Another voice

Pyrexia

A uberon Waugh

Marie Celeste Ward, Westminster Hospital Several weeks of high temperature spent in the public ward of a National Health hospital, attended by pleasant, kindly, skilful West Indian nursing staff, doctors and surgeons from all the three corners of the world, undoubtedly help a person towards an altered perspective on life, however temporary. The same events seen from home or wherever the country's seventy-six-and-a-half million homeless actually live, would not seem the same. I am not saying that such people are wrong, merely that the point of view of a man with a high temperature in a public hospital bed is likely to be different.

Was it my imagination, or did a mighty cheer go up from the ward, with bandaged stumps being waved in the air, when the news came through at lunch on Monday that Now! magazine was to close? Nurses and other responsible people agreed that this happened — possibly the result of a spirited debate the night before when a Sinhalese cardiac patient (valve replacement) was discovered with an old copy of this doomed publication on his table.

Similarly, one finds oneself reading things with extraordinary attention which under other circumstances one would ignore, or glance at for a moment with a supercilious sneer. Such a fate befell a long and almost completely unreadable article by Mr Michael Meacher, the left-wing' or Bennist Labour MP, in this Sunday's Observer, in which he envisaged a 'Society where Power is Shared by All'.

I hope Spectator readers will bear with me through these apparently random jottings (temperature 38.7°, pulse 112). I promise they are leading towards a conclusion and even a recommendation for future action. Mr Meacher was given the freedom of the Observer's leader page to air his anxieties about 'the enormous concentrations of private unaccountable power in the giant multi-national companies today'. He believes that socialism is the answer to this worrying phenomenon, but warns: 'It isn't enough to verbalise the ends. Socialism is also concerned with willing the means, which entails successfully challenging the present distribution of power in society.

'What is the essence of socialism? It is a society in which power, economic and political, is shared among all, not concentrated in the hands of a few . .

Anybody prepared to go on reading this stuff would have learned that all the good things in the world — full employment, 'a sense of occupational purpose, shared control over decision making, income security and work satisfaction' — may be achieved and paid for by the master-stroke of import controls.

Various explanations may be suggested for the Observer's decision to print this rubbish as if it were a viable point of view, a genuine contribution to debate. It might simply mark the general intellectual decline of the nation, that we can no longer distinguish sense from nonsense, logical argument from meaningless 'verbalising'. That is the most cheerful explanation, that we are just making noises at each otHer. A second, slightly gloomier explanation might be that the truth of our situation is too horrible to contemplate. We take refuge in whimsical fantasies, whether about the beneficent effects of import controls or the mighty, dormant energy of Britain's 'wealth creators' which, when released, prove an adequate substitute for coal and oil, and, power the national grid.

But my own explanation is more disturbing than either of these. The most significant feature of all the drivel pouring out, week after week, in left-wing gatherings is the constant repetition of this word 'power'. Nobody ever explains what it is, except that it is plainly something the writer or speaker hasn't got and feels he ought to have. But what on earth does it mean? As a free and law-abiding citizen of a free country I am not aware of a single human being who exerts the slightest degree of power over me, unless the mild, restraining influence of a wife can be discussed in these terms. Nor do I honestly think that I exert the slightest power over anybody else except, perhaps, my children. I do not see any advantage in insisting that these two pockets of influence should be 'shared by all'.

What on earth is Mr Meacher talking about? What meaning can possibly attach to the word 'power' which embraces something shared and willed by everyone? I do not think that this obsession with 'power' is evidence of the intellectual decline of the British, or even of our ghastly economic predicament. The writings of Mr Meacher, as indeed the posture of a large part of the 'New Left', is evidence of nothing more than that our society has somehow spawned and nurtured a surprisingly large minority of power-maniacs or frustrated Hitler fi gures. The problem is what to do with them.

Which brings me to the third part of my pyrexial meditations (temperature now 37.7°, pulse 105). This was prompted by a glimpse on the ward television of a 'black spokesman', or possibly a 'black leader' from Brixton who took it upon himself to threaten me — as if I could possibly be frightened by his absurd threats — with further and worse riots unless! consented to the complete restructuring of British society along lines to be decided by him.

This man may or may not have been the dread Mr Darcus Howe, editor of Race Today, the Marxist publication devoted.to convincing blacks they have a grievance — a purpose subsidised by the World and British Councils of Churches to the tune of £60,000. Mr Darcus Howe also helped set up the New Cross Massacre Action Committee dedicated to establishing that 13 young blacks burned to death at an all-night party in Deptford were victims of white racialism, police cover-up etc, etc.

Watching this man on television — as I say, I am not sure whether he was the real Mr Darcus Howe or not, as it is not always easy, when one has a high temperature, to tell these people apart — I was at first indignant that he should dare put himself forward as a 'black spokesman' or 'black leader'. In hospital, I am surrounded by gentle, hardworking, skilful, friendly West Indian nurses and ,sisters, and this ludicrous posturing oaf was no more their spokesman or leader than Mr Meacher is mine.

Then, as I watched him expound his views, I came to the conclusion that there was indeed something fundamentally wrong with a society which is prepared to listen to these preposterous people, dedicated to destroying it, as if they had a reasonable or respectable contribution to make. The fundamental flaw in our society is that it has lost sight of the need to protect itself. Spectator readers are familiar enough with my theory of the need for a riot police like the French CRS equipped with protective clothing, CS gas and special Blair Peach-style 24-inch weighted batons. It now seems to me (temperature 38.3°, pulse 105) that there should be a system for taking persistent agitators into a few weeks of solitary confinement in a remote corner of the country like Princeton, on DartMOOT, and bouncing them quite violently up and down for half an hour every day until they agree to stop trying to destroy society.

The idea is not to inflict pain, so much as discomfort and humiliation. Personally, I know of few experiences more disagreeable than those fairground machines which pick one up, throw one around and shake one about, although, as one could point out to the European Commission on Human Rights, the World Council of Churches, the Catholic Council for Social Responsibility and everyone else, people actually pay for the experience. But imposed as a punish' ment, for solitary half-hour stretches, I rather think it might do the trick. Temperature 37.7°, pulse 100.