Another voice
Growing old gracefully
Auberon Waugh There are now nearly eight and a half million old age pensioners in the United Kingdom, an increase of about two million in the past ten years. In fact, the increase is one of 28.7 per cent, as a little time with a calculator and the Central Statistical Office's compilation Facts in Focus (Pengiun 1.50) will show. In the same period, live births have dropped from 980,000 in 1966 to 676,000 in 1976 — a drop of very nearly 45 per cent, the most dramatic drop being in the last five years. There are now fewer babies being born in the country than at any time this century, including the two wartime slumps and despite an increase of seventeen and a half million (45.7 per cent) in the population since 1901. The same year of 1976 also saw the total number of deaths overtake the total number of births — probably the first time this has happened, apart from the two world wars, since the Great Plague and Black Death. The new development is that we are a shrinking as well as an ageing population.
But it is the increasing age of the population which is the really, dramatic development at the moment. By my reckoning, which may be imperfect. the average age of the population has increased by eleven years since the beginning of the century, but is now increasing by eleven months with every year that passes. Unless someone can persuade our idle, selfregarding young women to have more babies, the average age of the population will be nearer fifty than forty-five in ten years' time.
The Central Statistical Office still expect, a baby boom after 1981, but it gives no reason at all for this guess. Two editions ago in 1974 it was prophesying a steady growth in population every year. Since then, there has been a steady loss every year, so it has adjusted its 'projection' to give us a continued loss until 1981, thereafter an inexplicable gain. I imagine it is trying to save face. The 1974 edition of Facts in Focus projects a population of 62,400,000 by the year 2001. The new, 1978 edition, reckons it will take us until the year 2011 to reach 57,706,000. But the plain truth is that our population has been shrinking undramatically for at least the past three years, and unless somebody can persuade these wretched young women to breed it will start shrinking very dramatically indeed in ten years' time. If, as I rather imagine it will, the 1981 census shows a population of around 55,500,000, the 1991 census might easily show 52,000,000 and the 2001 census 46,000,000 — back to the 1920s, in fact, but with a much older population. At any rate, my guess is certainly as good as the
Central Statistical Office's, and is not compromised by previous bosh shots, like the five million-odd babies they appear to have mislaid. in the past four years.
Many reasons may be adduced for the refusal of Englishwomen (with a few honourable exceptions) to have babies: selfishness, greed, the emasculation of their men folk by women's lib, their own confusion about their role in society, the new emphasis on natural childbirth, breastfeeding and the father being present at birth, greater confidence in oral contraception. But in fact the contraceptive pill has been going strong for eighteen years now, and the decline in the birth-rate that started with the Labour victory of 1964 only became a nose-dive after Mr Heath's victory of 1970. Economic insecurity is the obvious and most boring explanation, although it is interesting that nobody responded to the Grocer-boom of 1973-4 and there is little sign of a North Sea oil baby-boom now. Even at the depths of the 1930s depression, with nearly ten million fewer inhabitants, we managed to have more babies than we do now, and only the world wars have succeeded in making
deaths outnumber births before. Perhaps it is a combination of economic insecurity and the contracept,vc pill, but I prefer to think it is a general mood of philosophical gloom. Everything else is so much better than it ever was before — better housing, better medical attention, better state welfare —and this might be thought conducive to having more babies, but a decline in religious beliefs has made the creation of new life a rather pointless exercise in self-denial.
That, at any rate, is my explanation, but the important fact is that we are a rapidly ageing nation. If we can get it into our heads that we are getting older, not younger, a number of interesting observations follow. Old age pensioners are already the greatest single market in the country, and they are also the greatest growth area. They also have more leisure than anyone else, and many of them enjoy reading. A little while ago the editor of the Daily Mirror, Mr• Michael 'Mike' Molloy, revealed as hischief worry that 100,000 Mirror readers die every year. His response has been to include a number of idiotic features about pop musicians and try to make the newspaper attractive to teenagers. At the time I pointed out that few university students read anything more demanding than Beano nowadays and teenagers generally read nothing at all, even when they are capable of it. I also pointed out that those who wish to read about pop stars prefer to do it in specialist magazines where they will be untroubled by the news from the Middle East or Mr Terence Lancaster's ruminations on the political scene. But the real objection, as I now see it, is that soon there will be no teenagers left. Old Mirror readers may be dying, but new ones simply aren't being born.
The great lesson, as it emerges, is that those of us who are engaged in wriiing for newspapers or performing on television should address ourselves almost exclusively to the problems, regrets and joys of growing old. This does not simply mean that we should discuss yoga exercises, amusing things to do with raffia, diets which will prolong active sex life, or that we should confine ourselves to making coy little jokes about our budgerigars' sex lives and our cats' lavatory habits, although these things will certainly come in useful and may well prove a growing part of the market. What I mean is that those who, write for teenagers should write about the disillusion and despair to which so many teenagers are prone after twenty or thirty years of teenage living. The magazine Over 17 should change its name every year — 'Over 18'. 'Over 19', 'Over 20' — if it wants to stay in business. Those who write for young marrieds should start discussing the emotional challenge of Facing Up to the Forties. Slowly, imperceptibly. we should work the country round to a fashion for eschatological speculation.
People may argue that by the time we have persuaded a geriatric nation to con template the four last things — Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell — it will be too late. Far better, they will say, for those
writers with crusading passion — the Paul Foots among us — to address ourselves to urging young people to breed. Prince Charles to set them an example etc. But this ignores the true problem. The small trickle of live births to which we are being reduced is quite enough to launch a population explosion, once people's attitudes have changed. What this poor battered society of ours is facing, after the trahison des clercs of the 1930s, is a trahison des vieillards. Our old men who should, in any stable society. ensure traditional observances, in fact, with their hideous, bright-eyed womenfolk, urge us to further excess and folly. It is they who insist we should stare at women's breasts on page three of the Sun, they who thrust contraceptive appliances at our elevenyear-old daughters. In ten days' time I shall be in Thailand, where the old are venerated. where the average age is under twenty. where , the agony of -Cambodia and its capital Phnom Penh is a close reminder of where Stephen Spenderism leads. All we can hope to achieve in England is to educate a new generation 'into the responsibilities of old age.
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