ANOTHER VOICE
Poles apart from the Ascherson theory of freedom
AUBERON WAUGH
very new weekend deluge of news- papers and magazines through the letter- box is bound to give anyone who spends his life writing for them pause for thought. No sooner have they arrived than the desper- ate search begins for the few things one wishes to read — in my own case, the Independent Magazine, Ascherson, Wat- kins and Ingrams in the Observer, Cros- land and Walden in the Sunday Times, Anderson, Johnson and, yes, yes, Wors- thorne in the Sunday Telegraph. Wading through the piles of other stuff, I reflect bitterly on Tocqueville's conclusion, based on his observations in America, that no- thing written or published had any effect on a public, in the words of his biographer, Andre Jardin (Halban/Weidenfeld, £18) `grown blasé and made sceptical by the very proliferation of periodicals'.
It was this conclusion which converted him to the idea of a free press, although, as he confides in us, he did not have any natural liking for it. The harmful effect of newspapers and suchlike, he decided, occurred only when people were not used to them. As soon as people became used to them, they treated anything they had to say with indifference. It was therefore useless to control the excesses of the press: First, you bring writers before juries; but the juries acquit, and what had been the opinion of only an isolated man becomes that of the country. . . . You hand the author over to permanent magistrates, but judges have to listen before they can condemn, and things which men fear to avow in a book can be proclaimed with impunity in pleadings, and what would have been obscurely said in one written word is then repeated in a thousand others. . . .
My purpose in quoting all of this is not so much to warn the Government of the extreme futility of the course on which it appears set so much as to lament a journal- ist's fate under the previous dispensation. It would be absurd to expect Mrs Thatcher to have read Tocqueville. She would prob- ably see him as some sort of European socialist. The urge to trounce any opposi- tion overrides any perception of how fee- ble or unimportant the opposition may be. The spectacle of government and legal establishment ponderously forming up for a mighty battle to prevent press, television and radio saying or doing anything which the Government does not want it to say or do is one of the few bright spots for journalists engaged in adding to the ener- vating glut of fact, comment and frivolity which pours through the letter boxes and out of the television every week-end. At least someone cares what we say or do.
But there is one other bright spot on the horizon. Two weeks ago, Timothy Garton Ash appealed to Spectator readers to buy a subscription, at half-price, for readers in Poland. It cost only £30.25 for an annual subscription, and readers were invited to send their cheques to The Spectator at 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 21.1 with Tor Poland' written on the envelope.
At the time, I decided that this seemed a worthy cause, I really must do something about it — and then forgot. Reading my own column would scarcely make the Poles any happier, even if they could understand a word of it, and the Wine Club offers might make them more miserable.
Then, this Sunday, there came what can only be described as a scream of horror from Neal Ascherson in the Observer. He claims to believe that reading The Specta- tor might put the Poles off conservatism altogether. That might indeed be a princi- pled objection to supplying it, if only one could be sure that it was an honest one that Ascherson is indeed concerned to see a happy conservative society flourishing in Poland. As he points out, the Poles 'are strongly attracted by anti-Communist and neo-conservative reading'. Is it Ascher- son's intention to turn them into more effective, better-informed anti-Commun- ists and neo-conservatives? That is not the impression I get from a regular reading of his column. If I had to summarise the Ascherson policy towards occupied Europe (about which he is passionately concerned), it would be that Poles, Czechs and Hungarians will have earned their freedom from Soviet-imposed tyranny only when they have been intellectually con- verted to socialism, in whatever form it may be that Ascherson approves. In point of fact, as we know, they all detest social- ism. So they must jolly well put up with the Russians until they come to heel and see the light. Otherwise fascism (gasp!) might result.
So Ascherson suggests various other magazines which people might usefully send to the Poles, regardless of the fact that none of them is running a scheme to do it. 'Never mind The Spectator. Send the Poles subscriptions to the British Medical Journal.' Jolly useful when they can't even buy aspirins or bandages, let alone antibio- tics. Or a subscription to Blackfriars 'the brilliant Dominican journal which sees through Mrs Thatcher as few socialist magazines do'. Or send them the New York Review of Books 'for their minds, and any journals of management studies and computer development for their eco- nomy. Send them a paper which covers world news extensively and critically — the Observer, for example.'
Send them any rubbish, in fact, but not The Spectator. They would not understand it, he says. 'If I were to leave this intro- verted, snobbish little province, which I hope to, its chronicle of local gossip and taste wouldn't mean much or matter much.'
In point of fact, I would be prepared to bet that the proportion of The Spectator's total sales sent to North America and Australia alone vastly exceeds the propor- tion of the Observer's entire foreign sales. Never mind. Ascherson is engaged in the fight against fascism. He draws attention to the half-price Polish subscription: 'Assum- ing that The Spectator isn't made of money, I wonder who pays the other half.'
The CIA, no doubt, or some sinister organisation of revanchist Polish aristoc- rats. If Ascherson knew anything of the economics of magazine publishing, he would know that it costs very little to print extra copies. These cut-price subscriptions may make no contribution to editorial costs, but they cost The Spectator nothing.
The severest rebuke which Ascherson has yet received from the Poles he tor- ments in this way, by his account, is being described as 'one whose sense of humour is more developed than his sense of reality'. There are many criticisms which might fairly be made of Ascherson, but frivolity is not one of them — witness his ghastly attempt at a joke when he urges that a freely-elected Upper House in Warsaw be filled with foreign bankers. But he has convinced me of one thing — that Poland is in that rare state of being unused to newspapers which Tocqueville described, where The Spectator might do some good. I am sending a couple of subscriptions, and urge everyone else to do the same.
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