From Free Life No 21, November 1994

Editorial Jottings

I

Last Saturday, the 8th October, having attended the LA conference on censorship, I went with Mrs Gabb for a Chinese meal in Romilly Street. Afterwards, we took a slow walk back to Charing Cross railway station.

I have no idea how many thousands of people can fit into Leicester Square, but now it was crowded as I had never before seen it. It was a chilly but dry evening. The cinemas were just emptying, and the restaurants were still full from earlier in the evening; and so there was a ready market for the alternative amusements on offer in the open.

There was an African drum quartet. The insistent rhythms of its music had drawn and were holding a large crowd. I saw an elderly woman take off her shoes and start dancing. Others joined in, and soon there were 50 or 60 people swaying and jumping in time to the music.

Further on, a comedian was cracking jokes with his audience. Beyond him, a Christian group was singing and calling us all to Jesus. A Hare Krishna procession went by us. Over by the telephone boxes, shivering slightly in their torn jeans, the rent boys were gathering.

Younger and more fashionable journalists, I imagine, would call this a "post-modern" scene, and try to work in something about masculinity or the decline of the brand name. For me, it was only something that has always happened - whenever people have been able to enjoy themselves, free from the disapproving gaze of others.

We passed slowly through the crowds, coming out of the Square by the National Portrait Gallery. At Charing Cross, the Sunday newspapers were already on sale. I bought a Telegraph. Back immediately to Tory Britain: "Howard go-ahead for ID cards" the headline said.

Oh dear! I will spare my readers yet another rehearsal of the arguments against these things. They are discussed at some length on the letters page of this issue, and have been roundly condemned in all the newspapers that I read. But I did hope that the arguments of many people who normally support the Conservative Party - not to mention the reservations of his own Home Office officials - would have had some effect on Michael Howard. Not so, however. The only argument that seems to have any effect on this most worthless of Home Secretaries is the length of standing ovation he can expect at the Party Conference; and bearing in mind the sort of people who go there, now that I and my friends have either left the Party in disgust or been kicked out, the headline should not have been in the least surprising.

Coming forward from last weekend, I have mixed feelings about Mr Howard's reception at the Conference. On the one hand, it was nice to see him made to look stupid. His address to the remaining faithful began in his best Nuremberg style. One could tell from his body language and the smug look on his face that he could hardly wait for the thundering applause. One after the other, he listed the traditional English liberties that our ancestors had either died defending or come here to enjoy, and that he is now proposing to abolish. Then he came to identity cards. But at this enormity, even his nerve had failed. They would, he said, be voluntary in the first instance. Not good enough for the assembled nasties. Never mind the certainty of "function creep", as a voluntary card became in the end essential for every middle class activity, from getting married to borrowing library books. Never mind that even a voluntary scheme would give the State huge powers of inspection and control. They wanted a British Gestapo now! They had been led to expect one - and here was their idol of last year telling them to be patient. Not even quasi-libertarians like Leon Brittan, or plain wets like William Whitelaw, fell so flat as this before the Party Conference.

And so we may not have to endure too much more of Mr Howard. The settled contempt of public opinion at large has entirely failed to move him. Perhaps being rejected by the one audience that had so far valued him may break his heart and send him creeping back to the Bar.

On the other hand, glorying over the tears he must have shed alone in his hotel bedroom draws attention from the audience that rejected him. These people are supposed to be conservatives. Their party tradition is supposed to be one of fear for big, centralised government. I do not suppose that Lord Salisbury would have liked all that I saw last Saturday evening in Leicester Square; but he would have been the first to oppose having the Police clear the place out. I am not so sure of the delegates who spoke in the "law and order" debate. They did everything short of hold their arms out for the tattooist's needle.

And for all this, I still see no present alternative to voting Conservative at the next general election. Oh dear! Oh dear, dear me!

II

Now to some headlines that failed to depress me. These, indeed, made me laugh. Last 10th August, the newspapers published details of a discussion paper from something called the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy. This paper recommends the Government to impose on us the kind of diet that in a prison would be denounced as cruel and unusual punishment. We are to be nagged - and, where appropriate, taxed and regulated - into eating fewer biscuits and cheese sandwiches. We are to eat only enough butter per week to cover three and a half slices of bread - much of which, of course, is to be wholemeal. We must eat more boiled potatoes and pasta, cooked without salt and served without sauce.

