Something to Declare
By PHILIP PURSER GENEVA to London Airport by Comet took just under seventy minutes. Getting from the Comet to a taxi took another thirty, includ- ing one minute spent trying to explain to the Customs man what a cotton peignoir is, two while he decided he'd better have a look at it anyway and one and a half while he made out a receipt for 19s. 10d. Three months later, arriv- ing from Luxembourg with the family, the Customs man couldn't have been nicer, but the wait was just as long and (with two children) twice as harrowing. Or there was the time when my wife was flown home from Germany after an emergency operation. The plane was delayed by bad weather and she was on the point of collapse when it finally did arrive; still there had to be the absurd routine of examining a cheap little camera she'd bought before being taken ill and levying-1 forget what it was now; something about El.
Again, the man wasn't unpleasant. Indeed he was quite abashed. No one would lay serious complaint against the comportment of the Water- guard officers (as the branch which handles this routine surveillance is called). They are po- faced, yes, but many people prefer that: if your underclothes must be picked over in public the more impersonally it's done the better. As a body they radiate a powerful if unimaginative air of incorruptibility. They would probably compare very well with their opposite numbers abroad if anyone could remember what their opposite numbers abroad were like. The point is, do we need them any longer? With the capitals of Europe as close as stations on the Southern Electric isn't their very presence a foolish anachronism? You might as well search the baggage of travellers from Worthing.
Certainly there is no obvious profit-and-loss justification. I'm told that at London Airport Central the average daily 'take' is less than £1,000, although at peak periods 1,000-1,500 pas- sengers are arriving every hour. In a speech in May, 1960, the Inspector-General of Waterguard admitted that of some 11,000 seizures a year only 2,000 were from fare-paying passengers (the rest from ships' crews). The Customs ser- vice earns its keep in the docks and airport freight areas and bonded warehouses. It catches its professional smugglers mainly through the agency of specialised officers and such tradi- tional police aids as information received.
It is claimed that there is a deterrent justifica- tion, that freed from stern confrontation the British public would immediately fill its hold- alls with bottles of Chanel, and foreign visitors come in weighed down with watches. More likely, those who are tempted to do any sub- stantial smuggling are already doing so. The range of stuff which it is worth bringing in gets smaller—or at least more specialised—every year. Where is the amateur smuggler to find narcotics or pirated diamonds? Watches from Switzerland and optical goods from Germany are about the only portable, easily procured goods which yield a worth-while profit.
Anyway, according to that wretched card thrust before the homeward traveller everything obtained abroad must be declared, and on nearly everything some duty is payable, if only purchase tax. This is where the inconsistency of the system really shows up. On cameras and watches the man must charge you, and according to a fixed scale. With other things, such as cloth- ing, it seems to depend entirely on the whim of the moment; he will wave through a Givenchy suit one minute and charge five bob on a necktie the next. I was told that it was rare to levy more than ten shillings on an undergarment or two pounds on an outer, but there are always exceptions: in a famous incident survivors of a jet crash in America who had been completely reclothed in New York had to suffer a lengthy itemising in the Customs hall and were finally charged quite large sums.
Equally inconsistent are the traditional con- cessions. The smoker is officially allowed his half-pound of tobacco (or equivalent), the drinker his bottle of wine or half-bottle of spirits. I don't smoke and I do ipy drinking in situ. Why shouldn't I be allowed a concession on something else, e.g., a cotton peignoir? Be- sides, in practice, very little tobacco or alcohol is brought back from foreign countries; the concession merely promotes the duty-evading sale of English cigarettes and Scotch whisky aboard the plane or ship, adding to the cares of the crew and falsely improving the country's ex- port statistics.
While tariffs (or even purchase tax) remain, there will obviously have to be the opportunity to declare articles, an excise bureau to which travellers would be exhorted to apply if in doubt. There might even be random checks (a 10 per cent. sampling perhaps), though I am not keen myself. It would at least save time for most people. To be fair, the Customs are often blamed for a whole structure of delays to which they only contribute (at .London Airport baggage- handling and aircraft parking are the great bogies), but the average time spent in negotiating them is probably ten minutes; and ten minutes multiplied by the 3,000,000 travellers who arrive by air every year (plus nearly as many by sea) represents an awful waste of money, man-hours and good will.
Entry to the Common Market, incidentally, isn't going to sweep away the problem overnight. It's been estimated that it may be as long as twenty years before internal tariff walls are finally down; even between countries as closely linked economically as the Benelux members there are disparities in, for instance, the tax on petrol. The douanier is still there in his little but by the frontier. The difference, of course, is in his attitude. In my last trip I crossed Luxembourg, German and Belgian borders and was waved on every time without stopping:' it wasn't special treatment for a British tourist either; for I was either in a German-registered Volkswagen or aboard the Europabus. The continentals have sensibly decided that the ordinary traveller is not a drug-trafficker or gun-runner and isn't going to sabotage anyone's national economy; unless they have some reason to, they don't bother him.
With the British the idea lingers that foreign travel is a special privilege, like ticket of leave. The privilege ends sharp in the Customs hall and the licking back into shape had better start straightaway. Everyone to read the card, to de- clare himself, to be mentally classified as Black, White or Grey (the actual categories which Customs officers are trained to adopt). Suspicion hangs in the air. You begin to feel first inferior, then furtive. What about that clean shirt you bought for the weinfest? Or the dress the baby was given? Ought they to be declared or will that merely sound ingratiating? By the time it is your turn to speak to the man you are feeling like a criminal. And according to the whole silly unquestioned institution you probably are.
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