The Light’s on at Signpost

by George MacDonald Fraser

  All that has changed. It is no longer taken for granted that a politician will bear a level dish. There used to be occasional scandals; now one follows hard on another, with shady deals and loans and honours for the boys and brown envelopes and cash for questions and favours in return for party contributions and blatant buying of influence and feverish attempts to hide personal interests.

  It is a sorry tale, made worse by the contempt which the Commons plainly feel for the electorate, as we see when a married MP, detected in infidelity, protests indignantly that it is none of his constituents’ business what he does in his private life—and in this arrogance he does not lack support among his parliamentary colleagues. What turns the stomach is not the adultery, which is usually good for a laugh, but the lofty assumption that the voters have no right to know that he is not a man to be trusted; he has broken the most solemn promise a man ever makes, but when it is asked “If his wife couldn’t trust him, who can?” there comes the inevitable whine about privacy, and the childish attempt at justification: “Everybody does it,” which is a lie. Everybody doesn’t. Without being unduly sanctimonious, one may remark that time was when unsavoury personal character, like poor performance, was a matter for resignation, but no longer. We have government from the gutter, and neither the detected transgressor nor the incompetent minister feels it incumbent on himself to do the honourable thing. They seldom jump; they have to be shoved. No wonder Parliament has fallen into disrepute.

  The tragedy is that not Parliament alone, but the very matter of government, has been besmirched. God knows democracy, that much-trumpeted and venerated myth, has faults enough; the notion of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, was silly enough when Lincoln said it, but later generations of politicians have turned it into an obscene farce. It is worth defining democracy, not in its literal* sense or in the swollen meaningless terms beloved of demagogues, but as it exists in fact: the opportunity, every four or five years, to choose among a few party hacks of doubtful character and ability in whose selection the voter has had no say. That is democracy, Western style.

  None of Lincoln’s conditions for government exists in fact. There is government of the people only in the sense that they are governed, but not in the sense that government comes of the people, and only a crook or a madman would say we have government by the people, when the truth is that it is in the hands of a dishonest, self-serving clique under unbreakable party control. As for government for the people, don’t make me laugh: the people’s will is flouted at every turn, on Europe, capital punishment, and the promotion of sexual perversion by government, to take only three issues. The politicians’ attitude is, bluntly, that the public are sheep who don’t know what’s good for them, and need to be led by a pack of second-rate lawyers, trade union activists, career opportunists, student agitators, and crazed feminists. That is democracy, British style.

  A striking illustration of this was given by one MP, a former minister, speaking on television, when he made clear his contempt for “grass roots opinion”, dismissing it as an unsound basis for decisionmaking; it was, he declared, a negation of political leadership.

  The arrogance of this, coming from a failed politician whose judgment one would not have trusted to buy a jar of marmalade, was almost stupefying. He actually saw himself as a leader, fit to take decisions, in defiance of the public will if necessary. I had the same kind of pompous claptrap trotted out to me on a radio chat-show by another MP when I taxed him with refusing to meet the public wish on capital punishment; it was for him and his fellows, he assured me earnestly, to supply a lead, not to follow popular opinion.

  Now, this kind of haughty pretension may have been well enough in the days of Burke and the Pitts, when there was genuine force to the argument that the country was best governed by an educated elite, trained and fit to lead and make the many-headed’s decisions for them. Many MPs then looked on public service as something to which they were devoted by tradition; they could also, with some justice, consider themselves the intellectual as well as the social superiors of their constituents and the unenfranchised masses. Those days are long dead. No one in his right mind would suggest that today’s MPs are superior in intellect, morality, education, or judgment, to the people they represent; many of them are plainly inferior on all four counts. Some cannot even talk grammatically, and by their speech shall ye know them—assuming you can interpret the half-educated proletarian noises they make.

  I have mentioned Burke, and those who defend the practice of MPs following their own judgment against the voters’ wishes can quote, if they are familiar with his works or have even heard of him, his warning to the people of Bristol that their MP owed them his judgment, “and betrays…you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” Fair enough for the eighteenth century, no doubt, but it was also this same Burke who said: “In all forms of government the people is the true legislator”, and, most tellingly: “I am not one of those who think that the people are never wrong…but I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is…in favour of the people.”

  It appears that the great Parliamentarian was no more consistent than any other politician, but he would repay study by those who, in their complacent self-admiration, have so little regard for the wishes of those whose judgment they were only too delighted to accept when it sent them to Westminster.

  An excellent way of demonstrating the unfitness of MPs is to compare them to ourselves. I think I know my capacity and limitations, and I doubt if I have ever been competent to run a department of state, but I led an infantry section in war when I was nineteen, commanded a platoon when I was twenty-one, and in middle age edited a great daily newspaper. Now all these jobs required some degree of what is called leadership—a gift which people like Blair seem to think is automatically conferred by election. I hold no very high opinion of myself as a leader, but can it be contended that the sorry collection of placemen and party hacks and p.c. women and semi-literate nonentities who have crawled and toadied and lied their way to Westminster are fit to lead me and millions like me—educated professionals and workers and artisans and craftsmen who have made their way in the world by real skill and perseverance, not by blathering and caballing?

