PARTISAN REVIEW
layer of the population of all social and cultural amenities, and infurja,tes
the middle, lower-middle, and upper-working classes to an extent of
which Labour's smashing defeat in the municipal elections is a signifi–
cant measure. It is the well-known policy of spending a pound to save
a penny.
Politically, the abolition of private motoring looks at first sight like
an ultra-left measure. At a time when the working man's main calorie–
providing and belly-filling foodstuffs are rationed to one small potato
per meal or one big potato per day, a few slices of bread, two rashers of
bacon per week, and so on, let us at least, so the argument runs, demon–
strate to the working classes that we mean to hit the rich equally hard
by depriving them of their motor cars. Even if the economic value of
the measure is dubious, it will lift the working man's morale. In fact,
there is good reason to believe that propagandistic considerations of this
kind played an• important part in the decision of our Westminster
Jacobins.
If
that is the case, it is
:a
further indication of their loss of
touch with social reality and the mood of the country. For those who
(apart from doctors, etc.) will still be able to drive about in their cars
are precisely the rich, and the category of people who in the eyes of
the working man are the direct representatives of the ruling class. In
rural districts the squire has his farming allowance, and will be seen
driving about the countryside as before, by using the simple dodge of
putting a sack of potatoes or pig-food into the dicky to prove that he is
on some farming errand. In industrial areas the directors, managers,
executives, etc. will have their business allowance; add to these the
bureaucrats of the Ministries, Controls, Coal Boards, Regional Industrial
Boards, and whatever they are called, and you will find that from the
point of view of the working man-in-the-street it is still "they" who
flit past him in their cars on their various "essential pursuits." And if
your little man-in-the-street happens to be a skilled factory worker with
a motor bike, a shopkeeper or artisan in proud possession of an old
secondhand Austin Seven, or a young mechanic who has built himself
a jeep from army scrap, then the effect will be directly the opposite of
that at which the Government was aiming. In fact, it is. It pushes the
upper stratum of the working class and the lower stratum of the middle
class off the roads, and leaves the ruling bureaucracy, technocracy, and
plutocracy in sole possession of them. Finished the little man's family
outing on Sunday afternoon in the rickety ark crammed with children,
picnic gear, and dogs; finished the bridal rides on the motor bike, the
young working man's vehicle of romance and adventure. The last bit
34