As a treat, we shall be allowed as many as three boiled sweets per week and three quarters of a small chocolate bar. Oddly enough, we are not told where to put the other quarter.

The paper was greeted with an avalanche of derision. And with good cause. It is known - indeed, here admitted - that, whatever its culinary merits, this diet is without scientific foundation. It is unproven - that one kind of bread is any better for our health than any other; that cheese and eggs and other animal fats are bad for us; that sugar does more than rot our teeth, and this only if we never brush them.

The recommendations are still funnier when we think how many of the people now making them were just a while ago telling us the exact opposite. It was then the case that animal fats were good for us, and red meat was the best of all. This diet also had no scientific foundation - though it did taste better than the present one.

Now this is not an isolated example of absurd or inconsistent claims about the effects of lifestyle on health. It illustrates a general rule of how these people operate. Look at their change of mind on alcohol. In the 1980s, we were told - on the flimsiest evidence - that all drinking was bad for us; but if we were unable to give up, maximum levels were recommended, keeping within which might not do us too much harm. Otherwise, we were encouraged to ease ourselves off the bottle by trying two or three "alcohol-free" days per week; and encouragement was reinforced by the usual demands for advertising bans and higher taxes.

Today, we are told - I will not say on what evidence - that alcohol is good for us. It is alleged to prevent heart attacks and a wide range of other conditions that it used to be said to cause or worsen. The old maximum recommended levels have been raised, and seem set to become minimum levels.

Look at their change of mind on smoking. True, there has been too much noise and passion in this crusade for quite the same smooth shift of opinion. A shift nonetheless is taking place. We are told increasingly that, contrary to all the propaganda of the past two generations, smoking is not the sole or even perhaps the main cause of lung cancer. The early papers from which all the noise and passion derived are now dismissed as inadequate. Their authors are accused of having overlooked car exhaust fumes as at least a joint cause of lung cancer. One can almost hear the sound of pneumatic drills, as guns for so long cemented into place are dug out and repositioned against a new enemy.

Probably the health fascists will have their way over diet, just as they have had over tobacco and appear set to have over petrol. There are too many salaries at stake for this battle to be lost - not to mention too many minds driven by the urge to control.

Even so, it is nice however briefly to see them made objects of public ridicule.

III

Some while ago, I taught a course on libertarianism at Middlesex University. Arriving early one week, I took a stroll round the various student stalls placed outside the dining hall. As ever, I was struck by the conservatism of student politics. The literature was glossier. The hairstyles were a little different. One of the feminists wore a ring through her left eyebrow. But these things aside, I might have stepped back across fifteen years into my own university days.

Most unchanged of all was the Socialist Worker Students' Organisation. Its stall was attended by the same withered fanatics, and covered with the same buff-covered tracts. I picked up a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Inside was the same photograph of Karl Marx - the one that makes him look like a glum Father Christmas - and the same imprimatur of the People's Press in Peking.

"Can I help you?" I looked up into the eyes of one of the less withered attendants. "Thank you, no" I replied; then added: "I thought the Chinese had given up on printing all this stuff."

"Not at all" I was primly told. "There is still a big demand for Marxist literature in the West."

We continued looking into each other's eyes for a second or so longer. Then I passed through into the dining hall for a very pleasant lunch. Some things, it seems, do change.

IV

My readers may have noticed a gap of nine months between issues 19 and 20 of this Journal. I apologise for this, though offer in mitigation the fact that I was burgled last February. The loss of so much property, combined with the manner of its loss, threw my life into a disorder that angered me, but which I was quite unable to overcome for several months.

This being said, I will return to the matter of the Party Conference. When delegates cry out for the noose and birch and branding iron, I tend to agree. The mildness of criminal punishments in this country is a disgrace. They appear to have little deterrent force, and their enactment on those criminals found guilty provides almost no moral satisfaction to the victims of crime.

There is, however, a huge difference between saying this, and then supporting things like identity cards and the abolition of due process. These are things that will have little or no effect on crime rates - but will erode the only social order on which the security of life and property can truly rest.

Let us, then, flog burglars until blood pours from their backs and out of their mouths; and set them to work in (private) penal factories until they have compensated their victims - but only after the most scrupulous trial that human institutions can provide, in which all the procedural safeguards so despised by Messrs Howard et al. are firmly in place.

But I have now said quite enough about all this for one issue. I will only promise in future to bring Free Life out more regularly.