  If I weren’t so outraged at the idea, I’d be helpless with laughter. Blair, a junior barrister who has never done a real job in the real world, to lead me? I wouldn’t follow him round the corner. Or any of his Cabinet of freaks and oddballs. Or the sorry parcel of yuppies and businessmen opposite.

  It may be asked, what’s the alternative, and the answer is that there isn’t one. The British political system has been defended as the least bad polity yet invented, and there is something in it—but only so long as the people who operate it play the game. I don’t apologise for using an old, perhaps outworn, expression; what I am saying is that our “democracy” is acceptable only if our elected rulers are honest, tell the truth, behave with decency, and strive to remember that they are there to serve the people as the people wish to be served.

  That is not what we have, or have had for thirty years, or look like having for a long time to come. Politics has become the preserve of the second-rate, a career primarily seen as a means of advancing personal ambition and lining the pocket; service is the last thing an aspiring parliamentarian has in mind. I must say again that I speak of the majority, not of the handful who have not forgotten what honour means.

  Occasionally, and more often since we became involved in the European folly, it is suggested that we need a constitution. This is puerile. There is not, and never has been, a written constitution worth powder to blow it to hell, including the collection of platitudes and wishful thinking by which Americans set such misguided store. Why it should be supposed that a document drawn up by a group of eighteenth-century English squires and merchants for a largely agricultural country should be thought suitable for the governance of a modern, highly industrialised, multi-national state, has never been cle
ar to me, but then I have always been mistrustful of vague, high-sounding, and sometimes downright daffy pontifications, and uncomfortably aware that a constitution means what you want it to mean. We have seen the US Constitution twisted and distorted and turned inside out by slick lawyers to a degree which Jefferson and Co. wouldn’t believe; to take one small example, they wouldn’t have equated pornography with freedom of speech.

  We must remember also that any constitution endures only until someone comes along who is powerful enough to tear it up, as the history of Germany, and others, bears witness.

  That, of course, is the ever-present danger, and it applies regardless of whether a country has a constitution or not. Any democracy which plays its people false is liable to find itself displaced by tyranny, and don’t think it couldn’t happen in dear, sane, sensible old Britain. All it takes is enough betrayal by dishonest government, and enough public disillusion, and suddenly Wodehouse’s wonderful fun about “Spode swanking about in his footer bags” is funny no longer.

  We can only hope for the best, reminding ourselves that our creaky old “democracy” can work, given integrity and courage in those charged with operating it; even the ghastly party system needn’t be an insuperable obstacle to good government. It’s a bloody awful manifestation of the worst in human and political nature, but it’s inevitable, as is the lure of politics to the corrupt and venal personality. The days when Cincinnatus could be called from the plough are long gone—and if he could be called he would be derided as a comic figure at Westminster.

  In closing, I must cite a prime example of hypocrisy in the so-called mother of Parliaments: the clamour from the Liberal Democrat benches for proportional representation. They demand it as the only fair, equitable, sensible, honourable, etc., etc., system. In fact, fairness, equity, sense, and most of all honour, have nothing to do with it; the Liberals want it because it’s the only possible way by which their clapped-out party can ever hope to get a share of power. Strange that their cry was never heard in the days (now some time ago, fortunately) when the Liberal Party meant something; was it not fair and equitable then? The truth is that today’s Liberal Democrats are like a football team fed up and resentful at languishing permanently at the bottom of the league, crying: “The rules must be changed, so that we can win.” It is a pathetic, typically dishonest plea.

  Quite apart from the moral one, there are many reasons why proportional representation, in any form, would be an extremely bad thing. One is that in Britain we traditionally vote for people, not parties, and the notion of party lists of candidates, chosen by the party hierarchy, is totally odious to any serious democrat. Not only is it wrong in principle; in fact it would mean that you could never get rid of those parliamentary disasters who so often rise to the top in their parties; p.r. would guarantee them permanent seats.

  On that last ground alone p.r. is abominable, but we may add the equally convincing objection, namely that it doesn’t work, as consideration of the havoc it has wreaked in various continental countries shows all too clearly. Fortunately, thus far New Labour has resisted the Liberal Democrat demand; the danger is that if ever they suffer a reduced majority they may bring it in to ensure the survival of Left-wing government—and its probable continuance until the day when Scotland becomes fully independent, and England, spared the presence of the Clydeside rabble at Westminster, will get the conservative (I emphasise the small “c”) English government it wants.

  * Admittedly, Commons tradition militates against this. Bad manners is deeply ingrained, as we see from the constant heckling, childish braying, waving of papers, and general kindergarten behaviour for which the Chamber is noted. If anything, M.P.s seem to be quite proud of this, and defend it as part of the parliamentary system. Indeed it is nothing new, but what was an unwelcome novelty was the playground “nyah-nyah-nyah” technique lately employed by party leaders who mistook stridence for oratory and insult for wit.

