Centrepiece

Water closet march

Colin Welch

On a recent Sunday evening I watched the television news coverage of a gigantic nuclear disarmament march in Brussels. The commentary was suitably respectful, even reverential, interpretative and 'thoughtful'. I give the gist, from memory: at least 100,000 people had turned out, double what the organisers had expected or hoped for; Western govern- ments and commentators must now take aboard the fact that opposition to nuclear weapons has spread far beyond the original CND-type nucleus, with its cranky minor- ity undertones; it now has a wide appeal to ordinary, solid, respectable people of all sorts and classes; and so on.

All this would have been rather more impressive on radio. In our mind's eye we could have envisaged the sober files march- ing quietly pat, rank upon rank, grey and drab, as if at the funeral of Vander- velde or some other venerated social democrat, all the steady, responsible sort of people traditionally found on the Clapham omnibus — or perhaps in Brus- sels on the Koekelberg tram. Reality as presented to us by the cameras, perhaps selectively, I concede, was rather different.

A man — I think it was a man — clad in a sort of white diving suit, had his head encased in a large white Ned-Kelly-style box, with eye holes and a flap over the mouth which rose and fell as the occupant breathed. On the end of a long stick attached to the box, a white woolly bobble on a string soared and swooped, playfully tapping the wild heads of other protesters near by. Fool! Blind fool! Only now as I write do I realise he was disguised as a water closet!

Then a huge, grim, bent, shambling figure, clad in a German army steel helmet and ankle-length greatcoat, like those sported by the hero of the hilarious film about Hitler in springtime. The face was concealed in a hideous first world war gas mask, with round goggling eyepieces and a long corrugated trunk like an elephant's hanging mournfully down. Even today such a surreal figure might arouse com- ment on a Clapham omnibus.

A rather pretty old lady, dressed in a smart, wine-coloured coat and skirts, eyelids fluttering winsomely, beaming tipsily, the sort of charmeuse who peeps flirtatiously into the saloon bar ('Have Norman and Eunice been in yet?'), carried an anti-nuclear banner in Flemish. For the camera she executed a slow and dainty dance — two steps left, wiggle the hips, two steps right, wiggle again and roguish simper.

Opinion-formers had come from far and wide to express concern. There was a banner inscribed, I think, 'Yorkshire CND', and a cheerful androgyne had his/her face painted all over with the Union Jack. I suppressed a furtive hope that Millwall CND might turn up.

The rift between commentary and pic- tures produced hallucinatory effects, as if one had dined too well. Vainly the mind strove to establish logical links: only con- nect. In what way is a reasoned distaste for cruise missiles expressed by wearing gas masks? How should we express our mea- sured support for the deterrent? By wear- ing a Pickelhaube, a barrel, a Ku Klux Klan outfit or a rubber nurse's uniform? I haven't a clue. This aspect of the language of dress seems to elude us.

I have heard Lord Chalfont argue with sombre but brilliant logic in the Lords against unilateral delusions. Would he have produced a greater effect by speaking in a gas mask? Perhaps so; but he clearly decided against it. He may have feared that the uncharitable, listening without profit to his muffled sub-aqueous boomings, might conclude that he had nothing of import- ance or interest to say. Which is more or less what I have uncharitably concluded about freaks on demos.

Fierce guard dogs with an inbred colour prejudice, I read in the Daily Tele- graph, are being reared in South Africa for sale to nervous whites. An awesome blend of bloodhound, Dobermann pinscher and Rottweiler, they are advertised in the Herstigte Nasionale party's official news- papers. The breeder, Mrs Martha de Vil- liers, warns that they will attack not only blacks but cripples and those who can't walk properly: 'they would think the per- son was drunk' (might they not attack drunks, incidentally, thinking them to be cripples?). 'They will go for anybody who looks different.'

Before marvelling at Mrs de Villiers's genetic and educational breakthrough, I couldn't help reflecting that all dogs known to me, if not as spectacular and terrifying as hers, have displayed in some measure the characteristics she prizes. They are all racists, all volubly and aggressively suspi- cious of cripples and whoever looks diffe- rent. They express without shame and act upon prejudices which in their masters have been long repressed by civilisation and the respect for others inculcated alike by religion and liberal humanism.

Hitler was said to have offered some- thing to every sort of German — conserva- tive, socialist, nationalist, collectivist — to every sort except the old-fashioned liberal. There were and are German liberals: Dr Erhard was one. But who ever met a liberal dog? A liberal cat, maybe, self- reliant, reserved, aloof, respectful of the rights of others, claiming respect for its own. All dogs are profoundly conservative, hostile to the unfamiliar and to change, of which packing suitcases is one disquieting warning. One of our Jack Russells used to pack herself in a case to avoid being left behind.

All conservatives? Even Mr Foot's beloved Dizzy? Yes, Dizzy's role was presumably to conserve Mr Foot and to guard him from innovations like Mr Kin- nock. Dogs, especially sheepdogs, are also collectivists, ever mindful of the need to hold together for protection the pack or ovine flock. The dismay of our sheepdog, Daphne, named after the lady who reared her as a puppy, when on a walk the family split was piteous. She would circle the centrifugal units, barking furiously, striv- ing to restore the unity and solidarity which like,a good shop steward she valued.

Our first Jack Russell, Winnie, impecc- ably white herself, echoed in stentorian tones the National Front slogan 'Keep Britain White'. Blacks jumped a foot, eyes rolled heavenward, woolly hats flew off, at her startling interventions. She also barked at elderly cripples in walking frames, perhaps on the grounds that, like gigantic insects, they had six legs: four legs good, two legs bad, six legs worst of all.

Her successor, William, raves also at advancing and retreating lawn mowers and Hoovers, as less predictably at aerosols. These are perhaps seen as small animals which, lifted on high, hiss menacingly or mockingly at the dog whose place they have usurped.

Dogs are against pacifism and CND, passionate believers in strong territorial defences and deterrence (though I suspect that any dog with a nuclear device would, as Bertrand Russell once advised, use it). We had a largeish garden in Putney. At intervals round the perimeter Daphne established fixed-line barking points, like the forts which were supposed to guard pre-1914 Belgium: points where the fence was lower and Mrs Lewis's flower hats could be discerned bobbing provocatively by; gaps under the two front gates, through which a snarling muzzle could be pro- truded; a high compost heap which enabled the garrison to see over the wall and blast off unexpectedly in some passing ear; best of all the slatted side gate, behind which she would rage and shriek at passing dogs, hackles monstrously raised, revolving so rapidly as to convey the daunting impress- ion that there was not just one mad dog within but about eight.

Mrs de Villiers's Bloemannweilers, as she calls them, may be different in degree. Different in kind they are not. If Mrs de Villiers doubts this, she has only to insert a crippled African CND drunk dressed as a water closet through my front gate, and see what happens.