ANOTHER VOICE
The reincarnated Sheriff of Nottingham awaits the return of Robin Hood
AUBERON WAUGH
Acorrespondent in Nottingham assures me that this year every police vehicle and every ambulance in the county carries on both sides a large photograph of the Chief Constable, Mr C. McLachlan, enjoining temperance. If he is right, it may well be that this policeman has finally made the break from vulgar self- advertisement into the megalomaniac per- sonality cult fantasies of a Kim Ii Sung or a Robert Maxwell. I know nothing about Mr McLachlan — he does not appear in Who's Who: whether he hails from Scotland, Ireland, Korea or Czechoslovakia; whether he is Catholic, Presbyterian or Buddhist; whether he is married with children (sorry, kids) or celibate; whether there have been tragedies in his life, or whether it has been an uninterrupted progression to his present exalted situa- tion. Perhaps he is a merry, convivial sort of fellow in private life, who likes nothing more than to crack a bottle of wine with his friends when there is no possibility of having to drive a motor-car afterwards. I do not know. But having followed his behaviour over the past few Christmas seasons, I cannot help wondering what sort of cringing helot population is to be found in the County of Nottingham which is prepared to put up with such a Chief Constable. Are there no controls over the extent to which a demented public servant can make a public nuisance of himself? Failing such controls, is there nothing left of the spirit of Robin Hood and his merry men in Nottingham to tackle this mon- strous reincarnation of the High Sheriff?
For the past four years, Nottingham has led the field in police harassment of motor- ists over the Christmas period, and come bottom of the league in the proportion of compulsory breath tests which proved jus- tified. For the previous three years, Not- tingham police forced an average 2,561 drivers a year to stop their cars, get out of them and blow into a plastic bag. An average of 82 drivers, or 3.2 per cent of those stopped and humiliated in this way were found to give a positive reading. Compare this with Gloucester, for inst- ance, which tested 300 drivers last year, of whom 75 proved positive; or Thames Valley police who this year recorded 332 breath tests in the ten days up to 30 December. Of these 74, or 22.3 per cent, were positive.
However, the figures of 2,561 drivers humiliated for a 3.2 per cent return were only the average over the previous three years in Nottingham. This year, the Year of the McLachlan Photographs, Notting- ham police decided to have a field day. They tested 5,600 drivers, and achieved a record score of 149 drivers over the limit — 2.66 per cent of those who were stopped, humiliated and threatened. The only squeak of protest so far has come from a Law Society spokesman, Mr Jeremy Allen, who is also a Nottingham solicitor: 'An enormous number of people had had their journeys interrupted and it has caused them concern. I don't think that is good for police-public relations.'
Damn police-public relations. It is time to call in the military. How dare the Nottinghamshire police suppose they can throw their weight around in this way? Out of every hundred drivers they stopped, they had no business to stop 97.
'If this means fewer funerals and less hospital visits, it is to be greatly wel- comed,' intoned Mr Peter Bottomley, Minister of Transport. Of course he is right that funerals are often rather gloomy, and it can be quite a bore to visit people in hospital. But both are things we must be prepared to do on occasion, and both are preferable to staying at home and watching a lot of odious rubbish on television. Yet it is to this that the McLachlans and Bottom- leys seem determined to condemn us.
I can well understand that the political and governing classes are unhappy to see citizens associating freely in each other's homes, in pubs and private clubs. They have no control of us there. They do not know what we are getting up to, what we are saying abourthem. Far better condemn the whole nation to watching television.
What they are trying to achieve, these people, is to put an end to all social life for those who live in the country, and most social life for those who live in towns. We shall then be the slaves of our television sets. Perhaps it is the weakness of their cases which explains the hysteria, the over-blown rhetoric and bogus indignation used to justify these measures. It is claimed that a fifth of road fatalities — say 1,150 deaths a year — can be attributed to 'drunk' driving: a driver has more than the permitted level of alcohol in his blood. But that claim assumes that every such accident is attributable to this cause. Even if one accepts the figures, it is apparent that four out of five fatal accidents are caused by people who are stone-cold sober. The conclusion is inescapable that in a fair proportion of these fatal accidents where one driver is over the limit, the 'drunk' driver is the innocent party.
Perhaps it would be reasonable to assume that 550 deaths are caused in England, Wales and Scotland every year by drunken driving. But rather than be accused of overstating my case, I will leave the figure at somewhere between 550 and 1,000. Total annual mortality in England, Wales and Scotland hovers around the 630,000 mark. Drunken driving therefore accounts for between .085 and .16 of one per cent of total deaths. This means that the odds are between 630 to one and 1,176 to one against each of us dying as a result of drunken driving. Since many drunken drivers succeed in killing only themselves, the odds against anyone being killed by another drunken driver are even longer.
Is this sufficient reason to force all citizens to cower in their homes, watching what proletarian rubbish has been chosen for them on television and being preached at, no doubt, by the likes of Esther Rantzen and Mr Donald 'Don' Mathews? Donald, who describes himself as a Friend of the Earth, does not himself hold a driving licence, but has taken it upon himself to publish a list of prominent men and women who have had the misfortune to be caught driving over the limit — a judge, a chief superintendent, various foot- ballers, actors, television personalities — in what he chooses to call his Hall of Shame: It is the number of celebrities we have discovered that is so shocking. Even those who ought to know better, like senior police officers and judges, have been convicted. We are creating the first annual Hall of Shame to show that personalities are willing to take the plaudits, but do not seem too willing to accept the responsibilities that go with their positions.
In fact he had found only 17 such personalities. The list included two ac- quaintances and one very dear friend of mine. The question that Englishmen — yes, and Englishwomen — must decide is whether or not they are prepared to knuckle under to the unspeakable creep Mathews, the demented McLachlan and the absurd Bottomley. If they are not going to speak out soon they might as well accept a life sentence of watching Esther Rantzen.
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