ANOTHER VOICE
I hope I'd have the guts to shoot a nocturnal intruder
BORIS JOHNSON
nap. You're awake. Your ears are pricked. Was that just the loose latch on the bathroom window, shaking in the wind? You strain the ears again, sorting the night- ly noises of the house — the moans and rumbles — for anything creepy. And there it is again, a sort of inexplicable thud com- ing from the kitchen, as though someone downstairs was moving about, and da-dum da-dum da-dum your heart starts like the theme tune from Jaws and your sweat feels clammy in the cool air as you ease your legs over the edge of the bed, and you prepare for the moment you have feared, the moment you have rehearsed, when you have to look for the hero inside yourself, when you have to DEAL WITH A NOC- TURNAL INTRUDER! It is one of those moments, oddly rare, when our characters are tested. What would you do?
Do you (a) wake up your wife and ask her to go and have a look, handing her a tennis racket for her own protection? Or do you (b) softly close the bedroom door, draw the duvet over your head, and try to remember whether you have household insurance? Or do you (c) gird your boxer shorts, descend the darkened creaking stairwell, turn on the lights and tell the pair of crackheads to put down that television and hop it? I think, I hope, I am a (c) man. But you always wonder, in your mental rehearsals, what it would be like if the bur- glars were unimpressed. What if they just laughed, and produced their Stanley knives and chisels, and told you to go back to bed? And what if it was going to take the police at least 40 minutes to arrive? Well, like most of us, I have a plan for that eventuality.
High on a shelf in the kitchen there is a cardboard box containing a Greek air pis- tol. It fires small, ceramic pellets. In repeat- ed tests on the squirrels who dig up the lawn, it has proved wholly inaccurate. In fact — before I am swamped with letters from animal-lovers — the squirrels are never safer than when I am stalking them. But it looks very much like the Ruger on which it is modelled. It feels like a mean piece, this plastic Ruger, bought for 3,000 drachmas from the tobacconist on Agios Stephanos; and the plan is to wave it at the intruders until they scarper. Note the mod- esty of this householder's intentions.
At the very most, my burglars might feel the momentary ping of a ceramic pellet. Far from being capable of blowing them away, this glorified pea-shooter produces a looping trajectory you can follow with your eye. Passionately though I support Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, and his right to defend his property, I would be nervous of keeping a loaded pump-action Remington shotgun under the bed. The Greek air pis- tol strikes me as supplying exactly what the law prescribes: reasonable force.
Except, of course, that the police would take a different view. Suppose I gave one burglar such a shock, by pinging him on the buttock, that he dropped his chisel on his toe, sustaining a nasty cut. Where would I be, in the eyes of the law? I would be in shtook. I would be hauled off to the cells and charged with possession of an unli- censed and unregistered offensive weapon, and one, moreover, which fell foul of the recent Act against replica guns. I would be charged at least with malicious wounding and perhaps even with attempted murder.
And would the local papers campaign for my release? Would they hell. The Highbury and Islington Express would run sinister sepia-tinted photos of our house, and the freaky vegetation around the dustbins. My neighbours would be invited to make remarks about our family's general hygiene. My friend the Guardian hack who lives next door would bite his lip, brush aside a tear, and write a third leader demanding that the law take its course. Polite society would agree that I was a sociopath, who had no business even to threaten a poor crack- addled young burglar who had, in the words of Ken Livingstone, been 'failed by the edu- cational system'. If I was ever let out of prison, my life would never be the same; and I know all this because I read the news- papers very closely on the morning after Tony Martin was found guilty of murder.
Not a single paper dared dissent from the verdict. No one, at first, had the guts to protest that a man who fired, in the dark- 'Forget it, Nigel, you'll look ridiculous — everyone knows you're a grey squirrel.' ness, at person or persons unknown, with a torch being shone in his eyes, and after he had been recently robbed of possessions of high sentimental value, should be found as guilty of murder as Kenneth Noye, and should be required to serve the same sen- tence. Not even Heifer — for once — did justice to my throbbing jowl-wobbling feel- ings of right-wing rage. What's wrong with the world? I howled. And then it hit me. I don't believe Fleet Street would have react- ed in quite that way four years ago. Blair has squandered his chance to do the big things: to reform welfare, or reach a lasting settlement with the EU; and in that respect he follows the Tory tradition. But there has been a subtle cultural revolution, a change in metropolitan opinion, as it is expressed in the newspapers.
Notice the way Peter Mandelson is pic- tured out on the town with his boyfriend; not that there is anything wrong with that, perish the thought, just that it would have been unimaginable before the last election. Notice the way all the candidates for the London mayor say they want positive dis- crimination in favour of women and minori- ties, and no one dare contest their reason- ing. Slowly Labour is winning the battle it really cares about, the Kulturkampf, adjust- ing what can be said, and what cannot be said. Breast-feeding is exalted; tobacco is demonised. Homosexuality is to be taught in schools; hunting is evil. Mr Chris Mullin, the tyrannical minister, actually wants a reg- ister of all .177 airguns, let alone my Greek job, and no one protests.
Of course, Labour is not solely responsi- ble for the phenomenon. The present right- on mood is part of the backswing against Thatcherism: not against greed — far from it — but against that aggressive Thatcheri- an honesty about the human condition, and in favour of getting rich nicely, with a con- science.
More important, I am not sure how widespread this new right-on mood really is. Metropolitan opinion was wrong-footed over Section 28, where the public thought differently from New Labour; and three days after the event it was clear that the country did not agree with the editorialists on the verdict passed on Tony Martin. You can say that William Hague is opportunist to see the gap between the polite view and the public view. But you can't deny that he is right to go for it.
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