ANOTHER VOICE

Lessons to be learned from Desmond Wilcox's Personal Experience

AUBERON WAUGH

It is a wonderful thing when one of us columnists has a Personal Experience which we can inject into our vapid com- mentaries on the passing scene to create the impression of first-hand knowledge. I nearly had such an experience two months ago in China. Even though I didn't quite, missing it by a few days, I have been dining and writing as possibly the greatest living expert on China ever since. My opposite number on the Sun, Desmond Wilcox, has been even luckier. Last Thursday, Wilcox was able to write of his very own personal experience:

A few weeks ago, Esther and I were caught in a jam coming back from a day out at Ascot. The police were pulling motorists in, for proper reasons, and then breathalysing them. We had seen how much drinking there had been at the races.

Nobody was angry, nobody resented what was going on. Most drivers became rather thoughtful, quite a few, no doubt, rather frightened.

Repeat that pattern throughout the coun- try, and you save lives and injury.

I have not had the same experience as Wilcox and am therefore not in a position to dispute the evidence of his senses, or those of his wife, the attractive expert on child abuse. Oddly enough, however, I remember the incident well because, of the 400 people stopped that day by Mr Colin Smith's roadblocks, no fewer than four wrote to me about their experience. The tone of their letters would not support Wilcox's observation that 'nobody was angry, nobody resented what was going on.

Perhaps they were too frightened to show their anger or resentment at the time. This, apparently, is what Wilcox wants. So concerned is he about the 400 lives which he claims would be saved every year by the granting of 'unfettered discretion' to the police, that he is prepared to substitute a universal police terror, where people are not only too terrified to drink at race meetings, weddings or other social events in the country, but too terrified even to complain when they are stopped by police and bundled out of their cars for no reason.

It shows a curious sense of priorities. As I never tire of pointing out, some 667,000 people die in this country every year in the normal course of events. Even if the figure of 400 lives saved was not completely bogus, it would be a drop in the ocean of general bereavement. `This is an urgent memo to Cecil Parkin- son,' is how Wilcox, who is described as the man who 'gets to the heart of things' begins the account of his personal experi- ence. It seemed an odd way to start what most of us might have thought was just another personal column. I have often remarked that under Mrs Thatcher we seem to be governed by the same percep- tion of life as inspires the Sun, but I have not seen the relationship stated so plainly before: 'By now I hope he has already been briefed by his civil servants on the most important initials in his portfolio — RBT, Random Breath Testing.'

Why on earth, I wondered, does Wilcox concern himself with this? The Depart- ment of Transport, like all bodies con- cerned with road safety and nothing else (not happiness nor social tranquility nor enjoyment of life), has always been in favour of imposing total misery on the land if it improved our already excellent record on road safety. Why should Wilcox wish to join the chorus of Scots Presbyterians, Wee Frees and members of Moral Rearmament who have infiltrated the De- partment of Health, the British Medical Association and other key areas? Have these Scotsmen also started infiltrating the great Child Abuse movement? I thought that a clue might be contained in one of his more mysterious passages: 'The real use of RBT isn't, as Mr Bottomley used to argue, that breath tests should be aimed at drinkers. Random breath tests are the best deterrent for ALL motorists.'

What on earth does this mean? Why should Wilcox and his Scots friends wish to deter non-drinkers? On the face of it, this passage seems completely meaningless. One has to turn to Adam Raphael's article in the previous Sunday's Observer where you can find virtually everything in the Wilcox article explained rather more clear- ly. This is what Raphael wrote: 'The purpose of RBT, unlike targeted testing, is `Miss Swann, give me something to make a decision about.' not principally to catch drunk drivers, but to deter drivers from drinking.'

That at least makes sense, but you cannot expect distinguished television per- sonalities like Desmond Wilcox simply to cover the same ground as journalists on smaller, less influential newspapers. They must get to the heart of things. He also gets to the heart of those 400 lives which will be `saved' by random breath testing: 'In this country it is calculated that we could save at least 400 lives a year.' To find out by whom it is calculated we must turn to the previous Sunday's Observer, where Raphael's page-long article is headed: `According to one expert, 400 lives could be saved every year if random breath testing was introduced... the Home Office says no.'

So one reads on to discover that this 'one expert' is a Scottish doctor living on Tayside, director of the Tayside Safe Driv- ing Project. Yet now that figure will be produced as if it were established truth, just as it was produced by a Mr Andrew MacNeill (I don't know where he came from) on Sky Television last Monday.

The Labour MP who tried in vain to get support for his random breath test bill last year, Mr John Home Robertson (from East Lothian), reckons it will take a hurricane to change the Home Office. Does he ever wonder why? Perhaps the Home Office, not yet being infiltrated by Scottish temperance fanatics, is less im- pressed by the bogus statistics produced in special pleading by people whose motive must always remain unfathomable.

`No fewer than 3,000 out of 3,400 orga- nisations which submitted evidence to the [Home Office] review' were in favour of RTB, according to Raphael. Wilcox gets to the heart of it: 'THREE THOUSAND of the 3,400 organisations that have been polled in this country about RTB believe that delay is costing lives, our lives.'

Can we please be given the list of these 3,400 'organisations'? Did they poll the Farmer's Arms Skittle Team of Combe Florey, the Bagborough Bell Ringers, the Bishops Lydeard Amateur Theatrical Soci- ety? Hurd, bless his brave soul, looks like standing firm. If Parkinson has any sense, he will put Wilcox's urgent memo straight in the wastepaper basket where it belongs. Paul Channon paid no attention to my warnings, and where is he now?