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The case that introduced me to my tolerance limits
Across the political spectrum commentators have, for once, been united in shock and horror. They are all impressively indignant that Patricia Amos was sent to jail last week because her daughters kept skipping school. I was extremely shocked, too - not by her fate but by my own reaction.
My first response was to think that her sentence is a good thing and that this startling punishment might for once send out the right message across the land, not only to feckless parents but to feral children, too.
I never imagined that I would end up as someone capable of such an extreme authoritarian response. I've always thought of myself as a libertarian. I instinctively dislike and distrust authoritarianism in any form. I particularly dislike state interference in private life and the interfering tendencies of this government. It's true, however, that Amos is the kind of woman who particularly provokes interference in those who are that way inclined.
She appears to be a pretty lamentable mother, according to the evidence heard in court. She has had five children by three different men and she has regularly ignored various warnings from her social workers and lacks either the authority or the will to get her teenage daughters to school. All this is deeply depressing and quite clearly part of the social breakdown about which we all wring our hands these days. Yet these things are hardly crimes.
Until recently I thought that the freedom to make a mess of one's life, along with any ensuing burden on the taxpayer, was the price of a civilised society. Tolerating the delinquency of the few was the price of freedom for all of us. Besides, I have a sneaking sympathy for anyone inclined to ignore social workers or to stay away from useless state schools: as John Stuart Mill said, a school must be very good in order to justify depriving a child of its liberty. There's a strong feeling of sledgehammer and nut about this story.
All the same, despite myself, I think it is a good thing to send a clear, harsh and exemplary signal to the delinquent classes that delinquency is no longer going to be tolerated. I know the prisons are horribly overcrowded and frequently a disgrace to a supposedly civilised society. I know they often achieve less than nothing; the only group, remarkably, on which they have much effect is first time offenders. When I produced figures recently about this interesting deterrent, I was met with a resounding silence.
Since prisons are for better or for worse so vile, a prison sentence for an unsuspecting mother must be a terrible shock. A very salutary shock pour decourager les autres. Amos's teenage daughters were back in school in their uniforms the next day and were clearly chastened. So no more Mrs Libertarian, either for Amos or for me. At least it is time for a little revisionism.
For decades, society, in the form of opinion leaders, the judiciary, the police and anyone who matters, has been sending out messages that bad behaviour is never really punished. It won't even be described as bad for that would be judgmental. All this has been well intentioned and understandable; clearly a child brought up in poverty and deprivation is more to be pitied than blamed when he gets into trouble. Clearly, the same applies to people suffering from mental illness, personality problems or extremely low intelligence. The sad truth, though, is that all this understanding and tolerance has achieved little except to make things infinitely worse.
Rudeness, swearing, litter, spraying graffiti and skipping school may not seem serious in themselves but, as former liberals are now beginning to acknowledge, they form part of a continuum of bad behaviour at one end of which are feral children and criminal adults. There is lots of serious evidence for this once risible, goody-two-shoes view.
Skipping school might not seem hugely important. But the fact is that 50,000 children skip school every day and so 50,000 have idle hands and time for trouble. A large proportion of the many crimes committed by children between 10 and 16 take place during school hours - 25% of their robberies, 30% of their car thefts and 40% of the street robberies that scare everyone else so much. What's worse is that parents connive with their children's truancy - possibly as many as 80% of them.
Although these wretched children may learn very little in school, they should at least be kept off the streets and out of crime during the school day. Now that Amos is in jail, other parents and other children might be more inclined to co-operate. This may be a big stick to shake at the dysfunctional, but it is well overdue. For too long these problems have been confronted with nothing more effectual than a limp, liberal carrot. What's more, this stick ought to be shaken vigorously in plenty of other directions.
Children who disrupt classrooms should be removed from the school automatically. Children who disrupt neighbourhoods - and there are a few such monster children, who are usually well known to the police - should be taken far away. There have been too many empty promises about this. So should persistent young offenders. They should be sent to well run boarding schools to get them away from the inadequacy of their parents, as rich children are. Parents who cannot and will not control particularly antisocial children should have them removed semi-permanently. (They might not even object.) Monster families should be expelled from the neighbourhoods that they terrorise and then split up from each other.
