Now that we have got the Arms to Iraq business out of the way, Sir Richard Scott can get down to what may turn out to be his real life’s work. This will be a new dictionary of English usage in which words can change their meaning by the addition of a nervous qualifying phrase or can have their meaning obscured by burying them beneath layers of double—perhaps treble or even quadruple—negatives.
For example, if someone thinks an Attorney General is personally at fault in dealing with evidence which might help to acquit people who are in danger of going to prison they don’t have to say so directly; the proper way is to say “I do not accept that he was not personally at fault.” For example, if a minister is caught out in a piece of double-dealing he or she can be described as making a claim of a “duplicitous nature", which softens the criticism quite a bit, and then can be got off the hook almost entirely by saying that of course they had "no duplicitous intention". For example, if a government has avoided what it claims to be its clear obligation always to conform to the constitutional principle of ministers’ accountability, there is no need to denounce this in clear terms; any criticism you make can be qualified with the words "in my opinion". And as by this time more people will be completely fed-up with such wimpish evasions it is a fair bet that your opinion will not be given much more than a contemptuous laugh.
Anyway, if Sir Richard Scott will send The Greasy Pole a free, autographed copy of his dictionary when it is complete we will respond by sending him a copy of the dictionary occasionally referred to by this column—a dictionary which defines duplicity as "deceit, double-dealing", and which he can use the next time he is called on to tackle the question of whether politicians ever mislead the rest of us and if they do whether this is deliberate or by accident. Whether, in words which may well make Sir Richard shudder, they ever tell lies.
The relevance of this issue is rooted in the fact that politicians base their appeal for votes on a clear, copper-bottomed guarantee that they are people of honour, people who hold to principles, which they will never betray. On the basis of those principles they make promises to us about how they will re-arrange society in any number of superficial ways so that many of its problems won’t worry us any more. Vote for them. You know you can trust them. Don’t you?
And so it has come about that among its many quaint, tourist-attracting rituals like Black Rod knocking three times on the door, like MPs addressing each other as honourable and gallant and learned or whatever and never saying anything controversial in their maiden speech, there is also the tradition that they never lie in the House of Commons. This causes certain difficulties because not a few MPs and ministers have been caught out making statements in the House which were not true. Indeed over the past few years there has been a succession of cases in which Members have at first defended themselves against allegations but have then had more-or-less to own up and resign
Shackled women
But whatever happens none has ever admitted to telling a lie and, perhaps more to the point, no other MP has ever accused them of doing so. Because that is another of those quaint customs. What it gets down to is this: it is permissible to tell a lie but if you are caught out you must not call it a lie; it is permissible to say that a Member is lying but you must not actually use the word. Other words must be used. Like mislead.
Because that was the word used by Ann Widdecombe, the Home Secretary’s deputy who is in charge of prisons, in the infamous case of the Shackled Women. Under the rule of Howard and Widdecombe, the prisons of Britain have had to develop internal regimes which have left the more anxious reformers wondering how long it will be before the crank and the treadmill will return. The duo in charge at the Home Office have notoriously thick skins, but even they were rattled when it was revealed that women prisoners who were about to give birth were being transferred to the nearby Whittington Hospital in chains which were not removed until the final stage of the confinement.
In the subsequent uproar Widdecombe—who was left by Howard to take the criticism—defended the policy with her customary obduracy and seemed to think she had clinched the argument by saying that the medical staff at the Whittington had not complained about the barbaric practice. But for Widdecombe this was a claim too far because the hospital had complained—indeed it would have been astounding if any doctor or nurse would happily treat patients in shackles— and had done so some time before. And of course the hospital were not slow to put the record straight, to expose Widdecombe in giving false information to parliament.
Telling the truth
Now this could have been a serious matter. Had Widdecombe told a lie about so sensitive an issue? Well we have already mentioned how durable are her dermal defences. So when she explained the matter to the House, when she apologised, it was not for lying, but for “misleading" them. So that’s alright then. Except, perhaps, for the women in Holloway and their children.
Except, perhaps, for the millions of people who live in the wider confinement of working-class life, who are so impressed with the promises and the declarations of honour that they elect politicians to sit in places where they make laws and mislead each other but never, never tell lies. Of course there is a desperate need in all this ritual of deception. What would happen, if politicians suddenly began to tell the truth? If they suddenly exposed their own impotence to make a world free of war. poverty, famine, fear. . . ? If they suddenly admitted that all those promises were really bribes to persuade us to vote for them? If the politicians’ sophistry fell into disuse and words always meant—well, what we know they mean?
Ivan
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