CENTREPIECE

Whisky and socialism: good and bad drugs

COLIN WELCH

Far more people dismiss the modern New Statesman as unreadable than ever, I fancy, venture into its grim-looking pages.

How do they know? I suppose the word gets round. In fact, the New Statesman,

unreadable as much of it is, has islands still, both grave and gay (especially gay), which may be visited with pleasure and profit.

A regular weekly bonus in the Statesman is of course its political editor and com-

mentator, Peter Kellner, who is perhaps even more worth reading than readable, though he is both. A grand master of political statistics — he confesses to a passionate interest in numbers — he is indispensable to friend and foe alike, whose maths homework he weekly and

impartially does for them. You don't have to take the Statesman to read him. He appears passim in the Times. He recently

exposed in its own columns, with typical fearless bluntness, its alleged misuse of

circulation and readership figures. Bully for him for writing that, and bully too for the Times which, after understandable hesitations, printed it.

More recently still in the Times he launched a passionate attack on two drug

problems which 'dwarf all others, bringing death to tens of thousands every year and misery to countless others. Pushers enjoy vast profits, making . . . lucrative deals at carefully chosen locations at Heathrow, often under the very eyes of Customs officials.' He referred, 'of course, to nico- tine and alcohol', which 'do more harm to more people than cannabis, heroin, cocaine, LSD and glue-sniffing put together'. As for bringing misery, I do recall Hugh Gaitskell, whose memory may

be even dearer to Mr Kellner than it is to me, confessing with emphasis that alcohol had always been a very good friend to him. Very lucky, I agree, the man who can

speak so with sincerity and without res- ervations, and perhaps his friend did let him down badly once in Moscow. But still I think it unbalanced to ignore the fun and friendship which drink can also bring, as if pubs were graveyards — 'a double death, please, miss, and two pints of misery'.

It is to Mr Kellner a 'grossly irrational' social convention which decrees that some stimulants and depressants, like alcohol, are legally sold at supermarkets while others are illegal or available only on prescription. With respect, may I suggest that social conventions are hardly ever grossly irrational? Their logic reveals itself to the sympathetic eye. If alcohol and nicotine were novelties, not yet established as parts of normal life, it might be possible and reasonable to ban or strictly control them. As it is, they have been with us for centuries, together with their attendant problems which, especially in the case of alcohol, are moderated by a wealth of experience and homely advice — 'don't drink on an empty stomach', 'don't mix grain and grape' and so on. About drugs, by contrast, society and most parents have no sensible advice to offer beyond a blank ignorant Don't. We survey the drug culture as the aged Bismarck surveyed the growing German fleet, with deep misgivings and apprehension, a portent of a new and frightening age.

The battle against the other drugs men- tioned by Mr Kellner may be by contrast not yet lost. It is not rational, because we can't ban or control everything, to ban or control nothing. We have problems enough: why add more? Sozzled as we may already be, how would heroin help?

In fact Mr Kellner's prescriptions are surprisingly moderate, at least to begin with: bans on alcohol and tobacco adver- tisements, higher duties, prison for drunk- en drivers, not even public ownership. He ends with a disarming reservation: his ideal world would contain no heroin or tobacco `and possibly no alcohol, although I am not so sure about that'.

While we are on about drugs, may I mention one which Mr Kellner ignores, though in its hard forms it too brings 'death to tens of thousands every year and misery to countless others'? It too must do 'more harm to more people than cannabis, he- roin, cocaine, LSD, and glue-sniffing put together'. It is profitably pushed by tens of thousands of dealers, including Mr Kellner himself, not in secret but publicly in the highest places, including especially Parlia- ment itself. I refer, 'of course', to socialism.

Its dire effects are strikingly similar to the other drugs deplored by Mr Kellner.

By suppressing rewards and penalties, it destroys all motivation to work, breeds apathetic idleness and dependence. It des- troys the family by usurping its functions, as also by shrinking inheritance. By weakening the sense of property, by scorn- fully viewing property as either common, public or theft, it encourages theft and vandalism. It encourages crime of all sorts by blaming it on social rather than indi- vidual evils. It further blurs the natural distinction between right and wrong by selecting ends, or even one supreme all- embracing social end, and nominating as `right' all appropriate means, however repugnant. It also treats as criminal wealth- creating activities never before thought so.

By its passion for abstraction and gener- alisation it fogs all reality, including the infinitely rich variety of actual life.

Some think that soft cannabis socialism should be legalised. They scoff at the dangers of escalation to hard Marxist heroin socialism. Others point out that soft socialism is always a disappointment. It never satisfies for long.

There are two roads leading away from the disappointments of soft socialism: you can go back or forwards, give it up or step it up. Yet the harsh cold turkey cure produces the most frightful withdrawal symptoms, as Mrs Thatcher is daily re- minded. By its effect on character, soft socialism makes itself seem indispensable, produces addiction and dependence. It destroys the will and power to do without it, obliterates even the memory and under- standing, the very idea of how life went on without it. Labour MPs seem honestly incapable of imagining how the pains and failures of life could be endured or cor- rected without stiffer doses of socialism.

As for the history of America, as indeed of mankind's long journey up from the pri- maeval swamps, it must, in the absence of some directing socialist intelligence or plan, seem quite inexplicable to them.

Would Mr Kellner's ideal world contain no socialism? I am not so sure about that.

Presumably it would either be socialist or

would not need to be, having achieved perfection by some other means unfore-

seen. Anyway, so long as he is not so sure about alcohol, it will be my pleasure to offer him a glass of death and misery next time we meet in the press gallery. Prosit!