Centrepiece
Uncompromising careers
Colin Welch
T ike Timothy Garton Ash last week, I lanoted with astonishment Julian Havi- land's remark in the Times about Mrs That- cher's 48-hour visit to Hungary: 'So she knows now what she has sometimes seemed reluctant to take on trust, that Eastern Europe is peopled with human beings.' I hope the insult was unintended. In the same issue of the Times, I was told by Richard Owen that Mr Andropov is (or now was) 'a widely read man with intellectual creden- tials'. I am rather reluctant to take this on trust. Perhaps 48 hours with this scholar, sage and booklover in his well-stocked library would have convinced me. Alas, this now can never be. Meanwhile, for those with Russian his collected speeches and ar- ticles appeared in 1980. They apparently consist mostly of ferocious attacks on Rus- sian dissidents. He also more recently laun- ched vicious campaigns against Yev- tuschenko and other writers. This is not to say he had read them; but certainly his repeated outbursts could only be regarded as a form of literary criticism, by no means uninfluential in its way.
Next week, exclusive: Chernenko as I know him; the gentle philosopher who cor- responded with Wittgenstein, Russell and Teilhard de Chardin; the poetry-lover who read Eliot's Four Quartets to a spellbound Politburo; gramophone evenings with Schoenberg and Dave Brubeck; 'my secret collection of Warhols and Hockneys'; his work for distressed gentlefolk and religious charities; 'rave-ups' at the disco; 'what Gladstone's example means to me'. Don't miss it!
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Moles on the dole. Graduates, lots of them, leave university only to join the dole queues — but they're not all lead- ing futile lives. There's this typical cell of left-wing activists, for instance, who tell Geoffrey Beattie there's scarcely a dull moment.'
Allured by this introduction in the Guar- dian's Grassroots section, 1 read on fascinated. I was introduced to Jane, Sue and Melanie, who have lived together in Sheffield since 1980. All three are social science graduates of Sheffield University. All are unemployed, yet without 'that aura of depression which characterises many graduates in a similar situation'. Sue, who springs from a comfortable middle-class background in Hemel Hempstead, pro- nounces Sheffield 'a great place to be unemployed'.
All three are 'distinctly busy!' At what? Jane, whose father is an army colonel, is doing a course on 'advice work', voluntary work in an 'Advice Centre' and at the Shef- field 'Peace Shop'. (`Special offer! Prices slashed!! Free jumbo pack of frozen peace with every purchase over £5.00 !!! Are shop-lifters a problem, with great lumps of pilfered peace stuffed up their jumpers?) Sue helps voluntarily in a school for malad- justed children and a youth club, also in the Peace Shop. Melanie works in the Peace Shop too, and often spends lunchtime on the Disarmament Society bookstall. `Together they form a cell of social com- mitment.'
Sue maps out a typical week. Monday morning, usually at home; Tuesday and Wednesday, 'an action in East Anglia', 'a Peace Camp' outside an RAF base; she has been to Greenham a few times and thinks the women there `great'; on Thursday and Friday, maladjusted children; on Saturday, if no demo, a jumble sale; Sunday, sewing and knitting. In the evenings she goes to political meetings in the Students' Union. She belongs to the Women for Disarma- ment Group, the University Disarmament Society, Sinn Fein and the University Anar- chists Group. She attends meetings of CND and the Grenadian Fellowship.
Are the three looking for jobs? What sort of jobs are they prepared to accept? Sue is deliberately unemployed at present, but hopes to start work soon in Ulster on a pro- ject to bring Protestant and Catholic children together. Jane would like a career in the social services. Failing this she would take a job that was 'obviously for money', like check-out girl in a supermarket. Never would she consider a management course or a sales rep job 'or some other compromise career'. Melanie is also adamant against `compromise careers'. What are 'com- promise careers'? We have to guess from the context. I imagine they must be careers which involve some sort of serious 'com- promise' with the ordinary world of buying and selling, some conscious adaptation to the manners and mores of the market place, some intent to prosper in it by adjusting to its mundane requirements. To be a mere wage-slave, if absolutely necessary, is excusable. To rise above that must be in the
same way to condone or endorse the evil capitalist system.
Jane and Sue, to be sure, are both taking typing courses. Learning to type looks at first glance like a sort of compromise: there are obvious dangers to the olympian purity and integrity of the socially-committed in acquiring any useful and marketable skills. Yet the dangers are perhaps illusory. An ability to type is of value not only to evil capitalist bosses but also to social workers, anarchists and even Sinn Feiners, who use words as well as bombs to advance their cause.
Now if I were writing a work of fiction, critics might well declare that these three characters are over-drawn, too perfect, types rather than living idiosyncratic beings. Little Women, they might say, is not only more edifying but more convincing. I am not sure that such charges would be whollY justified. Incongruous elements of normali- ty appear here and there, like sewing and knitting, which breathe some life into what would otherwise be wooden stereotypes. Others might think it in bad taste to survey with cool incredulity, disapproval or mockery people whose lives and activities deserve in some ways respect. To give free advice to those who need it; voluntarily to help maladjusted children; to bring Protes- tant and Catholic children together 0 it Ulster: all these seem on the face of t worthy, beneficent, even admirable things to do. Yes, but look again. Look at who's I giving the advice; ponder what the advice s likely to be. Look at who's helping the maladjusted children: is she so obviously well-adjusted herself? Look at who's going to bring the Ulster children together: Herself a member of Sinn Fein, how well is she placed impartially to understand what divides Ulster's children from each other, and to wash away the bitter memories and obstinate prejudices which bedevil them, Whatever success she achieves will presumably be by filling their little noddles with shared notions and common purposes not less absurd, harmful and dangerous than those which infest them now. lives Poor sweet girl-graduates! Their may not seem 'futile' to Mr Beattie or themselves, though I do agree they are rather 'typical'. They seem a bit futile or worse to me. Advisers who need advice' helpers who need help; peacemakers wh° create fresh strife; parasites unashamed' too proud to work; social scientists svh° seek to overthrow a society they haven t begun to understand; nonconformists wh° slavishly conform; victims of an education
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which has enslaved rather than liberated' remote and protected from all reality, thus without obvious possibility of develop' ment; preserved for ever perhaps, just as the Guardian caught them, as in an earlY Victorian photograph, their destiny only to fade, crumple, get torn or lost. One question Mr Beattie didn't put t° them: which newspaper, if any, do they read? No prizes offered for correct solo tion.
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