THE GREASY POLE
The Great - Are They Any Good?
Interposing themselves among the various layers of hierarchy and the
ravages of capitalist society there is a peculiar human stratum which
goes under the name of the Great and the Good. Their function is
largely self-defined; in their own estimation they serve, they
instruct, they resolve. Many - but not all- of them were fashioned in
expensive schools, followed by years of devoted study in prestigious
universities, to prepare them for membership of exclusive clubs and
intimidating professional societies. Every so often they descend to our
level to tell us what we are doing wrong and urge us to trust them to
put it right. They assume that their very eminence will persuade us to
heed their advice.
The boundaries of the Great and the Good are murky, difficult to set.
It is probably easier to say who is not one of them than who is. They
are unlikely to be found battling their way to work in a bus queue or a
sardine tin tube train. Typically, among their ranks are newspaper
editors, expired politicians, media personalities, university big-wigs,
ex-civil service mandarins and lawyers, especially those who have
graduated onto the Bench. They are often on call to newspapers or TV
programmes to cobble together some empty pontificating on a current
event. Their names are among the first to be thought of when it is
necessary to populate some quango or official enquiry charged with
blanketting some nasty reality relating to property society. So they
infest organisations like the Parole Board, the Press Complaints
Council, hospital boards of management. Some of them might find
themselves sitting as a governor of the BBC. (When the chairmanship at
the BBC fell vacant after the precipitous departure of Gavin Davies an
ambitious queue of the Great and the Good formed, hopeful for the job,
which yields a pay off of £81,320 a year for a four-day week).
Ryder and Radley
At this point we introduce Lord Ryder of Wensum, who is plainly among
the Great and the Good because he is a governor of the BBC and
its vice-chairman, acting chairman until Davies’ successor is
appointed. The Wensum bit of Ryder’s name is a river which provided a
natural defence to the unwalled side of the city of Norwich. When Ryder
was raised to the peerage he took the title of Wensum because he comes
from that part of the country; it is where his family reaped the kind
of profits to send him to a public school to begin the education
necessary for someone destined to be among the Great and the Good. In
fact he went to one of the more modern, less prestigious, public
schools - Radley, which was established as recently as 1847 and which
may have tried to assuage the shame of not being on the same level as
Eton or Harrow by imposing a notably abrasive regime on its unfortunate
scholars. One who went there described at as an “arriviste” school
where “+I was regularly withdrawn from everyday life for months on end,
as if abducted by aliens, and brought here instead. At the time, I
blamed the parents”. After participating in Radley’s compulsory Rugby
football, its cold baths and punishing long runs in the early morning
darkness, Ryder must have found relief in one of the more famous of
Cambridge colleges where he could unspectacularly graduate in history.
After that there was an appropriately seamless progress into journalism
(at the Daily Telegraph of course) and life as a farmer. But it seemed
the urge to give all this up in order to serve the rest of us
unfortunates was strong enough to persuade Ryder to opt for a career in
Tory politics. Like any new seeker after the higher reaches of the
greasy pole, he had to prove his motivation by trying his luck at some
hopeless seat. He took two batterings at the impregnable Labour
stronghold of Gateshead East in the general elections of 1974, until in
1983 he was ushered into the comfort of Mid Norfolk - which was not
only solidly Tory but his home area as well. This agreeable ending was
made even happier when, soon after arriving at Westminster, Ryder was
singled out for promotion - well, his wife was private secretary to
Margaret Thatcher, who was at their wedding - holding some minor jobs
before moving to Economic Secretary to the Treasury in 1989. In 1990 he
disappointed Thatcher, who had done so much for his career, by adroitly
switching sides in the Tory leadership struggle to support John Major,
who in his turn rewarded him with the job of Chief Whip.
