Political commentary
Hatters' Ratters strike again
Ferdinand Mount
The thought processes of Mr Roy Hattersley provoke both curiosity and anxiety. What exactly is it that decides the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection to refer this subject rather than that one to the Price Commission? One day he asks the Commission to poke its nose into Tea Prices, the next it's Decorative Paint, and then before you know it Hatters' Ratters Britain's answer to Nader's Raiders are off again to probe mercilessly into Recommended Retail Prices in Bedding (Beds and Mattresses but not Sheets and Blankets). Why not Sheets and Blankets? Are there no sharks in the blanket racket?
Does Mr Hattersley rely on rumour and gossip, cocking an ear at the bar of the Reform Club as a fellow-member remarks: 'You wouldn't believe the hanky-panky in the interior sprung mattress game'? There seems no rhyme nor reason to the selection. Luckily, the bureaucratic mind does not question or repine. When directed to examine Prices, Costs and Margins in the Distribution of Jeans, it goes right ahead and examines them. And it reports (House of Commons Paper, No 67) with a majestic thoroughness, beginning at the tons et origo of the matter. What are jeans? We have, so to speak, to define the jeansiness, the platonic essence of jeans which distinguishes them not merely from 'similar trousers made of cotton drill, canvas or corduroy' . but from dissimilar garments serving the same function, namely that of clothing the legs, such as tartan trews, lederhosen, plus-fours or Oxford bags.
The Commission does not shirk the less pleasant aspects of its brief. 'In their basic construction jeans retain the appearance of simplicity, even crudeness which is so characteristic.' Some investigators might ask to be relieved of their duties at this point, but the commissioners publicspiritedly press on to mention some of the typically crude identifying features of these scarcely mentionables: 'an unlined waistband with belt-loops... stiched-over leg seams... bar-tacking to strengthen stitching at pockets, belt-loops and crotch.' Without bar-tacking at belt-loop and crotch, no pair of jeans can be worthy of the name. But we must press on. There are questionnaires to be dispatched and research to be commissioned. Mr Hattersley wants to know all there is to be known about the distribution of jeans. And so he shall.
The Commission commissioned Research Surveys of Great Britain Ltd. and National Opinion Polls Ltd. to ask consumers searching questions. Where are jeans bought? In shops, mostly, it seems. For what purposes are jeans bought? Go on, guess. But, hold hard, hitherto we have interviewed only those persons who buy jeans. The Commission accordingly commissioned Tansley Law & Co. to grill the manufacturers. And the Economist Intelligence Unit, always eager to earn a few bob, was commissioned to provide 'some basic comparative data on the jeans market in the USA', 'aliter, to interview some of those tough eggs wheeling racks of clothes down Seventh Avenue ('Hey, buster, I'm from the Economist Intelligence Unit'). Finally, the Commission commissioned the firm of Wira to test different brands, of jeans.
It should not be thought these pollsters and analysts and testers did not earn their emoluments. The Wira people in particular set to work with a will and were indefatigable in testing jeans for such factors as 'fabric and seam strength, zip assembly performance, abrasion resistance and shrinkage.' It is heartening to be able to report that in the shrinkage tests 'the most stable jeans were usually of British manufacture.'
The report is worth £1.25 of anyone's money. It abounds in stimulating tables and graphs depicting, for example, Adults 'heavyweight denim jeans frequency distribution of retailers' target gross margins. And it has a subtle twist at the end, to wit, a recommendation that Mr Hattersley should do nothing, absolutely nothing at all, on the grounds that, even if profit margins are high as they always are in the rag trade, you can still shop around for different jeans at different prices.
Unfortunately, such entertainment is not to be had for nothing. Quite how much this particular report has cost the taxpayers is hard to establish, as the Commission has, oddly enough, for once not commissioned anybody to find out. We do not know how much of the £18,000 salary of the chairman, Mr Charles Williams, was earned grappling with the Jeans Question, nor how much of the Commission's total cost of £7.17 million this year should be apportioned to this or any other enquiry.
Yet the most striking characteristic of these bureaucratic excursions is not their expense, or even their fatuity or pomposity, but their inappropriate thoroughness. Under pressure, the Civil Service has in recent years conceded that now and then it does carry out work to an unnecessarily high standard. And its critics the Select Committees, the Think Tank, the Royal Commissions, Mr Leslie Chapman, have again and again pointed out the needless elaboration that seems to be as endemic to Spectator 9 December 10 the bureaucracy as puckering is to jeans. But less often is it understood why bureaucrats elaborate. Capitalism, after all, simplifies. Indeed, one of the main objections put by those wll° fear technological innovation is that even if they are not put out of work, they will be de-skilled; those who work the net machines may be paid more, but their viol'', will be simpler and hence more tedious ann demeaning. In the bureaucracy, by contrast' the most humdrum task can be ennobled. „or 're-skilled' by elaborating it to the giduY baroque heights of the jeans enquiry. The Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1853 did not establish the Permanent Civil Ser. vice on its present basis without con' siderable opposition. Several of the objec; tors from the government service pointeu out that 'the existing tasks of even the leading Civil Servants scarcely merited the talents that the reformers wished to see recruited from the universities to do the supposedly "intellectual" duties.' How much truer is this today when the Civil Service is so much larger. It 1S118 constantly reiterated lament in The Corn Confrontation, the Institute of Econon14 Affairs' rebarbative symposium on :In') prospects for the Open Society : that, as Jo Grimond puts it, 'a high Wet ortion of our ablest people are in futile, least unproductive and inessential, nec hat p a Pt roonfse. ' s sor Julius Gold remarks the 'it is one of the curious legacies of ou'e post-war period that so many ef , d brightest young people have been suelLed into the proliferating "public service?' 3.110 have carried over from their edueatie f (especially in the social science) fantasiesfi, social engineering which coincided nea' with their personal advancement.' These fantasies are now exposed as SUCtil. o he more widely politicians have sought ce assert their authority over the market-Plass the more impotent they are seen to be' to Ralph Harris points out in his sumniall the symposium. Mr Hattersley is les„st to ogre than a figure of fun. If people pay a fancy price for fancy jeans, theY And yet the Price Commission does inte fere in the market; it does restrict sore) firms and favour others; it does try t° bsy people what they ought to produce and Pole and buy; and it wastes a great deal of and money. Unfortunately, in its briefPrice life, the ted Commission has already accuenui4e career expectations. How painful it wi" is to de-skill all those price controllersit4. mid-career; Professor Kenneth Gad to name but one, has never recoverd ircos, his intoxicating war service as a Price way troller in Washington. The whittling 3 sd. of the State, like the passing of the lia loom and the phasing out of Army C°.and missions by purchase, will be a long,fe to awkward business. The process will ha 'like be, as R. M. Hartwell says,'somethinC°g or Fabianism in reverse.' But the Price mission will be a good place to start.
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