Onwards the nanny state
lain Macleod used to speak of the 'nanny state'. There could be no better illustration of what he meant by the phrase than the measure passed by the House of Commons last Monday, which will make it a criminal offence for motorists not to fasten their seat belts. As is too often the case, the question was debated mainly in pragmatic terms, by those who opposed the Bill as well as by its proponents. Let us, then, concede totally the utilitarian arguments in favour of the Bill: it will save many lives and prevent scores of thousands of serious Injuries; it will save a (rather abitrarily) estimated £60m a year in health service costs; let us ignore too the practical arguments against such a law: the grave difficulties of enforcing it, the impossibility of deciding such questions as when a woman is pregnant. There is a far more important issue at stake, and it was spelled out by Mr Powell in the Commons debate: the erosion of individual freedom as one area after another of Personal decision is enveloped within the law. Behind the good intentions which brought the Bill into being lies an unspoken assumption: the law—the State—must protect us from ourselves and our own irresponsibility. This vast extension of the concept of the law, whose traditional function has been to protect individuals from other individuals, has been foreshadowed by other measures such as the equally deplorable Act which compels motor-cyclists to wear crash helmets. It seemed some years ago that significant resistance was being made to such encroachments. For an example, Parliament very rightly abolished the law which made suicide a crime in England. But again, the arguments for repeal were 'practical': the law was difficult to operate when it was not absurd. How many MPs could grasp the point which Thomas Szasz, the heterodox psychiatric writer, has elevated into a principle: suicide is a basic human right? This does not mean that suicide is to be commended—any more than not wearing a seat belt, or any other form of 'irresponsible' activity which does not directly harm others. It means that the forcible prevention of such activity is a diminution of individual autonomy. Szasz's theses, with their ruthless logic, are too uncomfortable for most people to accept. Another uncomfortable critic of our age was by coincidence talking on television on the night of the Commons vote. Solzhenitsyn's criticisms of Western society are uncompromising and may seem exaggerated. In truth his diagnosis of the West's crisis—a failure of will—is correct but his prognosis wrong. England is not heading towards the Stalinist totalitarianism of slave labour and political police. She is heading towards what has acutely been described as totalitarian liberalism: a condition in which all the problems of coping with life are surrendered to what Mr Foot calls the 'collectivist solution'. On Monday the Commons—including, disgracefully, several Tory members—took another step towards the nursery in which nanny takes care.
