AS I WAS SAYING
How rock-ribbed Republicans make political correctness fun
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE
At least during the summer months, when Maine is largely taken over by old- fashioned families from Philadelphia, Boston and New York, it becomes, to all intents and purposes, a non-smoking state. Neither my wife nor I, who are both die- hard smokers, found this nearly as uncom- fortable as at first we had feared. Not that it was altogether easy to resist the tempta- tion to light up. But whereas in New York we always find such restraint impossible, in Maine, from where we have just returned, it proved well within our powers.
The difference is easy to explain. When the social pressure to abstain comes from respectable and decent people you like and respect, as it mostly does in Maine, one feels a duty to conform. But when it comes from trendy social chicksters you dislike and despise, as is often the case in New York, you feel a duty not to conform. It all comes down, I would suggest, to the pres- ence or absence of political correctness. In Maine, that tyrannically fashionable tire- someness seems largely absent, whereas in New York, except for a few 'safe houses' like Bill Buckley's or, more characteristical- ly, Edwina Sandys's — in which, miracu- lously, a supply of her grandfather Winston Churchill's favourite Havana cigars can still be found — it is omnipresent. Therein lies the rub. Abstinence in the cause of good fellowship, good manners, old friendships — such as we practised in Maine because it induces a glow of virtue becomes almost a pleasure. It only becomes intolera- bly painful when imposed, as it is in New York, by a fashionable orthodoxy which seems to have more to do with progressive politics than with health or hygiene.
In this respect the politically correct Hamptons, say, or Martha's Vineyard the two resorts favoured this year by the Clintons — are just as bad as New York, and had we been holidaying there, instead of Maine, the urge to puff smoke in every- body's face would also have been irre- sistible, the satisfaction of giving so much offence to so many adding greatly to the pleasure of the nicotine. But in Maine, favoured mostly by old money, retired for- mer CIA bosses, well-connected admirals and generals, and other respectable folk of that ilk, we had no desire to puff in their faces. Quite the opposite. For being unable to earn our keep when it came to crewing in the ocean races, the least we could do was to refrain from giving offence by light- ing up, even at sea.
My guess is that even Bruce Anderson than whom there is nobody more politically incorrect — would have felt the same. In the company of a commanding, rock-ribbed Republican type of anti-smoker even he would keep his cigar case well out of sight. For in no time at all what in antipathetic company seems an irksome imposition gets transformed, in sympathetic company, into a welcome challenge. Indeed, we did not feel in the least put upon or tyrannised over. After a few days it became almost a natural reflex, rather like resisting the impulse to break wind. Not that the desire altogether disappeared, but at a certain point, as much in the one case as in the other, the desire to please oneself is super- seded by the much stronger desire not to displease others.
Anyway, the point worth making is that in America the war against smoking is no longer confined to bien pensant, left-lean- ing, chattering classes who have succeeded somehow in imposing it on everybody else. Like it or not, it is now a prejudice — if prejudice it be — shared not only by a majority of all classes and by all political persuasions, right as much as left, but also by a majority of all generations, old as much as young. So also, I would say, rather less confidently, is anti-racism. Again, our Maine experience was revealing. True, there are no blacks in Maine, but most of the summer visitors come from areas where there are plenty of blacks. So in the course of a three-week holiday among the very saltiest of the American earth — our host was a distinguished wartime American marine — one might have expected to hear at least one or two locker-room, men-only jokes, of which Bruce is so fond. But any trace of racism in these circles is just as frowned upon as any trace of tobacco.
It is an extraordinary transformation. Having recently learnt to watch my tongue on the subject of race while touring Brixton with the black journalist Darcus Howe, I thought I knew the limits of what can and cannot be said without giving offence. How wrong I was. For in Maine, even among rock-ribbed Republicans, I learnt the need to be even more scrupulously sensitive. But the lesson, having more to do with good manners than social engineering, was pain- less, as it would not have been had it been taught in politically correct New York. Indeed it came as a relief. For here at home I have to keep my new anti-racism within wraps for fear of standing out as a bit of a wet.
Most surprising of all, I even found myself in Maine in accord with Sir Brian Urquhart, recently retired from the United Nations, with whom, during the Suez crisis in 1956, I had crossed swords most bloodily. In New York, covering the row at the UN over the British invasion of Egypt, I had gone to Urquhart's house for dinner. Anti-British feeling was running high and I remember having felt great relief that at least under Urquhart's roof the British case would be given a fair hearing. After all, Urquhart had been a second world war hero, and it seemed to me inconceivable that he would countenance any criticism of Britain at his table — not at least while our troops were still going into action. In the event such hopes proved unfounded. Presumably in an effort to demonstrate unmistakably his new international loyalties, he bent over back- wards to be even more anti-British than the American guests. I was shocked to the core. How could a war hero who, little more than a decade earlier, had been prepared to die and kill for his country, now find it in his heart to side with Britain's enemies in another hour of crisis? For anyone of his or my generation to convert so rapidly and so completely, seemingly without any strain or sorrow, struck me as unnatural, almost obscene. Provoked beyond bearing, I lost my temper and walked out.
Running into Urquhart in Maine this year, 40 or so years on, I could not under- stand why I had made such a fuss. From today's perspective, it was my extreme nationalistic tantrum which struck me as abnormal, not Urquhart's internationalism. So far from renewing the old quarrel, I blushed with shame and we got on fine.
What would have happened, however, if the reunion had taken place in London, instead of Maine, at a meeting, say, of my old friends at the Conservative Philosophy Group, or at some other gathering of unre- constructed superpatriots? Almost certainly I would have found it much more difficult to admit that I had been wrong, just as I would have found it much more difficult, if not impossible, to refrain from lighting up, or even — had Bruce been present enjoying the occasional racist crack.
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