ANOTHER VOICE
Back to the revolting new class of ignorant, bossy proletarians
AUBERON WAUGH
Afew weeks ago, while brooding about the poor state of Britain despite its apparent prosperity, I arrived at the con- cept of a Non-Commissioned Officers' Revolution, or trahison des fonctionnaires, to explain why almost every aspect of modern life has become less agreeable in Britain than elsewhere. The more one broods about it, the more possible it seems that the triumphalist philistinism apparent in so many aspects of modern British life, from architecture to proposals for a new school curriculum or the disgusting new design for telephone kiosks, has exactly the same origin as the brutal authoritarianism of chief constables demanding 'unfettered discretion' to harass and humiliate harm- less motorists.
It might also have the same origin as the remorseless power-hunger of the various pressure groups, from Campaign against Drunk Driving, League Against Cruel Sports and Action on Smoking and Health to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. However, we must wait another week or two to explore the precise connec- tion between the collapse of the old officer class (as exemplified by St Peregrine, perhaps) and Nigel Lawson's acceptance of the proposal that Inland Revenue staff should be given the same powers of forci- ble entry and search as have always been vested, scandalously enough, in Customs and Excise. The connection between this and the various pressure groups who seek to bypass the democratic process and impose their obsessions on everyone else must wait even longer.
This week I propose to discuss the effects of this NCOs' Revolution on aspects of art and language, but as the whole debate was started by power-mad and exhibitionist chief constables, I might first refer to a signal development in this field.
The plot to end all social life in the countryside and remove the institution of the pub from the English scene started on the assumption that of the 5,000 or so road deaths recorded in any given year, about one in five — let us say 1,000 — were the result of accidents in which alcohol might have been a factor. It was this figure of 1,000 alcohol-related road deaths — al- ways cleverly dressed to appear as 1,000 innocent victims of drunken drivers which justified the Association of Chief Police Officers in demanding 'unfettered discretion'. If this demand is ever granted, it will mean that nobody can leave or return to his house safely if he has drunk two glasses of wine, however sober he is or however well he drives. Throughout all the time I have been writing about this subject, I have never been able to extract from the Department of Transport the breakdown of this figure of 1,000-odd alcohol-related road deaths: how many represent drunken drivers killing themselves (i.e. non- innocent victims) and how many represent drunken pedestrians (whose deaths, although regrettable, have nothing to do with the campaign against drink driving).
On Saturday, nice Mr Bottomley (poss- ibly appalled by the forces he has himself unleashed) let the cat out of the bag. Welcoming the clews that Britain now had the safest roads in Europe, Bottomley cautioned: 'We need to remember the anguish caused by every death. . . . This year, some 500 pedestrians who have had too much to drink will die on the roads.'
So the figure for drunk pedestrians killed is 500 or precisely half the total cited for all alcohol-related road deaths. Drunken driv- ing accounts for only half the total. The whole campaign has been conducted on a deliberately and grotesquely false prospec- tus. I shall return to this matter, suggesting possible reasons for this programme of distortion at a later date.
Professor Anthony Snodgrass of Cam- bridge recently coined the word 'Murdoch- ism' to describe an aggressive opposition to classical education apparent not only in the Murdoch press but also throughout the government and educational establish- ment. Another example of Murdochism might be the ostentatious refusal, not only of the Sun, Sunday Times and News of the World, but also of the Times, to get people's titles right. Throughout all edi- tions reporting the tragic death of Lord Boyne's daughter in a go-kart accident, the Times referred to her as Lady Sarah Hamilton-Russell. This may seem unim- portant, and it is certainly possible to argue that excessive importance has been attached to such things in the past. But the peerage and its relations in fact occupy a huge slice of middle-class Britain. Debrett lists the names of some 75,000 living people, nearly all of whom, we may be sure, are acutely aware of the different honorifics attaching to the children of viscounts and barons on the one hand, earls, marquesses and dukes on the other. Either Murdoch's Times has decided as a matter of policy not to employ one of them, or it is making ostentatious and offensive gestures of repudiation towards the country in which it is still published.
Recently I regretted the fact that our ancient and established auction houses, great national institutions in their own right, were forced to deal in so much 20th-century rubbish in deference to the taste of half-witted American millionaires and sad, confused Japanese. Two weeks ago I learned from Geraldine Norman's report in the Independent that Sotheby's furniture department had failed to recog- nise an 1858 cabinet by William Burges, the towering genius among architectural furniture makers of the English Gothic revival. They put it in for a sale, unrecog- nised, at an estimate which was less than four per cent of the £45,100 it eventually made.
Even this seemed an extraordinarily low figure, until one learned that the three London dealers most interested — Haslam and Whiteway, Blairman's and the Fine Art Society — had been allowed to join forces and bid in partnership to secure it. By informing Sotheby's of their intention in advance, they avoided any suggestion of illegal combination or 'ringing', although Sotheby's must have been puzzled to learn of three big dealers joining forces to bid for an object which they had estimated at f1,200-£1,800.
Nobody can doubt the honesty of this hallowed institution. Five or six years ago, to my great sorrow, I had to sell a minor Burges to buy a London flat. Sotheby's had never heard of Burges, so I took it to Christie's, who swooned with excitement. Surges is without question the most easily recognisable furniture maker in the history of European civilisation. No doubt Sotheby's under its exciting new chairman, the curly-headed, only slightly swarthy former Conservative minister and 'poet' Lord Gowrie, has an impressive expertise when it comes to judging 20th-century art — distinguishing which daubs are human and which the work of chimpanzees etc. It is plainly true that large parts of Britain have been taken over by charlatans, in- competents and the revolting new class of ignorant, bossy proletarians. But other parts have not yet been taken over. It is the job of all of us to pick our way between them.
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