Another voice
The real debate
Auberon Waugh
It seems inconceivable to me that the country could ever grow weary of the Thorpe trial, but the editor assures me that this is so. It is the only thing happening in Britain which is of the slightest interest to the rest of the world — our answer to the Pope in Cracow, rampaging homosexualists in California, frightful earthquakes everywhere else. For the rest we have only the dismal, unremitting spectacle of our national decline to offer for the diversion of the world community but surely there is nothing new to be said about that for home consumption? We all know perfectly well what is wrong with the country -and what needs to be done to put it right, but it is not the business of political commentators, as I. constantly remind them, to involve themselves at the centre of Great Debates. That must be left to leader-writers. Our job, on these occasions, is to sneer from the wings. From this vantage, the only interesting thing about Sir Nicholas Henderson's memorandum to Dr Owen is how badly it is written, 'A considerable jolt is going to be needed if a lasting attenuation of civic purpose and courage is to be averted.' It reads as if it had been prepared by a committee of Edward Heath, Harold Evans, Arthur Bottomley and the former Sunday Times Insight Team. One doubts somehow that it will supply the considerable jolt which appears to be needed. . .
For my own part I have already suggested a knighthood for Peregrine Worsthorne as the essential first step in any programme of national recovery. As long as Mrs Thatcher continues to neglect my advice I shall be sceptical about her intentions. As for the leaden-tongued 'Sir Nicko' Henderson, one must remember that Peter Jay used to make these brave, sensible noises about the British economy being sent to Washington. No doubt Henderson will do the same thing for the Thatcher economic miracle, but I can't believe the Americans will be any more impressed. If we look inwards for a moment, we may see in Sir `Nicko's' leaden English an explanation for all that has happened.
We are spoiled, of course. Among those lucky few Englishmen who remain behind, our national decline has become a thing of beauty, a work of art in the mouths of Mr Reginald Bosanquet and Miss Anna Ford. Week after week we hear how British products are losing their appeal, how our industry is hopelessly inefficient, how the unions, far from learning anything by their mistakes, are intent on making us poorer, duller and sadder than ever. Every night after hearing these events described in the sturdy masculine tones of Mr Bosanquet, the lovely amber-dropping voice of Miss Ford, we go to bed inspired with a feeling of national pride.
In the past 12 days I have heard no one discussing 'Sir Nicko's' boring memorandum, although practically all the newspapers have discussed it endlessly. Of all the newspapers I have read, only one has mentioned the topic which every other man and women in the British Isles seems to have been discussing throughout this period. Even that one scarcely seems to have done it justice. Mr John Junor, the cheeky 60-year old chappie who this year completes his quarter century as editor of the Sunday Express, wrote in these terms about Miss Ford's refusal of a £75,000 offer to be photographed without any clothes on: 'Miss Ford is not only a lovely lady. She also has a good, sensible mind between her pretty ears.
'What does stagger me is the insight the incident has given us into the economics of female nudity.
175,000 for Miss Ford? What, then, in heaven's name do you suppose they would pay for Marcia?'
With the greatest respect to an immensely senior journalist, I am not sure that Mr Junor has quite got the point of the Great Debate. The point is not what Mr Paul Raymond might be prepared to pay for the nudest Lady Falkender. The point is surely that Miss Ford refused to appear naked.
Perhaps Mr Junor was merely-observing my rule that commentators should avoid the temptation to pontificate on major issues of the day. But Miss Ford's decision strikes me as being so crucial to our national identity crisis, so admirable a banner under which to gather the tattered remnants of our national pride and so much a source of hope for the future, that on this occasion, in the absence of The Times, I propose to break my own rule and give the nation a lead in what, I am convinced, is the real debate of the hour.
The case against Miss Ford's decision, put at its simplest, is an extension of the old rule, noblesse oblige: it would give so much pleasure to so many people if Miss Ford were to take her clothes off in front of a camera, that what little inconvenience it might cause to herself should be seen as a tax which beauty, birth, wealth and wit owe to the ugly, base poor, stupid and generally under-privileged majority. This argument ignores the fact that the ugly, base etc majority would already be demanding 83 per cent of her £75,000 fee, or £62,250, to compensate them for their disadvantaged state. Even £12,750, it might be argued, is an adequate reward for the indignity of removing one's clothes in front of a photographer. The poor might well feel insulted — in addition to their normal state of envious hatred — that anyone should refuse such a huge sum for such a trifling service. The sting of this insult might be removed by suggesting that Miss Ford would probably lose her job if she agreed to Mr Raymond's suggestion, but I do not think this is the real reason for her refusal, or that it would remove the real sorrow of the masses whose real wish is to humiliate and degrade feminine beauty, to establish that money is what counts and that everyone is as base as they are. Miss Ford has struck a blow for modesty, decency and human privacy: but she has done more than that.
The female form, as promoted by Mr Raymond's masturbation industry, bears little or no resemblance to our (editorial) experience of it. Forever 19 years old, of an implausible, indiarubber perfection, the naked ladies of Mr Raymond's stable exist, if they exist at all, on the fringes of erotic fantasy. Few women have breasts of such perfection or ever had. As I wrote when complaining about topless French bathers last year, the female breast is an object of veneration to the human male only because of the intimate circumstances in which it is normally revealed. Publicly exhibited, the most perfect breast is no more erotic than a well-turned ankle, The same is true a fortiori of a woman's other private parts. Millions of people undoubtedly rejoice on the beauty of Miss Ford's face when she reads the news; some may speculate about the body which attaches or the spirit which animates it, but any suggestion that because she has given her face to the public we have a right to inspect her other parts is plainly the most damnable error, hateful, cruel and vile: '0, Horrible! 0 Horrible! most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee bear it not.'
Perhaps Miss Ford's gesture will be seen as a turning point, reaffirming a belief in human relationships against the encroachments of the masturbation industry. Our new ambassador in Washington may not have much to boast about to Americans, but let us content ourselves that we still have Mr Bosanquet, who can read us the news the way we like to hear it; and we have found in Miss Ford, a clergyman's daughter, our own equivalent of France's Marianne.
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