  * The much vaunted “democracy” of ancient Greece was not a democracy in any sense. About 5 per cent only of the population were entitled to vote, and women were excluded altogether. More than 60 per cent of the population were slaves.

  INTERLUDE

  Orcs and Goblins

  WITH THE FIRST FILM OF The Lord of the Rings trilogy having rekindled the controversies about allegories and symbolism which broke out after the books’ publication more than forty years ago, and new disputes about where Tolkein got his inspiration (the Warwickshire countryside? the Ribble Valley? the Western Front?) it is highly satisfactory to be able to settle absolutely one minor question in the great panorama of Tolkeinery. Namely, are the goblins of The Hobbit the same creatures as the orcs of the Ring stories, or are they of different species?

  This debate divided the canteen of The Glasgow Herald in the 1960s, so I wrote to Tolkein for a ruling and received a courteous and detailed reply, written in the famous spidery hand so familiar to students of his works. Yes, orcs and goblins were identical, and he added the fascinating information that they had been inspired by his childhood reading of The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, eerie spellbinders which had helped to freshen my own infant nightmares. Their author was a Scottish minister named George MacDonald (I was about to say “no relation” until I discovered that he was descended from a survivor of the Massacre of Glencoe, and therefore kin to my paternal grandmother).

  That is my tiny contribution to Tolkein scholarship. His orcs and goblins are George MacDonald’s, but as to other inspirations, who knows? It is a common mistake to think that one can spot with certainty the wellsprings of an author’s imagination, as I know only too well, having had a critic state flatly that I was plainly much influenced by Conrad—of whom I had not read a single word at that time. I will not enrage Tolkein admirers by noting that Conan the Barbarian preceded the Ring books by many years in the field of sword-and-sorcery, since I would bet heavily that Tolkein never even heard of Conan, but I have wondered if he ever encountered that remarkable fantasy of E. R. Eddison’s, The Worm Ouroboros, which has been casting its spell for more than seventy years. Probably not, but I’m fairly certain that Tolkein enthusiasts would find Eddison to their taste.

  SHOOTING SCRIPT 3

  Gene Hackman Should Have Blown up Vesuvius

  SOMETIME AFTER the Musketeer movies had been released, Pierre Spengler asked if I was interested in doing Superman, which Ilya Salkind was determined to bring to the screen. I had my doubts but said ‘yes’ on principle; however, later Pierre phoned me to say that they thought an American writer would be more appropriate, and I couldn’t argue with that; in fact, I was rather relieved.

  After that nothing happened until the scripts of Superman I and II were written by David and Leslie Newman, and Robert Benton. Pierre told me they had some slight problems with the script; would I go to Rome to meet Guy Hamilton, who was to direct? So I went, staying at the Cavalieri Hilton, outside Rome (notable for excellent ball-point pens which wrote very finely). Guy and his wife (formerly the actress Kerima, in Outcast of the Islands) were staying at a palazzo (Lanzerotti?) in the middle of Rome, one of those magnificent marble interiors which looks like a slum from the outside. We had dinner, and I quickly realised that this was a director I could get on with splendidly; a tall, genial, educated Anglo-Scot who had learned his trade sweeping the studio floor for René Clair.* He was slightly older than I; Kerima, who was about my age (early fifties) he referred to as “my child-bride”.

  The production at that time was planned for Cinecittà, and there I was given the two scripts—really one long script, split in the middle à la Musketeers. Guy said: “I want twenty-five minutes out of the first one, eighteen out of the other, and any improvements will be gratefully received.”

  In fact they were splendid scripts—fast, inventive, and thoroughly well-written, and I hated the idea of cutting them at all. But I did, in consultation with Guy—which means that I explained where I would abbreviate and connect up, got his ag
reement, and made my notes for the actual work, which I would do at home. There was no question of improving them; I just had to cut and rework so that no one could see the joins.

  I had previously been sent Mario Puzo’s script, which is still in my attic somewhere. It was enormous, with very long speeches, and I didn’t refer to it again: my impression is that if its storyline bore any resemblance to the Newmans–Benton job, the actual treatment and dialogue didn’t, but I never read it closely. Puzo got the principal credit on the first two movies, but for my money the moral credit belongs to the N–B version. At this stage I doubt if I contributed much new material at all—maybe a rephrasing of dialogue to accommodate a cut, maybe a different ending-opening of scenes for the same reason, but nothing original. Anyway, I did the work, getting the scripts down to size, and that, I thought, would be that.

  At this stage, incidentally, there were four super-villains in the movies, to be played, it was hoped, by Christopher Lee (as Zod), Ursula Andress, Charles Bronson (as the goon) and Mickey Rooney as a sort of evil jester, Jakel. The Rooney character had to go, alas, and in the end the villains were played by Terence Stamp, Sarah Douglas, and Jack O’Halloran.

  Time passed, in which I wrote books and worked on various other films—Royal Flash (with Dick Lester), Prince and Pauper (Fleischer), Force Ten from Navarone (Hamilton, of which more anon), and at least as many others which never got made, such being the way of this crazy industry. Five films written and actually screened in five years was unusually good going, but in my novice ignorance I didn’t appreciate this.