She claimed that was half true.
Half true? I asked.
You agree, but I dont, she said. Very droll. An amusing debating point but hardly a serious answer.
In short, she claims that our political system as presently constituted abuses its authority in order to preserve litist privileges. And that, in so doing, great suffering is caused to the homeless, the unemployed and the aged.
She seemed to feel I was out of touch with ordinary people. I cant imagine where she got such a strange idea. Patiently I explained that I was fully informed about the disadvantaged members of our society, that Id read all the published papers, seen all the statistics, studied all the official reports. Whereupon she fired a string of irrelevant questions at me: What does half a pound of margarine cost? What time do Social Security offices open? How long can you run a one-bar fire for 50 pence in the meter? and so forth.
Of course I didnt have the foggiest idea of the answers, nor do I see the relevance of the questions. But she seemed to imply that if I had known the answers my attitude to authority would be different.
This is a preposterous notion. We all agree that it would be marvellous if there were no poverty, and we all sympathise with those who are less well off than ourselves. But we simply do not have the resources to achieve an equally high standard of living for everyone. Indeed, the whole notion of equality in an economic sense is a mirage. There will always be somebody who is better off than oneself.
To my astonishment she rose from her chair and started wandering round my office appraising the value of everything she saw, as if she were on a Sunday afternoon outing to Portobello Road. She asked me if my desk was my own. And the portraits. And the porcelain. She knew full well that they were government property, and she estimated that the contents of my office would fetch about eighty grand, which I believe is the vernacular for 80,000. Enough to keep twenty one-parent families for a year, she said.
I think that eighty grand is a gross overestimate, but even if shes right shes economically illiterate. I was about to explain to her how depriving the rich does not create any more wealth for the poor in the long term -- indeed, the contrary is the case -- when she asked me about my salary. I refused to tell her my income but she had looked it up. Is there no privacy any more, no respect? Is nothing sacred?
She had the audacity to propose that I drop my income to 100 per week, leaving 175,000 a year left over for the needy. Once again I tried to explain that my salary is merely part of a complex economic structure. But her mind is closed. She said that when she is in power -- God forbid -- she will simplify the structure.
All of this I bore in silence. It was my duty. I bit the bullet. But then the damnable woman went too far! She suggested that I was making a profit out of serving my country.
She had done a little research on me, or certainly on my salary. But I too had not been idle in advance of our meeting, and I now asked her a series of questions: for instance, how her policy of banning sexist calendars in council helped poverty.
Her answer was most instructive: sexism, she claimed, is colonialism against women. It would have been more correct to describe such calendars as obscene -- but the word obscene is now misapplied to describe war, financial fraud or other forms of conduct which may be wrong but are not obscene.
Clearly Agnes thinks colonialism is, by definition, wicked. And by applying the word to sexist calendars the case is proven, without having to be argued further. So I asked her if colonialism against women is reason for Houndsworths encouragement and approval of the adoption of children by lesbian working single mothers.
Yes, she said. I am against prejudice in all forms. I do not think that children should be brought up in an atmosphere of irrational prejudice in favour of heterosexuality. Several more questions begged there, I noted.
Then I asked whether her policy of allowing only free-range eggs to be sold in her borough helped in the fight against heterosexual prejudice, the fight for womens rights, or the fight against poverty.
Her answer: Animals have rights too. Colonialism against chickens, I suppose. But when I laughed she became very emotional. A battery chickens life isnt worth living. Would you want to spend your life unable to breathe fresh air, unable to move, unable to stretch, unable to think, packed in with six hundred other desperate brainless, squawking, smelly creatures?
Of course I wouldnt. Thats why I never stood for Parliament. But the point I was trying to get across to her was that battery hens make eggs more plentiful, and therefore cheaper, and therefore they provide food in her borough for the needy, about whom she professes to care so much.
She refused to concede the point. The price of the suffering caused to the chickens is too high. Funnily enough, I can see her point a little. I prefer to buy free-range eggs -- but then, I can afford them. In fact, her concern for the animal kingdom is the reason for her starting a neighbourhood Pet Watch scheme to combat the theft of cats. I indicated that the sum of money might be better spent on the needy -- but doubtless she would argue its being spent on needy cats.
By now I was making Agnes angry. She asked me what I have against our dumb friends. My reply -- that I have nothing against them, for I have a great many friends in local government -- did not amuse her at all.
We bickered for quite a while. Finally, having totally failed to establish any rapport between us, we stopped exchanging slogans and turned to the matter on the agenda: her wish to withhold funds from the police, ban them from council property, sack the Chief Constable, and allow several no-go areas.
I enquired sardonically if she did not even believe in colonialism against criminals, but yet again my little joke fell on stony ground. Agnes believes that people only become criminals because of the unfairness of society. However, this good-natured theory takes no account of heredity, or of the numerous privileged and wealthy criminals whom society has treated extremely well.
She also believes that the police in her borough are insensitive and racist. Im sure that many of them are the former and some are the latter. But it is still in the interests of all of us, especially those ordinary poor people on the high-crime housing estates, to have adequate law enforcement.
This she does not accept either, and this is where I lose all sympathy for her. She acknowledged that she did not mind if those people were in danger of being mugged, raped and bombed by Molotov cocktails.
I tried to explain that it could lead to the overthrow of our whole system of government, our way of life. Yours, she said with a smile, not theirs.
She was, in short, happy to abolish parliament, the courts, the monarchy -- everything! I offered her some matches to burn down my office. But she declined with a smile. I asked her why.
I might need it, she said.
[Hackers diary continues Ed.]
November 3rd
Tonight I sat in my favourite armchair in the flat upstairs, doing my boxes. I thought Id be alone all evening, but Annie got back early from Birmingham [Hackers constituency].
I told her that I had told Humphrey to have a meeting with the dreaded Agnes Moorhouse. Annie was amused: That sounds like an interesting social experiment.
Actually Humphrey said the meeting went very well, but I noticed he didnt want to talk about it too much. And Bernard tells me that he had four whiskies in the ten minutes after she left.