Another voice
Coppers' nark
Auberon Waugh
Generally speaking I attribute the extreme unpopularity of the press in Britain to the hypocrisy of the British, their extreme terror of being revealed for what they are. We hide our nasty little secrets behind a huge smokescreen of concern for the privacy of others, for the feelings of in- nocent wives and children which might be hurt by untoward revelations. We build great defensive ramparts around the absurd proposition that nobody has any business to know anything which does not concern him. Idle purveyors of information have every conceivable motive attributed to them, from the sadistic or merely mercenary to a self-righteous zeal for establishing some principle of 'the public's right to know'. Of course this ludicrous no- tion can be shot down as easily as the no- tion of a public right to work, eat, smoke opium or wear inflammable nighties.
The press, as l say, is a thoroughly good thing, adding enormously to the gaiety of the nation and even to its intellectual vitali- ty by feeding it with a constant stream of in- formation — some more or less true, some more or less false — for people to discuss, believe or disbelieve, approve or disapprove and fit into the pattern of their lives. But having said that I believe the press to be a thoroughly good thing, I must obviously qualify the word 'good'. Newspapermen are not like nurses, midwives, ministers of religion or Salvation Army volunteers. They do not provide a public service in the sense that firemen, policemen, even soldiers, provide one. They are not 'good' in the socialist sense of making a selfless contribution to the social structure, only 'good' in the sense that entertainers and candy-floss salesmen are good.
It is when these two ideas of goodness grow confused that I begin to lose my en- thusiasm for the press. There are those, of course, who see its role as being more im- portant than the chronicling of events as they seem to unfold, commenting on them and making jokes or indignant noises about them, as seems most appropriate. There are those who feel the press should have an ac- tive role in shaping events, influencing political decisions, exposing malfunctions of the administrative process and acting as a general coppers' nark. Nobody, so far as know, has ever asked the press to do any of these things. It is a role which it has adopted on its own in a spirit of goody- goodyism, sometimes marred by self- importance and even spite.
The worst offender, apart from the News of the World and Sunday People which have traditionally worn a mantle of sexual purity to hide their shameful prurience, is undoubtedly the Sunday Times — at any rate since Harold Evans emerged from the northern mists in the late Sixties. We followed his holy campaign for the ex- travagant reimbursement of thalidomide victims patiently enough. Perhaps not many people agreed with my feelings that the cause was unworthy, the money an of- fensive intrusion into private grief. But even if they did agree, they cannot have suppos- ed that great harm was done by the disbursement of these huge sums of money to a small number of people, however un- worthy. It had the moral value, perhaps, of an up-market bingo game.
Similarly, I do not suppose that much serious harm will have been done if the Sun- day Times succeeds in its long campaign to stop the sale of duty-free drink at airports. Some pipsqueak in the travel or aviation department decided this was a bad idea no doubt he is a teetotaller — and the newspaper has been campaigning ever since, pointing out that bottles of drink in the passengers' cabin constitute a fire hazard, a health risk, a moral outrage. Never mind that aeroplanes must have now flown many billions of miles with never a single accident from this cause. But even if they persuade the British government to stop this harmless and amiable allowance and mercifully there is little sign of it they will only have succeeded in making a small nuisance of themselves.
However, a claim made in the Sunday Times on its own behalf last week strikes me as altogether more serious. Commenting on the House of Lords decision in W. T. Ram- say versus Inland Revenue Commissioners, which seems to overturn the country's en- tire tradition of tax administration, Mr Phillip (sic) Knightley wrote: 'The Treasury began examining proposals for major tax reform after the Sunday Times disclosed that for more than 60 years the Vestey fami- ly had legally avoided paying millions of pounds of British tax. One proposal was for an all-embracing law in which the intention of the tax-payer would be paramount ... But before the Treasury reached any con- clusion, the House of Lords took the in- itiative.'
Perhaps I should explain the background. Traditionally, citizens have had the right to make whatever dispositions they like to reduce their tax liability. So long as the dispositions were legal, the in- tention was irrelevant. Under W. T. Ram- say versus Inland Revenue Commissioners, such dispositions may be set aside if they have no commercial value apart from the
reduction of tax liability. Lord Donaldson, the new Master of the Rolls, has already used this case to justify such a decision.
In countries like West Germany and the United States, where personal taxation policies are sane, just and designed merely to raise revenue, such an attitude on the part of the authorities is fair enough. In Bri- tain, where personal taxation policies, left virtually unchanged by six Conservative ad- ministrations since the war, would appear to be punitive, confiscatory and socially manipulative, it has very serious implica- tions. Lord Wilberforce, justifying his deci- sion to alter the system of personal taxation without reference to Parliament, said this: 'If the court stood still while the techniques of tax avoidance progressed, their im- mobility must result either in the loss of tax, to the prejudice of other taxpayers, or to parliamentary congestion, or both.'
I do not propose to discuss all the false asstimptions in this stupendously silly remark — that the court may alter the law when it chooses, that it should concern itself with loss of tax or 'parliamentary con- gestion' — but I do feel it necessary to knock on the head the false assumption that if Citizen A (Lord Vestey, perhaps) pays less tax, then Citizen B (Phillip [sic] Knightley, who knows?) must pay more. Governments will always grab as much money as they can, from whatever source, and will always spend as much money as they can get their hands on. Individual arithmetic does not enter into it. The only motive an individual taxpayer has for preventing his fellow citizen from avoiding tax legally is jealousy or spite.
When Mr Knightley published his analysis of the Vestey family's perfectly legal tax avoidance schemes I followed with mild interest, feeling it unlikely that I would pick up anything relevant to my own tax position. Even today, when maximum rates of personal income and capital transfer tax stand at 75 per cent (against the 98 per cent which obtained throughout much of the period under study) a person is distinctly odd who does not take every legal advan- tage available to reduce his tax liability. In the charitable way we journalists have, I assumed that this persecution of the Vesteys had some murky origin — someone had pinched someone else's girl, perhaps.
Not, apparently, so. Knightley was held to have struck an important blow against the whole principle of tax avoidance. His motives remain inexplicable. Does he not pay taxes himself? Does he deliberate pay more than he need? But the most serious aspect of it all would appear to be that in the process of his curious campaign against the Vestey family he created a climate of opinion which persuaded the highest court in the land to share this delusion. Inex- plicably, he has been honoured by his col- leagues for this behaviour, being nominated as Granada TV's Lawgiver of the Year or whatever. I feel we should form a hollow square and drum him back to the colonies.
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