Nobody who chooses to have more than three children should get extra housing or extra child benefit; nobody will stop them but they will find life harder. Parents who can't support or control two children are still less able to deal with more; prudent parents don't and feckless parents shouldn't; there should be no perverse incentives for people to keep having more babies that they expect the state to look after. Schoolgirl mothers should not be given independent housing; they should choose between staying with their families or living in supervised hostels. These sound like terrible steps to take but it is, one could argue, still worse not to take them. Whatever their excuses the few wreckers in society do hideous damage, spreading fear and ugliness and hopelessness; they rob everyone else of their most basic freedoms. There is no reason why they should be left free to do so, still less enabled to do so.
Put this way round, it is quite astonishing that so much grossly antisocial behaviour has been condoned for so long. No doubt it is because people in power have never been much troubled by it; until recently they have been able to buy their way out of social problems. But now that the problem is intruding onto the pavements and the doorsteps of the powerful, desperate remedies might begin to appeal. As Edmund Burke put it: "Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without." And Burke was not an authoritarian.
The Sunday Times | Sunday, May 19, 2002 | Comments (0)
Bright as you are, Mrs Blair, you have no right to rule
The sleep of reason breeds monsters - and in these uncritical times a new kind of political mutant is emerging. It is the feudal meritocrat. Cherie Blair is one such oxymoronic hybrid. Her husband, the prime minister, is another.
Nobody can deny that both are meritocrats: both have been successful because of their abilities. But no reasonable person can deny, either, that there is something very feudal about their sense of what is proper; their attitude is much more seigneurial than that of the most die-hard conservative.
The Blairs clearly believe it is perfectly proper to appoint unelected cronies to high office and influence. But now it emerges that they think it perfectly proper for the prime minister's unelected wife to chair "millennium" political debates for the supposedly great and good at No10 on matters of great public import, with ministers of state sitting meekly in the audience.
The effrontery of it is dazzling: it almost blinds people to the insolent, insensitive, undemocratic arrogance that it reveals in the pair of them and in those who cluster round them. The prime minister said at one of these jamborees that they were "very much Cherie's idea", but it must have been his idea to let her do them. And now his official spokesman says: "We are totally unapologetic."
I wonder to whom the "we" refers. This first-person plural might be getting rather out of hand - or rather, out of the prime minister's hand and into his wife's; apparently at one of these power gatherings Cherie Blair said that anybody with further policy points should make them known, and "we" will take them on board.
It could be argued that none of this matters very much. It might look bad, but it doesn't make any real difference. The prime minister's wife has great influence in any case, with or without showing off in Downing Street drawing rooms. If she is more intelligent than he is and, as some people suspect, a stronger character with stronger convictions, it could hardly be otherwise. This is simply a piece of tactless vulgarity, up with which we will just have to put.
Any Conservative government would have been excoriated for such behaviour had, say, poor Norma Major tried to brainstorm an arts minister at celebrity coffee mornings, or had Denis Thatcher presided over a gathering of captains of industry. Imagine the howls of Labour outrage. But that is just one of the injustices of this funny old world, up with which we will also have to put. Politicians are always peddling influence. And undue influence is the spouse's prerogative - influence without accountability.
It reminds me of a verse by Hilaire Belloc:
The accursed power which stands on privilege (And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge) Broke - and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge and Women and Champagne.) Plus ca change; only the details alter. What is different about the Blair Booths and their cronies, I believe, is a new attitude to the same old thing. It is, I believe, why they are so shameless; they actually feel no shame. They have a genuine sense of entitlement: what might be wrong for others is somehow right for them.
Just as a feudal lord felt innately entitled to slice off poachers' ears or ravish village maidens, so the new feudal meritocrats feel that their merit entitles them to whatever their merit might suggest.
They believe, oddly enough (and even if they don't admit it), just as much in the hereditary principle of entitlement as feudalists of old did. In their case the inheritance is merit, as in intelligence and drive, and is refined, as they see it, by moral superiority. So, among other things, it entitles them to appoint their own private armies of advisers and their own loyal lords and ladies, just as they please.
