Simply Smith

I READ with interest last week that we should be grateful that our Prime Minister is the control freak in charge rather than one of the Looney Left members of New Labour.

We should, this person wrote, thank our lucky stars that people like Ken Livingstone and others on the extreme left of the Party have been sidelined and enjoy little influence in the Labour Party of the late 1990s.

I have to say that his statement causes me little comfort. Indeed, underlying this comment is the assumption that the smile on our leader's face hides a determination to exercise control at all costs.

The smile is false, and if the smile is false what else is false? Is it that the only object of contemporary politics is to gain and retain power? Or am I being naive? The Puppet Master may use threads of gold but the puppet continues to be controlled.

I dislike being used like a puppet, and, like most Englishmen, I am wary of words like 'control' and 'power'. They tend to evoke a sense of 1984.

Since the General Election of 1979 the people of this country have been treated like pawns in a game of National Chess.

A game in which the White Queen dominated the political scene with a fervour and megalomania that would have done justice to that thirteenth century Mongol warrior, Genghis Khan. Last year, though, the Red Knight checked white's advance.

The People spoke, but did anything really change? Did we exchange the use of overt power for that of benign control?

This Government's majority in the House of Commons is as huge as the Tories was, and, like an oil tanker, requires careful steering.

It could very well sink a dinghy without even noticing the fact.

The problem with benignity is that it is difficult to counter. There is a reluctance to destroy anything that it is difficult to counter.

There is a reluctance to destroy anything that is gracious and attractive, and as a nation we fervently wish to be led with dignity and wisdom. But any smile, like the smile of the Cheshire Cat, really means nothing.

There is no substance to a smile, the power of a Puppet Master is absolute. I don't enjoy the feeling of being controlled in whatever manner. It lowers the dignity of human-kind and diminishes the status of the individual.

But, control is control however it is wrapped.

Puppets and Cheshire Cats evoke memories of childhood, and when we were children our parents decided much of what we did.

But we are children no longer, and quite able to make decisions for ourselves.

We must resist any attempts at control, albeit benign, and recognise that the exercise of power rests not with those in Government but with those being governed.

In the words of the old joke, be alert - everyone loves a lert. Joking apart, though, remain guarded when confronted with a smile.

You may be so captivated by that smile that you don't notice the golden threads attached to your body.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.