ANOTHER VOICE
Two studies in our own forms of hypocrisy
AUBERON WAUGH
Hypocrisy was generally held to be a fault of bourgeois society. The preaching of high standards could not always be accom- panied by the maintenance of them in pri- vate life. Throughout my entire childhood, I was afflicted by second-rate people point- ing to some more or less mythical figure for the number of prostitutes in Victorian Lon- don, and urging that the whole of Victorian society was a sham because the men who frequented these prostitutes came from homes where piano legs were covered in order to avoid any suggestion of indecency. I could never see the connection. The excessive modesty demanded in middle- class society was a distortion produced by the gynaecocracy. Of course one would have been pleased to escape from such an oppressive atmosphere. Where was the harm in such dissembling as might have been necessary as one left the house, claim- ing an appointment?
I never really realised quite how hypo- critical our working-class mass culture had become until the great debate over the National Lottery's grant to Covent Garden. Lacking the High Tory's natural under- standing of the working class, or Mr Major's deep affinity with all the stupidest people in the country, I was intensely irri- tated by the suggestion that a proportion of the Lottery's profits would go to good caus- es, heritage, medical research and the rest of it. This seemed an unnecessary exercise in redistributive Father Christmasism — one of the great curses of political life. If the Government had to confiscate a pro- portion of the profits, it should be used to service and eventually reduce the national debt. But Mr Major knows what a genera- tion of vipers he has produced, and now we hear on every side that people only enter the Lottery because of the good causes it supports.
Or so we read in the Sun (which runs its own gambling scheme, subsidising noth- ing). What I find shocking about these let- ters is that anyone should expect them to be believed. No middle-class person will pretend that it is in order to aid medical research, rather than in order to win £18- £20 million, that he enters the National Lottery. Are the lower classes really such fools that they hope to be believed, or are they merely observing some rigid social convention we do not understand?
The middle-class equivalent may be found in reactions to developments in the Bosnian civil war. Discussion of Bosnia has become a competition among participants to establish which can prove himself the most distressed, the most indignant, the most truly angry about events which few of us can understand and none of us can do anything to influence. Of course it is more fun to denounce Major, Clinton and Rifkind as mass murderers than it is to scrape the bank account for £50 or £100 to send to the Red Cross or Feed the Chil- dren.
The standard of analysis among these global activists is generally cretinous: Bosnian Serbs the aggressors: ergo the bad- dies; ethnic cleansing equals genocide: we must favour the Muslims for this reason; every country with any moral sense must pile in and stop the genocide; failing that, at least we should give arms to the Mus- lims, thereby prolonging the war.
However, it is not the inadequacy of this analysis which causes despair, nor the baby- ish self-importance with which it is dis- cussed ('Of course, like Adolph Eichmann, Akashi is just obeying orders. . . But then, if John Major, Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac are so short-sighted that they can't see more than one opinion poll ahead . . . what's a little genocide between friends?' — Private Eye).
What causes despair is that this teenage hysteria represents the liberal, humane orthodoxy. It has every reason to feel self- important in its ignorance. It is the voice of the intelligentsia. Next time round, it will prevail.
This same voice can already be heard over the dinner table wherever bien-pensant Englishmen meet. It has even crept into The Spectator. Like Americans, we have to choose a baddie — the Bosnian Serbs — and an underdog — the Bosnian Muslims. Then, although the squabble has nothing to do with us, and our participation can only 'Wake up and see the city that never sleeps.' make it worse, we must urge immediate and massive intervention to make sure the goodies win. People may reasonably com- plain that British and American leadership has been short-sighted, but is has not been nearly so stupid as its critics who urge arms sales, air strikes and everything short of physical occupation.
The civil war started because neither the Bosnian Serbs — comprising peasants, for the most part, but also forming the bulk of the army — nor the outlying Bosnian Croats were prepared to accept domination by the largely urban Muslims; nor were the Bosnian Croats prepared to accept domina- tion by the Bosnian Serbs, whom they tradi- tionally detest. It was never a war of geno- cide, but a war of forced resettlement, which is bad enough, involving acts of ter- ror as well as tens of thousands of dispos- sessed refugees.
Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats have acted with every bit as much ferocity against Bosnian Serbs in their own ethnic cleansing. There is ample evidence of this in reports from Bosnia, but our cocksure brigade of armchair moralists seems to ignore it. To see the civil war in terms of a war between the independent state of Ser- bia and the independent state of Bosnia is quite simply wrong. Serbian forces are not involved inside Bosnia. Even if it were right, it would be none of our business to see that the two sides were evenly matched, or to participate in favour of one side or the other. It would be kind to help dispossessed refugees resettle, but to offer them homes in Britain would be an absurdity. They have no wish to come here, and wish only to be left in peace with their own people.
It was quite reasonable of the United Nations to declare an embargo on arms sales to any of the participants, although they could scarcely hope it would be observed. That should have been the limit of its involvement, outside humanitarian aid. The more countries which decide to involve themselves out of moral self-impor- tance, the greater the chance that the war will spread. A letter from the ludicrous Jasper Elgood in last week's Spectator ended with the bleat: 'Perhaps we will end up having done virtually nothing about the genocide in Bosnia.' All that is required of us is to dip into our pockets and send some money to the Red Cross or Feed the Chil- dren, unless we are prepared to go out as volunteers. After you, Jasper.
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