ANOTHER VOICE
The mystery of 'John Major's' brief appearance at Question Time
AUBERON WAUGH
John Major's brief tenure of the Foreign Office will be remembered, if it is remem- bered at all, for his announcement of the Government's intention to repatriate the Vietnamese boat people from Hong Kong, forcibly if necessary. This announcement was made at Question Time on Wednesday — his first as Foreign Secretary and also, as it turned out, his last, since he was moved to the Treasury next day.
Presumably this intention had been bub- bling up inside the Foreign Office for some time. Anyone who has visited Hong Kong recently will know of the explosive situa- tion in the camps, and the intolerable burden for Hong Kong, which has been forcibly repatriating Chinese illegal immig- rants in large numbers for the past 25 years, to have to house these unassimilable and unpopular Vietnamese. In the 16 years since America's defeat in Vietnam, inter- national enthusiasm for accepting these refugees from socialism has understandaby waned, and Hong Kong has been left holding the baby, Something had to be done at some point, but it was the sort of decision which politicians prefer to delay as long as they can. It was impossible to imagine dear old mutton-faced Geoffrey Howe seizing the opportunity of his first appearance as Foreign Secretary to make such an announcement; hard enough to imagine him making it under any circumstances, except in the dignified circumlocutions we have come to expect on these occasions: an Orderly Return Programme would be negotiated with the Vietnamese after con- sultations with the Hong Kong authorities; consideration would be given to all genuine refugees on political grounds, etc, etc.
At very least, Major's determination to seize the nettle and announce, at his first opportunity, that 'it is soon going to be necessary to tackle the thorny question of involuntary repatriation' seemed to give some clue to his character, about which we have so few insights from any other source. Apart from the intriguing suggestion that his father was a trapeze artist, we know nothing about him. autlish' is the word given in Who's Who to describe his educa- tion, but there is no indication how rutlish it was, or to what extent he can be described as properly rutled.
My own suspicion is that he may not be a human being at all, but something assem- bled out of plasticine and synthetic fibre in a high-tech laboratory to specifications supplied by Saatchi, Tinkerbell and the Downing Street Think Tank as a Thatcher- ite NewBrit Mark II, replacing the Cecil Parkinson model, now seen to be out- dated. Just as Parkinson, like Franken- stein's monster before him, ran amok and impregnated its secretary, so with the NewBrit Mark II. No sooner was 'John Major' removed, bubbling and steaming, from the Downing Street Think Tank than it started gabbling about atrocious crimes it intended to commit, forcible repatriating 40,000 Vietnamese to a cruel tyranny where they will certainly be kept as slaves even if they are not actually eaten.
But I am afraid this explanation may be over-fanciful. There can be no doubt that there are many in the Foreign Office, and even more in Hong Kong, itching to get on with forcible repatriation, and any atro- cious crimes it will involve. One explana- tion for the timing might be that they thought the Foreign Secretary was new and green. I use the word in the vernal sense, as of salad days, green in judgment, not in the Bookerite expropriation. Having allowed the homosexuals to take over 'gay', will no one fight to defend that pleasant word 'green' from the Booker- ites? Must even the rushes-o henceforth grow environmentally-conscious, specta- cled and bursting with self-righteousness?
I digress. Another explanation might be that 'John Major's' Foreign Office advisers decided this was a good time to announce Britain was back in the forcible repatria- tion business because the current libel case of Aldington versus Tolstoy and Another would stifle discussion of the likely con- sequences. We cannot remind ourselves of the atrocious things which happened at Klagenfurt — the suicides, the shoutings and clubbings and deceit — because they are sub judice.
However, that is not my reading of the situation. The British atrocities are admit- ted, as is the fact that vast numbers of the repatriated prisoners were murdered on being handed over. All that is in dispute is Aldington's role in the business, whether or not he knew that the Russians intended to shoot all officers out of hand and put the other ranks into slave labour camps with- out trial, and that the Tito forces intended to massacre their prisoners indiscriminate- ly; also, I suppose, whether Aldington was obeying orders, as he claims, or whether he was overstepping them and making them up as he went along. None of this has anything to do with the Vietnamese in Hong Kong, and I certainly do not intend to comment on the merits or otherwise of Aldington's case. But it does seem reason- able to point out that this business of forcible repatriation is liable to produce a certain stickiness along the line.
There is a further objection. Keen as the Brits may be to get back into the forcible repatriation business, the Vietnamese have made it abundantly plain that they are not prepared to take people back who are forcibly repatriated and brought to their frontiers at gunpoint. This is quite unlike the Russians and Titoists, who were de- manding them hack. It looks as if force will be required not only to make the refugees return, but also to make the Vietnamese accept them. Perhaps Mrs Thatcher wel- comes the thought of another Vietnamese war fought along these lines, but the Vietnamese have shown they are rather better fighters than the Argentinians, and even she could not be absolutely sure of a victory where the entire might of the United States had failed.
Lord Ennals (pioneer of the programme to expel mental patients from hospital and return them to the community) wrote to the Independent on Thursday in his capac- ity as Chairman of the Asian Committee of the British Refugee Council, urging a massive aid programme `to help rebuild the Vietnamese economy'. He suggested that any refusal to help this 'very poor and war-damaged country is indefensible'.
In other words, we should bribe the socialist tyrannies to keep their oppressed masses prisoner, thereby bolstering the socialist regimes and, in Vietnam's case, helping it resume the military expansion now curtailed through lack of funds. doubt whether that programme will recom- mend itself either to Thatcher or to Bush.
So it looks as if we may be back in the forcible repatriation business, with the added ingredient of force required at both ends. I have always maintained that Thatcher's departure, when it eventually comes, will be a sticky one. How the country yearns for Geoffrey Howe! With his sheep's eyes and strange, currant-like droppings, he is far the most human of all the candidates on offer. But is the Con- servative Party, in its present state, able to recognise a human being when it sees one?
Previous page
