ANOTHER VOICE
But who are these other people with our beloved in his garden?
AUBERON WAUGH
Wen I first saw pictures of the Com- mercial Union Building next door to the Baltic Exchange in St Mary Axe with every single one of its windows blown out by an IRA bomb on Friday night, I must admit that my heart lifted. It was shown with a picture of the B & 0 store at Staples Cor- ner, Brent, flattened by another bomb a few hours later, and my heart sang. Obvi- ously this was a wrong reaction. Three peo- ple were killed immediately in the City explosion and 91 injured, many of them gravely. It was a cowardly and despicable act by mad terrorists, even if casualties resulted from the police mishearing 'Stock Exchange' for 'Baltic Exchange' on the telephone. But I had gone to bed in the small hours of Friday morning in rather an elated state, and was still in an elated state next day. It was not just that I had success- fully predicted the result of the election throughout, while others were losing their nerve and beginning to sob quietly about their mortgage rates and tax bills. The main reason why I continued to be in an elated state for some 24 hours after going to bed on Friday morning was that at the age of 52 one takes longer to recover from these rare moments of euphoria.
St Mary Axe and Staples Corner, Brent, both looked like parts of Beirut after a sav- age battle between Israelis, Syrians, Pales- tinians, Christian Lebanese and 57 varieties of Muslim extremists. I was particularly impressed by the shoddiness of the build- ings which had been blown up. Last month the Observer carried a story that Westmin- ster Council, inspired by Mr Heseltine's example in knocking down the DoE head- quarters in Marsham Street, was planning to dynamite half the hideous new buildings in Westminster, including the Home Office in Queen Anne's Gate and Basil Spence's revolting Knightsbridge Barracks.
In the happy afterglow of the election, and in the general state of infatuated love which, in common with half the nation, I felt for our nice Prime Minister, I won- dered for a glorious moment whether Mr Major might be celebrating his popular mandate with a blitzkrieg on all London buildings of the last three decades. At last we would have a radical Tory government dedicated to putting the clock back in all those areas of national life which fill us with shame, embarrassment or disgust.
Of course this is not at all what nice Mr Major's government will be like, but before
discussing the sort of government we have elected, I must just add an observation about these terrorist explosions. It has been pointed out, in relation to the Baltic Exchange bomb, that such bastions of capi- talism as the Stock Exchange, Lloyd's Building and the Bank of England are with- in a few hundred yards of each other. If the IRA can successfully blow up Richard Rogers's revolting edifice without inflicting any casualties, I will find it very hard to ignore the NorAid box next time it is brought round at the Sacred Heart Sum- mer Barbecue and Sports Day.
It is only when we examine what sort of parliamentary Conservative Party has emerged from 13 years of the Thatcher- Murdoch continuum that our euphoria may subside a little. This.week the Sunday Times gloated in a heading across the top of eight columns on page four: 'State-educated Tories take over the reins.' It appeared over a peculiarly unattractive photograph of the new Member for Brentwood and Ongar, Mr Eric Pickles, whose scowling countenance appeared over a blocked announcement: TORIES' NEW FACE: He is an ex-grammar school boy from York- shire, a lawyer with a degree from Leeds Polytechnic and a reputation for bare-knuck- le political fighting on Bradford city council.
One can see how all this adds up to an irresistible combination for the Sunday Times, and there is a long and good tradi- tion for constituencies like Brentwood and Ongar to choose their candidates from the state-educated sector. It is faintly worrying that these state-educated Conservative members now outnumber the ordinary members just at the moment when the vic- tims of Shirley Williams are beginning to appear in public life. Pickles, for instance, was a schoolboy of 13 when Mrs Williams first arrived at the Department of Educa- tion and Science as a Minister of State, and so was Mr David Amess, the Plaistow-born Essex man whose hold on Basildon was cel- ebrated throughout election night as if it was the best thing which had happened to
`Look at me — I'm levitating.' Britain since the birth of the Princess of Wales. Watching him as he gesticulated and gloated on television, I reflected that it was sad and rather worrying that this great influx of state-educated MPs should have coincided with the generation which suf- fered the first catastrophic decline in the standards of state education.
The essence of Essex man, we are told, is that he votes with his wallet. I see nothing wrong with that. So do I. So, I learned to my surprise, does Charles Moore. If Essex man voted with his wallet and did nothing else, he would be a thoroughly welcome addition to the political scene since his interests, in the great democratic divide, coincide with those of the educated, profes- sional and propertied classes against those of the great economic and emotional underclass which votes Labour. But he is only a welcome feature on the political scene so long as he confines himself to the pursuit of his own pleasure in his own area. The moment he starts imposing his gross preferences on the party and on the coun- try, he becomes a sworn enemy.
Amess, in addition to being an enthusias- tic hanger who has volunteered to pull the lever himself, is one of the original 28 Tory Stinkers (there are 19 of them left) who voted to ban hunting in Britain on 14 February. How, exactly, is this unpleasant young man's wallet affected by this matter? I suspect it is not affected in the least. He voted against hunting because he wishes to impose his loathsome, ignorant culture on the rest of us. It is not enough that in Basil- don they prefer reading the Sun and watch- ing Sky Television to hunting. Mr Amess will not be content until he has stopped everyone else from hunting, forced us all to read the Sun and watch Sky Television.
Mr Major will have his work cut out keeping the Essex element in its place. The rest of the country is much bigger than Essex, although you might not believe that to read the Murdoch press. Perhaps it is time that the Conservative Party, along with Labour, broke up into its many com- ponents, between Reactionary Whig (where I think I belong) and 'Old Tory' Worsthornite or Saloon Bar Bloody-Fool, between Progressive Tory, Etonian Wet and Essex Stinker. But if Mr Major decides to bring Amess, Pickles, Ann Widdecombe and `Terry' Dicks into government, will the last non-Essex person to leave the Conser- vative Party please turn out the lights?
Previous page
