Centrepiece

Who is the enemy?

Colin Welch

The so-called peace campers often denounce American airmen here as part of an enemy army of occupation. Doesn't the cap fit their own little coconut heads rather better?

After all, the American forces are here at the invitation of our legally elected govern- ment. If that invitation were withdrawn by a subsequent government, 1 would expect them to withdraw at once, disastrous for us as the consequences might be. They con- stitute part of America's defence, to be sure, but they contribute much more obviously to our own and that of Western Europe. Some may regard this contribution as ill-advised, causing more dangers than it fends off. They are entitled to their opinion only if they can point to safer alternatives which we can afford. I don't think nuclear disarmament coupled with a massive in- crease in our conventional strength pro- Vides any such alternative. It would cost an immense amount more money. It would demand either conscription or a readiness in the young for service and sacrifice which we have not expected or required of them for a long time. Personally, though pleased When conscription was abolished, I have since changed my mind. Better the obscene bellowing of the colour sergeant than that of the Rolling Stones; better drill than the disco. Nor do I deny that many of the Young may be a sight more patriotic than they look, may long to be valued and honoured, and would welcome the call if it came. I think it should. But even if it did it would not lessen our dependence on nuclear weapons.

We could indeed ensure that we ourselves would resist agression with conventional weapons alone, more frightful than ever as these now are. Compared with what could now be achieved, the destruction by con- ventional weapons of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Tokyo was nothing — so many vicarage tea parties, to use Peter Simple's tune-honoured phrase. In no way, however, Could we deny nuclear weapons to our enemies who, by threat or use, could render all the courage and sufferings of our con- ventional forces absolutely useless, null and void, as Japan's became useless in 1945. Conventional forces without nuclear back- log and cover, however formidably armed in other ways, are but sheep waiting for the knacker.

No one, by contrast, invited the women to Greenham. Their presence there is pre- sumably illegal, their activities certainly so. _

heY are being moved on at the moment. :they will presumably settle again near by, ill defying the law, cocking another snook

from a new podium, like those maddening birds which, shooed away, fly a few yards and then flop down to resume their depredations. The point of view they seek to express or exemplify was decisively re- jected by the British people at the last elec- tion. They represent only a minority, pro- bably no bigger than that which might col- laborate with a Russian occupation and which might indeed include many of the very same peaceniks. The Greek Phanariot community of Constantinople had long an- ticipated the eventual conquest of their city by the Turks. They thought it futile to resist and, when it came, they obligingly entered the service of the Sultan. The so-called peace movement is our Phanariot fifth col- umn, wittingly or unwittingly working for the victory of tyrants far crueller and more intolerant than the Sublime Porte.

The Greenham women are not patriots for us, though some of them in a dreamy, other worldly way may think they are. Their patriotism is mostly either for lands which exist only in their hopes and imaginings, or for a land which exists all right in the east, but appears to them as if through the golden haze of sunrise. Like the intellec- tuals of the Thirties, these last have transferred their patriotism to Russia.

All are in effect an enemy occupation in posse and, if they are lucky, may survive to become part of one in full reality.

'rlood journalism,' squawks the New Statesman, 'consists of a perpetual state of war with authority.' We have grown accustomed to such shrill, bellicose boastings and rodomontade. Like the inter- mittent humming of the refrigerator, or a strident wallpaper grown familiar, we hard- ly notice them. To their absolute but dangerous idiocy, to their dire effect on young, impressionable and ambitious jour- nalists, we grow insensible.

Could anything be more absurd than perpetual war with authority? Perpetual, mark you: with authority when it is right, with authority when it is wrong, with authority when the facts and conclusions are obviously debatable. War with authori- ty legitimate and illegitimate alike. War with the authority which strives to guard

our interests, war with that which threatens them. Perpetual war, like the perpetual foaming and snapping of a mad dog. Perpetual war, like Trotsky's perpetual revolution, destroying first whatever exists, then whatever replaces it, ad infinitum.

Truth is the first casualty in every war, in this perpetual war against authority as in any other. Those engaged in it lose all scru- ple, impartiality, balance and sense of pro- portion, as also kindness, mercy, loyalty (except to fellow-condoltieri) and even humour; they become pompous and self- righteous. In this war, facts are useful if they are damaging to authority, useless, and thus to be ignored or suppressed, if they are not. Fiction will do as well as fact, provided it hurts. Honourable men, spotless reputa- tions, precious institutions, may all be harassed and besmirched, provided authority is shaken thereby. Long and careful research to establish the truth is worse than useless. It gives the enemy time to regroup and recover lost ground. Authority may sometimes have a good case. To admit this in wartime is unthinkable, rank treason, fatal.

Wars often damage the character of those who participate in them. Decent men can become cruel and insensitive, commit- ting atrocities which would in peace have been alien and abhorrent to them.

As the enemy, authority can have no legitimate interests or secrets of its own, no legitimate role in protecting the public interest. All its activities must therefore be laid bare and impeded, regardless of the ef- fects on public security and safety. Ecrasez l'infotne is the warrior journalist's battle- cry, or Fiat justitia I (as I the I journalist perversely defines it), ruat coelum. Indeed the ruin of heaven is for him dearer than justice.

What campaigning journalists of this sort overlook is that authority in this country is to some extent chosen by and answerable to most of us and represents more or less what we want. Journalists who attack it without cease or reason are liable therefore in the end to make themselves more odious than what they hate and vilify. Are journalists on the whole respected and liked? The polls do not suggest we are. On the contrary, we seem to be feared and mistrusted, not least perhaps for the rabid hostility of some of us to what most ordinary people think more protective than oppressive, not so much a prison as a comforting shelter.

Allowed to rescue one person from a sinking boat, how many Americans would, I wonder, prefer Woodward or Bernstein to Nixon? How many British would save Mrs Thatcher rather than one of her in- vestigative detractors? One thing alone, in- cidentally, shocks me about the Mark af- fair. This is that Mrs Thatcher should receive with unconcealed relish fulsome compliments for acting as a sort of super- salesperson. I would expect her to leave such antics to Heseltine or Walker. I can't see Gladstone sinking to selling cement to Arabs.