They appear to believe that it entitles them not only to power but to glory, in the form of sumptuous wallpaper, the most chic Cal-Ital cuisine and the hospitality of the super-rich on prolonged holidays. And it entitles the prime minister's wife to cut an unconstitutional caper at No10 if she feels like it.
The Blairs and their court circle can hardly understand why people keep carping on about these things. Surely everybody realises that they are the brightest and the best? And the most moral? The purer than pure, as in their election pledge? And that they are entitled to whatever they fancy, in a way that their predecessors simply were not?
What is new about new Labour is that it sees cronyism not just as a perk of office but as some sort of divine right, inherited by the elect. Hence the prime minister's messianic tone when moved. Hence his silence about the sleaze that surrounds him: the righteous have triumphed, so things must be okay. But, as the 20th century proved, righteousness is one of the most dangerous qualities in politics.
Perhaps a generous observer might see all this not so much as the emergence of a new political mutant as part of a much more general confusion about people's roles.
Teachers, parents, social workers, judges, police, priests and not least the royal family have all been subjected to great doubt about what is proper - or appropriate, as we now feebly say - for them. So, particularly, have women. I suppose it might be just possible, even for a clever woman like Cherie Blair, to feel confused about a woman's role and to see nothing odd in having her focaccia and eating it, as both career woman and career spouse.
In my view, though, a woman who has a busy legal career very much in the public eye, not to mention four children, has very little place presiding over policy-making salons in Downing Street simply because she shares the prime minister's bed. She would not be there otherwise, on merit.
Mrs Blair considers herself a feminist; she should therefore know that women did not chain themselves to railings and go to jail just so that an independent professional female could tag along on her husband's Armani coat-tails. The situation is all the more undignified since the prime minister's wife has no constitutional right to do so.
It doesn't matter how clever Mrs Blair may be, or how professional. It doesn't matter that there may be no conflicts of interest for her and no indirect commercial advantages involved. She is a barrister and part-time judge and so is part of the judiciary; as such she has no right to meddle in the executive. Cherie Blair should be above Caesar's wife - too careful and too proud to put herself in such a false position and still call herself a feminist.
Incidentally, Mrs Blair does seem a little vague about her precise location; she has writing paper headed: "From the office of Cherie Booth QC, 10 Downing Street", which is odd. As Cherie Booth QC she has an office at Matrix and as a private person she lives at 11 Downing Street.
This letterhead is a very minor matter. But it is a tiny symptom of the feudal meritocrat's mentality - an unthinking assumption that a conviction of one's own ability entitles one to see the corridors and drawing rooms of power as one's own private fiefdom.
The Sunday Times | Sunday, May 12, 2002 | Comments (0)
Charles needs a lesson in self-denial from his mother
'Happy and glorious, long to reign over us" may be the words of the national anthem but they are not exactly the right words to describe the monarchy over much of the past quarter century. For most of my adult life there has been something distinctly unhappy and inglorious about the royal family.
The shameful manipulations of Diana on television, the ungentlemanly, unnecessary confessions of Prince Charles, the artless venality of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Prince Philip's wildly insensitive humour - all this has been enough to weary the most stalwart of royalists.
Only the Queen has been above reproach, but she has been bitterly and unjustly reproached nonetheless, and her unhappiness has sometimes been obvious in public. So the question of how long the monarchy might reign over us has risen again and again, particularly now in this year of the jubilee.
It is hard to justify the hereditary principle in these meritocratic, egalitarian times. But I suspect people know now that there are worse things than inequality, and one of them is the dogged pursuit of equality. Besides, in practice, the crown is a protection against the corruption that passes for meritocracy. Imagine what would happen if we had an appointed or elected head of state; we might get someone like Chirac or Mitterrand or Clinton. We might even get Tony Blair, the man who would be king and frequently behaves like one. The thought is too terrible.
Even so, many people must have thought from time to time that we have been seeing the beginning of the end of the House of Windsor. The prime minister's wife does not curtsey to the Queen, there are republicans in the cabinet and the young seem indifferent. There was a moment after the death of Diana when the public appeared to be turning furiously against the Queen; it seemed that she had suddenly been transformed into the Wicked Old Queen who didn't grieve for the poor Fairy Princess.
