The British have had a good and close look at the other side of the moon. They have not liked what they have seen. But they are unable to turn their gaze away.
It is not that they are fascinated by the horror of the goings on on the opulent side of society. They are just dazed. It is said to have been a traumatic experience. The “You never had it so good” slogan became unconvincing some time ago.
Authors are openly accused not only of banality but downright vulgarity. British society is truly caught in a convulsion.
It is not that the affluent and the welfare society was a propaganda myth. In 1947 the average industrial wage was 6.8s a week. Now it is over £lb. Against this rise of 250 per cent in wages, the price index has moved up by only 82 per cent. On the basis of cold statistics the spread of the welfare state cannot be denied either, since the expenditure on education, health, pensions and unemployment benefits rose from £1,678 million in 1951 to £3,760 million in 1961. The trouble is not only that these services have not kept pace with the demand and the needs of the community and the weaker sections have suffered neglect, but that another world has grown in the shadows of the opulent society.
Law Evaded
As far as I have been able to discern, it is not so much the fact of the neglect of widows, the old, the infirm and the disabled that is troubling the British public. It is appalled at the discovery of the size of the underworld, the defiance and the circumvention of the law by the clever and the unscrupulous and the inability and the unwillingness of the authorities to protect the weak against the strong-arm methods of the new-type thugs.
In London, indictable crimes last year rose by nine per cent over the previous year to the record figure of 214,000 and the detection rate dropped to 25 per cent. The value of stolen properly was estimated at over £12 million. Barely 20 per cent of it was recovered. The criminals increasingly used firearms. The big crimes are the work of professionals organised in gangs. In the last eighteen months I have been here I cannot recall one major theft having been detected and it was only last week that one pay robbery attempt was foiled during all this period. In the affluent society, derelict slums feed the underworld of crime.
Horse Doping
Another scandal that is attracting a great deal of attention these days is that race-horses are doped on a massive scale. It is suspected that Relko – which won the Derby was doped to win. Many others are known to have been doped to lose. One estimate has it that 48 different types of drugs are in use and many more are on the way. The days old rum and heroin are over and more sophisticated drugs arc in use.
During the last four weeks the national papers have collected and published a mass of material on the doings of Peter Rachman who made a fortune out of vice and extortion as a slum landlord. They have detailed how he hired squads of toughs and fierce Alsatians to frighten and, if necessary, forcibly throw out tenants. Doors and windows and even roofs were removed to hound out the tenants. He had perfected the technique of harassment. It is disclosed that 50 per cent of his flats were at one time occupied by prostitutes who paid him over £20 every week for just one room popularly known as bed-sitters.
Shady Clubs
The way he evaded the Council and income-tax authorities alike has been exposed. In London one can buy ready-made companies for a sum of £25. Rachman brought 40 or 50 of them. Through front men he made real ownership so shadowy that the authorities could never catch up with him. He had rich and influential collaborators. In over a score of clubs in cellars with which he was associated, one could buy anything from girls to Indian hemp. But the more shocking part of it is that he got away with it and that he was not an exceptional case. Scores of other “Rich Charlies” (Rachman’s term for people to whom he used to sell his properties), are still in business. The racket literally involved hundreds of people.
The question has been asked why all this did not come to light long ago. After all, Rachman dominated the once notorious Notting Hill Gate areas where racial riots broke out in 1961as a direct result of the activities of the exploiters of West Indian immigrants like Rachman. This has since been one of the most investigated districts in London. Personally I am inclined to share the view of Anthony Sampson, the well-known author, that the public became concerned with this major national disgrace only because Rachman had kept Christine Keeler and Marilyn Rice-Davies as his mistresses. The facts were available earlier, only nobody bothered.
The British people owe a debt of gratitude lo Profumo. If he had quietly resigned, much of this filth would have remained covered from the public gaze.
Perhaps appropriately blood-chilling pictures of alcoholics and madmen, sadists and perverts, by Francis Bacon, undoubtedly Britain’s most talented painter today, are dominating the world of art exhibitions these days. Each of the figures in his pictures inhabits a private hell. His self-portraits would haunt even the worst Philistine.
The Times of India, 28 July 1963