Bastards and Sleaze
But Ryder’s luck was out for that was not the best time to be a Tory
Whip, what with John Major’s battle with the Euro-sceptic
“bastards”, including the unlamented Iain Duncan Smith. (Another of the
rebels, Teresa Gorman, complained in her book Bastards about how
ruthless the Tory Whips were with them). And that was not the end of
the discipline problems, as the party’s MPs seemed to be queuing up to
discredit Major’s unwise call to get Back to Basics with a succession
of exotic embroilments and underhand deals which have collectively gone
down in history as Tory Sleaze. Nothing he had endured at Radley had
prepared Ryder for this and in 1997 he decided that enough was enough.
He left active politics, became a director of Ipswich Town Football
Club (which proved that the Great and the Good did not lose the common
touch) and founded and became chairman of two local private radio
stations. As he did this he may have congratulated himself on his
timing for in the 1997 election his 1983 majority of 15,515 shrivelled
to just 1336. In a traditional show of gratitude for Ryder’s devoted
labours in lubricating the process of capitalism’s deceptions Major
elevated him into a Life Peer, with an appropriate gong - the OBE - to
go with it. >From here it was a short, predictable step for him to
become a governor of the BBC and, in January 2002, the Corporation’s
vice chairman.
It was from that vantage point that Ryder made his grovelling apology
to the government over the Andrew Gilligan affair. “On behalf of the
BBC,” he snivelled, he had “No hesitation in apologising unreservedly
for our errors”. Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell - who have yet to
apologise for their “errors” over the 45 minutes Weapons of Mass
Destruction distortion - were delighted at Ryder’s fulsome toadying.
They overlooked the fact that Ryder was not speaking “on behalf of” the
workers at the BBC, who staged an immediate mass protest, nor for the
thousands who were outraged by the government’s cynicism and Hutton’s
readiness to brush it all aside.
Weirdo and Watches
So what kind of politician, journalist, farmer, Life Peer, BBC
governor, is the Great and Good Lord Ryder of Wensum? A fellow Tory MP
- not one, it must be said, famous for being discreetly considerate -
described him as weird, quiet and secretive, wearing his watch upside
down because the time of day was not a matter for public disclosure
(whatever that means). Edwina Currie, perhaps making comparison to John
Major, thought him “skinny and youthful-looking+hiding behind owlish
glasses, drinking Diet Coke+” He did have one fervent admirer though,
at least for a while, in the odious, fascistic Alan Clark, who said he
was “+such fun. So intelligent, and has the right views on practically
every topic” (although Clark did not make it clear whether these
“topics” included Nazi Germany). But as Clark became increasingly
bitter about being out of Parliament (ignoring the fact that it was by
his own decision to stand down) Ryder ceased to be a subject for his
admiration. “I am ‘put out’ by my friends ignoring me,” whined the
tediously egocentric diarist of Saltwood Castle; “Especially wounded by
Richard. I did think that he was a friend, and I a confidant of his”.
Clark’s final opinion, contemptuously approving his wife’s waspish
appraisal, was that Ryder was “+just a little accountant+on the way out
he scuttled away through a side door”.
But if Ryder was an accountant he was clearly one who could do his
sums, as he proved in 1990 when he calculatedly deserted Margaret
Thatcher in the hope that he would be better off supporting Major.
Thatcher wailed at his treachery:
It was a personal, as well as a political blow to
learn that
Richard, who had come with me to No. 10 all those
years ago
as my political secretary and whom I had moved up
the ladder
as quickly as I decently could, was deserting at the
first whiff
of grapeshot.
With his kind of credentials, Ryder fits comfortably in the ranks of
the Great and the Good. His grovelling apology about “errors” at the
BBC and everything about his amputated career in politics implied that
the fault lies with the rest of us, for our scepticism when we are
confronted with the likes of him and their pathetic defence of
capitalism. We might ask, what gives him the right to behave in that
way? What gave Thatcher and Major the right to foster him in what they
hoped would be his faultless journey up the greasy pole? Such “rights”
spring from the basic class structure of capitalism with its minority
privileges and will endure with the system. Lord Ryder of Wensum is
living witness to the cruel cynicism inherent in that system as well as
the confusion among those who speak loudest in its defence.
IVAN
Socialist
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