Another voice
Caliban at Blackpool
Auberon Waugh
David Dimbleby's exclusion from the BBC's team of commentators at this year's party conference came as a great relief to those of us who were wondering gloomily whether we should include the Labour Party conference at Blackpool on our autumn programme. There is over- whelming evidence that he was excluded from the team on the insistence of the Labour Party. This gives any individual or newspaper who chooses to take it a highly principled excuse for boycotting the whole dismal occasion.
The explanation put forward by the debosh'd fishes who run my own union, the National Union of Journalists — needless to say, they are warmly in favour of the ban — is apparently that Mr Dimbleby is `politically biased' and therefore unaccept- able to the Labour Party as commentator. His political bias is proved by the fact that he has been using a non-union printer for his family newspaper ever since his own, unionised, printers refused to print it for him.
I do not think we need worry about whether or not Mr Dimbleby's attempts to rescue his newspaper establish a political bias. The most breath-taking assumption — apparently shared by the BBC — is that nobody suspected of a political bias should be suitable to comment on a party confer- ence; or more specifically, that nobody accused of an anti-Labour bias should be allowed to comment on a Labour Party conference, since nobody has yet insisted that commentators at the. Conservative, Liberal and Social Democratic Party con- ferences should be well disposed to the parties concerned.
But any excuse is good enough for missing a Labour Party conference under present circumstances. Historically, they used to be rather jolly occasions. When Labour was in power, one saw all the mighty officers of state letting their hair down and pretending to be human, along with such giants of the trade union move- ment as were capable of articulate express- ion. They sucked up to the press and the press sucked up to them and a thoroughly good time was had by all. Now, in opposi- tion, robbed of all the agreeable trappings of office, they seem twice as self-important and only half as human, blowing them- selves up like bullfrogs to frighten and impress us, as if anybody in the country apart from themselves could give a farthing for the details of their latest scheme to ruin the nation and carry it, trussed like an old boiling fowl, into the empty larder of the Soviet Union.
It was Christopher Booker who, in discussing the trade union movement's hatred of the press and television, first compared it to the rage of Caliban at seeing his own face in a glass — an image he borrowed from Wilde who took it, I think, from Browning. It still strikes me as one of the neatest comments ever made about the times in which we live, but it can be extended through every aspect of the Labour movement's present posture. In fact one can read the whole of The Tempest putting the Labour movement in the place of Caliban throughout — represented, perhaps, by a Frankenstein/Hammer Films version of Arthur Scargill in the part of the 'freckled whelp, hag-born — not honour'd with human shape', possibly with Hatters- ley and Kaufman in the parts of Trinculo and Stephano — "Ban, 'Ban, Ca-Caliban, Has a new master; Get a new man' — and one begins to see the threat of these people in its proper perspective.
Of course, one still needs a Prospero to keep Caliban in his place and visit him with the most appalling aches and pains when- ever he misbehaves. But the essence of Caliban is that he is a very ridiculous monster. His malice, with his idleness, lechery, greed and capacity for mischief, is limited by his own stupidity. He will lie recklessly, but he is easily exposed in his lies. 'You taught me language and my profit on't is I know how to curse,' he complains to Prospero on one occasion. We taught him how to read and write (up to a point) and his profit on't is he knows how to regurgitate semi-digested Marxist jargon.
At the present time, the Calibans in our society are in rout all over the island, shouting 'Freedom high-day! High-day freedom.' I was most impressed by Sir Peregrine Worsthorne's wise and salutary Diary of last week, containing his anecdote about striking miners on the train from Wivenhoe to Clacton. After they had twice been approached by a polite, elderly black ticket inspector and asked for their tickets, which they did not have, they chased him down the train and kicked him. Freedom high-day! High-day freedom!
The important thing to remember about the Calibans in our midst is not only that they are ridiculous as monsters (unless one happens to find oneself caught in a fight without a weapon) but that they represent a very small proportion of the working class. The rest may allow them- selves to be intimidated by them, but they do not like or admire these yobs in the least. And that is the tragedy of the Labour Party's remnant, as it gathers to make ancient, fish-like smells in Blackpool, sur- rounded by suitable toadying members of the press. Nobody likes it any more. Only the stupidest and most backward voters are impressed by its noises of outrage against the current ruler of the island, knowing full well that Caliban's own rule would be infinitely more oppressive, impoverished and incompetent. Caliban has always been with us. One of the main justifications of government is that it can keep him in his place. The country is now waiting for someone to send him back to his cave.
I suppose this is what Sir Peregrine meant when he expressed some anxiety in his kindly way that `today's idealistic middle-class young' are likely to produce 'a whole generation of politicians who arc more anti-working-class than Auberon Waugh'. The whole concept of a democra- tic politician who is prepared to stand up and say, with Horace, 'odi profanum vul- gus et arceo' (even in Latin) is an absurdity. I doubt whether such misodemotic mut': murs would be allowed in the Members Bar, let alone in the tea room. There is really no electoral mileage in the sort of reservations I express from time to time about the threat of proletarian affluence. My only point, for what it is worth, is that the greed of English middle-class liberals whereby they are not content to be prosperous themselves, but insist that everybody else must be prosperous too — is as short-sighted in its way as the greed of the Calibans. The noises, smells and hideous sights perpetrated by an affluent working class greatly outweigh, in their nuisance value, any greater peace of mind available through the illusion of having scattered plenty o'er a smiling land. But that is a private point of view, and not one which I would seek to promote through an election manifesto. There is all the difference in the world between being anti-working-class, as I am sometimes accused, and being anti-yob. Every tub-thumping teenage Quintin Hogg or Eldon Griffiths in the country is free to jump on the second bandwagon, and many of them will, no doubt to good effect. For my own part, I reserve my particular hatred for Caliban's companions, the Labour 'moderates' who still hope they can ride this ungainly monster to their own advantage: Hattersley, Kaufman, Pete! Shore and now Denis Healey, unilateral' ism's most recent convert. These are the people I would like to see humiliated. .., For some reason, the press feels boor,'" to take the side of these repulsive men with double chin, who'll always cheat and al' ways win. I do not understand the reason. There is a perfectly respectable opposition party on offer from 'Doctor' David Owen (it is not normal or proper for a non-doctor to claim this honorary title after ceasing t° practise medicine). Why should not the, Labour Party be left to its troupe. Calibans and demented would-be ling masters in the form of Tony Benn?
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