ANOTHER VOICE
How democracy makes cowards of half of us
AUBERON WAUGH
We laugh at the abject recantations imposed on erring public figures by the totalitarian regimes of the Left, but the public recantation of Ed Koch, Mayor of New York facing re-election next year, was surely even more abject for having been inspired by himself. There was no pistol held to his head in Gracie Mansion when he sat down to compose it. At least I imagine there was no pistol, although since reading Nicholas von Hoffmann's excellent new biography of the New York lawyer Roy Cohn (Citizen Cohn, Harrap Col- umbus £12.95) I cannot be positive. So far as one can judge, the slippery mayor was merely responding to the requirements of democratic prudence, when he publicly contradicted the evidence of his own eyes. The only surprising thing is that he should have told the truth first time round when, returning from a six-day fact-finding visit to Belfast and Dublin, he announced on Tuesday: 'I do not believe that the British are occupying forces. My impression is that the British are trying to play a constructive role.'
This statement was described by the Telegraph's Ian Ball on Friday as an act of political suicide. Koch had already offended the negro vote — or at any rate the negro activists — by telling New York's Jews that they would be 'crazy' to vote for Jesse Jackson in the State's democratic primary. Blacks and Irish make up almost half the Democratic vote in New York. Hence the crawling 'clarification' which he issued on Saturday:
I foolishly used an expression which caused great pain to many Irish Americans. I regret this deeply. It was an error to say that the British are not an occupying army. What I meant to say was that there has been a modest change in the British role in North- ern Ireland — a change which ought to be encouraged.
I believe that the British should set a time-table for their departure. If the British decline to set a departure date, the Irish government should set the date and then initiate a world-wide campaign to compel the British to leave.
On Thursday of last week, Mr Koch was still sticking by the evidence of his eyes. `You can't tell the truth,' he complained. `Look what happened when I talked about Jesse Jackson . . . I simply believe the truth has relevancy.'
It took him until Saturday afternoon to learn that it has none. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, who accompa- nied him on the trip, was never visited by doubts on this score: 'Having been brought up in an Irish American family, from the time we were a quarter of an inch high we heard the argument given by the British that it is a peace-keeping force and not an occupying force,' said Cardinal O'Connor. `I've heard talk about blood baths that would occur, that Protestants and Catho- lics would kill one another in short order. I don't believe that in this case . . .
It would be tempting to fall back on a racial explanation, that the New York Irish are so painfully stupid they are unable to see whether British troops in Northern Ireland are an occupying army, or whether they are there at the clear wish of the Northern Irish majority to protect them against hostile and alien pressures from the South. Mr Koch is not, of course, of Irish extraction, although I suppose he may be a distant cousin of the immensely distin- guished Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Perry O'Worsthorne. If the racial explanation is the true one, it was a further sign of stupidity on the part of the New York Irish to send their Jewish mayor to Ireland. He could see perfectly well whether the British are an occupying force in Northern Ireland or not.
Mr Koch was himself denounced as a racist after his intervention in the New York Democratic primary, but I do not believe he is any such thing. Those who met him in Dublin and Belfast were impressed by his thoughtfulness, kind- heartedness and sincerity, although I do not see how these really tie in with his sudden volte-face on the question of whether or not British troops in Northern Ireland are an occupying force. If one turns one's back on the racial explanation, one is left with the scarcely more acceptable possibility that the Democratic Party machine is largely kept going by thugs and liars. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate, has called in the strongest terms for Britain to take her troops out of Ulster and he, surely, is no Irishman — just a creep. Nor do I honestly believe that Cardinal O'Connor was kept informed of the British case as a child, even when only a quarter of an inch high.
But the real lesson of American attitudes to Ulster surely concerns the nature of democratic politics. Power may corrupt, but democracy corrupts even before power has been attained. At one time, the un- speakable Edward Kennedy went round collecting ethnic groups as you or I might collect glass paperweights. He even pro- duced a book of ethnic speeches, as I recall, although I cannot find it. It is an absurdity to suppose that any democratic politician can care sincerely about all the minority interests he hopes to rally under his banner. We are right to despise them.
I wonder if Mrs Thatcher was hoping to attract the female religious fanatic vote when she announced, quite gratuitously, that she supported the ordination of women. What she actually said, to a group of Australian journalists, was: 'I do not myself find it at odds with the Christian doctrine.'
No doubt she proposes to disregard everything St Paul wrote on the grounds that St Paul was rather odd about women. Surely, after our experience of a woman prime minister (like Mrs Bandaranaike, Golda Meier and Mrs Gandhi, she led her country straight into war or civil war) we have learned our lesson when it comes to women priests. If the corrupting influence of democratic politics is to turn men into spineless sheep, it appears to have the opposite effect on women, turning them into ravening lions. One begins to under- stand that there was nothing remotely odd about St Paul's attitude to women. He more or less had it right: Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their hus- bands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. . . . Let all things be done decently and in order. (1 Cor. XIV.) Only a woman prime minister, I fear, could interpret our duty in Ulster as being to meet murder and terrorisni with terror- ism and murder. I wish she would go, before all her good work is undone.
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