- class income than they do now. Rather the opposite. The gap between the rich and the poor may even become greater. All that will change is that the rich and the poor will feel more socially equal, the rich less socially superior and the poor less socially inferior.
In other words, the trade-off will be as follows: in return for the rich abandoning everything that makes the poor feel socially inferior — i.e. titles, posh accents, private education, old school ties, elite regiments like the Brigade of Guards, Oxbridge, membership of exclusive St James's clubs, gentlemanly manners — the poor will be persuaded (brainwashed) into giving up everything that makes the rich feel eco- nomically insecure — socialism, class soli- darity, trade union militancy, proletarian fellowship and pride. Let me give an exam- ple of what this will mean in practice. In return for in future calling himself Mr Grosvenor and forgoing the traditional respect for rank — cap-doffing and fore- lock-pulling — the Duke of Westminster will be allowed to enjoy his millions; and in return for abandoning all the trappings, ceremonial and customs, as well as money, of the monarchy, the Queen may even be allowed to remain nominally Head of State, at least for the rest of her lifetime.
What New Labour is engaged upon is a giant symbolic transformation. This is what the French and Russian revolutionaries tried to do at first when they just abolished titles and made everybody call each other citizen and comrade, before finally finding it necessary to proceed to the physical liqui- dation of the old nobility. In a way, this is what New Labour is planning to do. Having despaired of bringing about real economic equality, it will simply remove all the visible symbols, the landscape, if you like, of inequality, and declare that henceforth everybody is middle-class. No wonder the well-off are so keen on Mr Blair. What a bargain he is offering them: a future of unchallenged economic security in return for abandoning a few historic airs and graces, most of which, except in name, have already been rendered pretty meaningless.
Can this trade-off work? In America, where it was tried first, it did work. But that was a new country with no history and a vast virgin continent in which to shape a new cultural and social landscape. In France, where it was next tried, it also worked, but only after much violence and at the cost of creating irreconcilable divi- sions between the new order and the old order without putting anything in its place, as the Russians are now discovering. Here in Britain, so long as capitalism continues to produce the goods, the trade-off may have a better chance of working without violence and division, although it will be interesting to see the reception Mr Blair gets when he starts abolishing private edu- cation, humbling the Queen much more than he has done already, and removing from the peers not only their seats in the House of Lords but also their titles, not to mention all the other titles as well, includ- ing the non-hereditary ones. The attempt to ban fox-hunting has already given us a fore- taste of possible troubles to come. As a key symbol of the old hierarchical way of life it will have to go, of course. But, as the Coun- tryside March demonstrated, it won't go quietly. Gentlemen's clubs may be an easier target, with the feminist lobby proving a more effective battering-ram than the ani- mal rights lobby.
But the real trouble, I suspect, will come not so much from the threatened erstwhile upper orders as from the threatened erst- while lower ones, particularly if capitalism starts failing to deliver the goods. Even in Arnerica those hit by the slump in the 1930s soon started to doubt the reality of their sup- posed middle-class social status when reduced to eating at the soup kitchens, turn- ing back, if only temporarily, to the proletari- an identification which by then was too faint to afford much comfort or support. Hence the increased membership, albeit only tem- porary, of the Communist party. If the bad times return here, Mr Blair will have to appease the unemployed by more than a symbolic social New Deal — which Mr Mur- doch and the Sun are all for — and resort to real anti-capitalist measures much more rem- iniscent of Old Labour — which Murdoch and the Sun will be all against. Let us hope there will be no Jarrow March repeats in Britain's new classless society. But if there are, redundant 'middle-class' employees will look in vain not only for the comradeship of the old working — and proud of it — class but also for the sympathy of the old upper — and guilty about it — class.
A modernised, classless Britain with rich and poor, but without plebs and patricians — that is Mr Blair's aim, and Mr Hague's too, for that matter: a Britain quite unrecog- nisably different from how it has been depicted in British literature — notably, of course, in Shakespeare — art, architecture and even, until very recently, films; a Britain increasingly antagonistic to ancestral voices and any kind of habit, value, opinion, cus- tom, eccentricity and style which cannot be exploited by the market or comprehended by an increasingly unchallenged and unchal- lengeable so-called middle class.
But don't, dear reader, despair. For just as the white heat of Harold Wilson's tech- nological revolution went off the boil, so may the white heat of Tony Blair's socio- logical equivalent. For a hierarchical social structure which has lasted ever since the Middle Ages, surviving vestigially intact even the gigantic turmoil of the industrial revolution, two world wars and half a cen- tury of the socialist zeitgeist, is not going to disappear overnight. Perhaps some comfort can be drawn from the fact that even after 70 years of communist oppression Russian farmers still welcomed back their exiled former masters and mistresses with all the ancien regime marks of respect and rever- ence. As for the French revolutionaries, no sooner had they got rid of one aristocracy than, under Napoleon, they created anoth- er — an example which Tony Blair's mar- shals, if history is any guide, may well in time be tempted to emulate. So the game here is not up by any means. But at least we now know what it is all about.
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