However, it has become clear, suddenly, that none of this matters. People still love the monarchy. At least they very clearly loved the Queen Mother, and at the beginning of the jubilee celebrations it seems that they still love the Queen. Thousands have flocked to see her royal progress.
The myth of majesty still has enormous power. The theatre of majesty is not just a bizarre delight to millions; it also fills a deep need. Somehow the Queen has retained her strange and powerful place in the national psyche. Even her rigid, old-fashioned perm is an emblem of constancy.
Somehow she seems to have solved the awkward problem of how to be a hereditary monarch in a supposedly meritocratic state. The way she has done this is well, if very deferentially, revealed in a remarkable BBC television series called Queen and Country, written and presented by William Shawcross.
What strikes one again and again about the Queen is her astonishing self-discipline and her overwhelming sense of duty; it is quite clear she puts her duty before herself, almost to the point of self-denial. She has scrupulously avoided self-revelation.
The young Queen was adulated, all over the world; she was the Diana of her day, immensely pretty, constantly photographed and watched: the archive footage is amazing. But the Queen was never seduced into taking this personally. She has clearly seen her constitutional role as nothing to do with her own personality; when she has been persuaded to appear in public as a real person, she has very rarely done more than act the part of a real person, as she sees fit.
One of the touching aspects of these documentaries is that they show glimpses of her in private, in film footage that hasn't been seen before; she emerges, rather to my surprise, as very charming, with a very appealing smile. However, as she would probably be the first to say, that is not the point.
The point is her public, constitutional role. She never imposes her self on her role. Just as few had any idea of what the Queen Mother thought, so it is almost impossible for the public to know what the Queen's personal opinions are, or how she really feels. Not for her the theatre of the face and body that Diana stage-managed so carefully, even when silent. The Queen receives swathes of crowned heads and ambassadors and worthies, and quite a few mass murderers, with the same formalities and the same impersonal courtesy.
All this self-discipline and self-denial is not merely the expression of old-fashioned attitudes or emotional frigidity; it is central to the pact the British royal family made for survival and for a constitutional role; the deal, which evolved in a classically British and pragmatic way, was that the crown would have no real power and no public say in things; its role would be neutral and ceremonial.
Coming from a very self-disciplined generation, the Queen has been able to accept the extraordinary limitations of her role; it seems much less likely that anyone from a later generation could bear them.
Diana certainly could not. While the Queen puts self last, it was quite clear that Diana was only really interested in herself - in self-discovery, self fulfilment and self-exposure, as in her pursuit of publicity and her public confessions.
Prince Charles's tragedy is that he hovers uncertainly between these two extremes. On the one hand, he is obviously extremely dutiful and devoted to all kinds of uncontroversial good causes. On the other hand, he too is all too interested in self-discovery and self-examination; he also unaccountably abandoned his princely silence about his marriage and spoke out; no doubt he regrets it. But it has all been a part of the drawing aside of the veil from the mystery of royalty - a great mistake.
We have come to know too much about the private self of Prince Charles. We also - and I think this is far more threatening to the survival of the monarchy - know far too much about his opinions.
It sometimes seems that Charles doesn't understand his constitutional role. It is not acceptable for an unelected prince, with all his inherited status and influence, to interfere in contentious political matters. The most stalwart of royalists might object to him speaking out against the policy of the elected government of the day; that is what he has done over genetically modified crops, for instance - a highly politicised issue.
It doesn't matter whether one agrees with him or not; he has no mandate to use his voice and his influence, and he only gives comfort to republicans. He was, for instance, extremely unwise to take a line on religious faiths, with his new enterprise Respect; religious beliefs are highly contentious and politicised, and he has no right to rush in where even angels are quarrelling with each other.
Unless Prince Charles is willing to accept the harsh terms of royalty, and unless he can keep the theatre of majesty separate from the squalor of politics, as his mother has done, he may find that he will not have long to reign, happy and glorious or not.
The Sunday Times | Sunday, May 05, 2002 | Comments (0)
