Free politics
Leo Abse
Wilkes Audrey Williamson (Allen and Unwia £4.95)
The sexual problems of politicians, as this century knows to its sorrow, can 'become catastrophically enmeshed in the public domain. It is, however, from the celibate in politics rather than the libertine that the public
has most to fear. Mdfiez-vous les buveurs d'eau.
The impotent need omnipotence to assuage their wounded self-esteem. A Hitler, acting out his private complexities in socially resonating conditions, remains unsatisfied despite uniforms, boots and spurs, pathetic fumblings and squalid rituals with Geli and Eva Braun. Real consolation for private impotence comes only as he achieved the multi-potence of the orator at the huge public meeting where he would obtain the full responses which he was incapable of prompting, or gaining, from women. And with such responses Hitler, privately impotent, became, unfortunately, publicly omnipotent. But, contrariwise, the telling by Audrey Williamson of the story of the most politicallY effective libertine ever to grace the House of Commons chasteningly reminds the more puritan among us that the private concupiscence and the restless promiscuity of a public man can sometimes have the most extraordinarily beneficial side effects for the wider community. With John Wilkes the libertine and the libertarian are conjoined: and without the one, we would certainly not have gained the other.
His constructive political career began, amidst the whore houses and bagnios eighteenth century London: it was through his well connected brothel associates that he was able initially to manoeuvre his way into the House. The Hell Fire Club, the centre for orgies and black magic with the Rabelaisian motto "Fay ce que voudra," was his first political base: it was definitely not the sort of route to Westminster nowadays favoured by the circumspect young men from the suburbs currently asking for your vote. But he certainly had a conquering charisma, far removed from their synthetic charms. Born with a squint and ugliness which if it did not merit the satanic cartoon drawn by his eneMY Hogarth, nevertheless impressed itself on all who met him, he could boast, with justification, that he could talk away his face in thirty minutes. His inadequate physique may have been the overdetermined spur for his voracious appetite for women, but it certainly was no handicap to him in his efforts to reach the bed or the populace. One yearns today for the zestful audacious politician who, like him, could cause the church bells of southern England from East Anglia to the West Count)' to ring out glad welcomes as he entered the townships, fresh from his imprisonment.
To an offer of snuff, he once replied "No thank you, I have no small vices." And as his vices, so his virtues. He was indeed a large man. Even the squeamish Gladstone, a century later, had to concede: "Judged by his achievements he must be enrolled among the great champions of English freedom." Gladstone could admit no less to this man, twice expelled from the Commons, outlawed and exiled from England for some three years, and imprisoned for two years at King's Bench Prison, to whom we owe the great reforms of the abolition .of general warrants, the freeing of the press and
freedom of choice for the electors.
The Victorian statesman, however, would never have been able to acknowledge that the same forces that in his private life brushed aside all constraints propelled him, too, in his challenge to public authority. Repressive law, as repressive morality, provoked him into battle. The Establishment of the day divihed intuitively where lay thedynamic spurring him. on. When he was charged with seditious libel, he was accused on two counts: the one was for his publication of insults to the political programme of the King's Party, the other was for his publication of an erotic treatiseon Women. No wonder the Establishment lost out against him: Eros is rarely denied.
Audrey Williamson, somewhat breathlessly, and with excruciating punctuation, tells this story of the fornicator triumphant. The more Professional historians, and the literary, will no doubt chafe at her presentation and her _style: but the zest of her subject invades her book, and we share her engagement. Alas, how few of the pussy-footing aspirant Place men now at the hustings would dare to break their shackles, and invite you to vote for such courageous imprudence. More is the pity for England.
Leo Abse is Labour candidate for PontypoolHe has most recently written Private Member, a Psycho-analyticat study of his fellow Parliamentarians
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