PERSONAL COLUMN
Grumbles about Hell
JOHN VAIZEY
Even now, we still have the capacity to sur- prise ourselves. I was racked by doubt about whether or not to accept an invitation to give a lecture in South Africa, but as I am always racked by doubt about some- thing it wasn't all that surprising that I was. Eventually, after a great deal of humming and hawing, I went, out of sheer curiosity. It was exactly as I expected, beautiful, sad, and the people were hospitable and likeable to a degree. But I found that I just couldn't take apartheid. An immense wave of disgust, with them and with myself, came up and drowned me, till I couldn't get out of the place quickly enough. Even that dull old airline, BOAC, with its governessy steward- esses, seemed as welcoming and liberal as drinks with Maurice Bowra. Visiting Fort Hare, the black university, was the most degrading experience. A stout blonde Afri- kaner lady, who was very jolly and liberal and was the Rector's wife, greeted us with Marmite sandwiches for our elevenses. There had been a to-do about getting per- mits to visit the place, and at Rhodes Uni- versity (which must qualify for the title of the worst university in the English-speaking world) it was as though I had announced my intention of walking on water or raising the dead. A black professor sat among the Marmite, twisting his hat in his hands. But Marmite was the limit. Lunch was not per- mitted. He went, we stayed. Now what do you do? Make a scene? Deny yourself lunch?
Make things worse for the black- pro- fessor? You eat it, of course (and very good it was, too). I am now prepared to go to any lengths to support those courageous men and women who seek to abolish apartheid and establish black supremacy. But, and this is the thing that surprises me, the people that I found least sympathetic were the liberals. The Afrikaners were straightfor-
ward Wein, -haltswienderkinder, follower s of Professor Eysenck about black IQ (genetic- ally lower), and keen on Mercedes, money, rugby and black ladies. It was just like' Dusseldorf or Heidelberg. The liberals were like Geoffrey Rippon on New Zealand agri-
culture or the Foreign Office on Biafra (or anything else)—just plain creepy. You can sometimes hardly bear to be in the same room with them. 'Of course, we pay them well, but frankly, with a thousand years to catch up you can't expect them to . ..' and so on. What the liberals like, of course, is the sense of being against a disreputable government, of being with the currents of world opinion, and yet enjoying the cheap labour. 'Our contacts with people like you are the only things that keep us going,' they say, as the servant brings another tray of drinks to the swimming pool. Any decent— by which I mean honest—South African I would think is actively involved in terrorism either for or against the blacks. The liberals are in a hopeless position. On my few hurried and illicit (though doubtless well- reported to the secret police) visits to blacks, the depths of their revulsion with the liberals were at first surprising but soon entirely comprehensible. The most creepy thing of all is, of course, the Anglican Church. The Archbishop, as well as accepting the segre- gated seminaries (and doubtless regretting that the Three Wise Men did not come in separate compartments), received an appli- cation by a coloured priest for• his son to attend a grammar school of which the Arch- bishop was chairman of the governors. The application was rejected. The Church, true to its tradition of exploiting coal miners, keeping brothels etc, abides by the law and benefits from it. The episcopal hypocrite continues his ministrations. I prefer the honesty of the Dutch Reformed Church who have the courage to say what the Arch- bishop does. The only comfort is that the South African bishops will presumably eventually join many of their episcopal pre- decessors in Hell.
Whenever I think about Hell, a place in which John Newsom (of whom I was immensely fond) believed wholeheartedly, I find myself hoping that there is a special place for liberals. John Newsom was always racked by doubt and was full of self- irony. Whenever he found himself saying anything remotely priggish a little giggle came into his voice, and he went through a very quick and entirely characteristic pro- cess of saying to himself (or so I imagine) 'Come oil it, we're all compromised and self- indulgent'. I hope and believe that it is that irony and self-awareness that lets you off. Professional liberals, entirely lacking that capacity, richly deserve what's corning to them. Self-indulgent, censorious, and in the deepest sense wholly self-serving, they were the nastiest group in the Asquith govern- ment and played leading parts in helping our last administration, especially at the Foreign Office. As the Foreign Office spokes- men, hardworking men, changed from black tie to white tie, to rush from Lancaster House and the smoked salmon to the Royal Box and the champagne at Covent Garden, in the chauffeur-driven Rover, accompany- ing the President of Mali, Or the Third Secretary of the Mongolian mission, their self-sacrifice in the cause of furthering the people's government was never out of their friends' minds or off their own lips. Gazing up at the Foreign Office spokesmen, Hell was indeed a comforting thought I hope it is policed by Biafran and North Vietnamese devils, aided by the odd hungry old-age pen- sioner and fifteen-year-old school leaver.
There is a heresy, of course; that Hell is already here. If it is, then undoubtedly it is called New York. Just as everything that you could possibly want is allegedly to .be found in New York, so everything you could possibly not want is certainly there. It has become horrid as well as torrid. In South Africa every liberal wants to come to England, though usually only on a visit, so that they can return to the sunshine, the servants, and the low taxes, and grumble about our trades unionists, while retaining their licence to be liberal. London's chief trade these days is indulgences. American libefuls now talk incessantly of emigrating to England. They want to cut their ties with America, they ,say, though not with their banks. Not for them the hard daily political work of reforming the society, of ending the war, of trying to edge forward from im- provement to improvement by compromise and argument. They want out, as they say. And where they want out to, of course, is London and our long-suffering universities, to which they have brought their own un- equalled talents for administrative incom- petence. bad teaching, disloyalty and rudeness to people at their disadvantage, like waiter. What amazes me 'is how they get in here. The poor unobtrusive, decent, well-washed Kenyan Asians fly back and forth from air- port to airport, unwanted; the Americans, stoned to the eyes, lousy and complaining. arrive, are embraced by the immigration officers, clamantly demand jobs, buy tax- free cars, and occupy (so far as the naked eye can discern) those few seats at Covent Garden that are available. Once here, like true liberals, they ignore every genuine cause that might benefit from hard unpaid unobtrusive work or disinterested thought, and lend their noisy support to every di, credited and ineffective craze that afflicts us. And, in the process, they are destroying the very thing that they allegedly have come to find. No restaurant where they have been rude to the staff is ever the same again, no university where they have left their des tructive trace will ever feel peaceful or sem c again : no progressive cause will ever look genuine again. The honest Americans. it seems to me, have mostly stayed there. What we have are the liberals, God help us.
Now, the question that is behind all tin, is, I think, a fairly clear one. What is it that makes South African and American liberals equally tiresome in their own different ways? I think it gets a simple answer. They want the benefits of their societies without paying either the intellectual or the spiritual price for them; and they want the moral pleasures of joining in the condemnation of their societies without actually doing any- thing about it. It is for that reason that the dear old Labour party, stumbling on as it does, from compromise to compromise, is so much more admirable than the liberals who condemn it. Hard work, in the Labour party, or in the Conservatives, gets results and has made England a liveable-in society. And, for all my criticisms of it, to see Britain from South Africa or from America is to see a good decent society. And after hearing what South Africans say about Harold Wilson, he deserves our undying loyalty, whatever our party.
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