Fay Weldon - Godless in Eden

This being the Age of Therapism we turn our attention, like Princess Diana in the famous BBC interview, to our anorexic and bulimic selves, not to the state of the nation. We see ourselves as wronged, not wronging, victims not persecutors; we ally ourselves with the underdog. We ‘felt’ our way to a Blair victory, didn’t ‘think’ it. When it comes to a decision about joining the common European currency, abandoning the Pound Sterling for the obnoxious new Euro, it’s the people’s intuition which is to decide the issue, not their judgement. A referendum’s to be held; let the people emote their way to the truth, since even the nation’s economists are defeated by the complexities of the matter.

This being the Age of Therapism, my local school, which has a leaking roof and no pens or pencils for the children, recently enjoyed a visit by a team of forty counsellors. They stayed for two weeks. Talk and listen, talk and listen. Adapt the child to its circumstances: reality is only in the head.

This being the Age of Therapism, the NSPCC, which knows how to wring hearts and raise funds, now focuses its ads along the lines, ‘Just £15 will provide counselling for a child.’ Forget hunger, poverty, wretchedness. Talk and listen, talk and listen. All will be cured.

Therapism absolves us of personal blame. The universe is essentially good! The fat aren’t greedy, or genetically doomed: no, their unaesthetic shape is caused by abusive fathers. (All switch! In Mother Nature’s new creation the old man is the villain of the piece, as in Father God’s it was the female witch.) As in Erewhon , our criminals are mentally ill, poor things, and the ill (as in AIDS) are the criminals. They didn’t eat right. All things are mendable; the paedophile and the rapist can be cured by talk and investigation of the past; the police, unlikely to catch the robber, can put the robbed in touch with their Victims’ Support Group. All will be well, and all will be well. Once Christianity was the opium of the people: now its sleeping draught is Therapism.

Poor suffering wretches that we remain, but now without sin, without guilt, and so without possibility of redemption, searching for a contentment which remains elusive. Though at least we cry ‘Love, Love, Love,’ not ‘Kill, Kill, Kill’. We strew flowers in St Diana’s royal parks, where’ere she trod, and try not to sew land mines.

Therapism demands an emotional correctness from us – we must prefer peace to war, tranquillity to stress, express our anger so it can be mollified, share our woes, love our children (though not necessarily our parents) and sacrifice our contentment to theirs, ban guns, not smoke, give voice to our low opinion of men (if we are women), and refrain from giving voice to our low opinion of women (if we are men), and agree that at any rate we were all born happy, bright, beautiful and free, and what is more, equal. This latter makes educational policy difficult: Mr Blair, little Mother of the Nation, loves us all the same: we must all strive for academic achievement and when we grow up must all work from nine to five, or eight to six or seven; not because work pays the rent, but because work makes you free.

‘Take up thy bed and work’ as The Daily Telegraph recently subheaded a rather extraordinary article in which a bold new Social Security Secretary of State declared that the disabled must not be condemned to a life of dependence on State Benefits. This government has the opportunity and the mandate – a familiar phrase from ministerial lips since the Blair Government swept into power – to reform the Welfare State so that it provides proper help and support in order to allow those people who can work to do so, while helping those who cannot work to live independently and with dignity. Disability grants, in other words, are to be cut. And indeed, and in fairness to the government in its new stepmother mode, she certainly finds her house cluttered up by unfortunate poor relations she truly cannot afford to keep. If only at the same time she didn’t throw quite so many good parties. (£7 million worth, they say, at Downing Street alone, since the election was won, attended by pop stars and flibberty-gibbets.) If only, ancient mutton dressed as lamb, stepmother didn’t keep claiming to be so cool and young and new; miniskirting those old blue-veined legs.

Everything’s being re-logoed. British Airways loses its flag and crown and becomes a flying gallery for ‘new, young’ artists – those two adjectives apparently being sufficient recommendation for excellence. (I won’t fly BA any more: the tail-fins bring out the critic in me.) The retiring head of the British Council in Madrid – the BC is the cultural arm of the Foreign Office – told me sadly the other day that its logo is to change too: from admittedly mysterious but at least recognisable rows of orange dots to something that demonstrates the Council is ‘all about people’. ‘But it isn’t about people,’ I protested. ‘It’s about civilisation, culture, ideas, the arts.’ Said he, sadly, ‘I wish you’d been at the meeting.’ Claim that anything is ‘about people’, magic words, and all opposition melts away. Diana reigns!

Stepmother doesn’t like other women much. Doesn’t want rivals. She gives them hot potatoes to hold and sniggers when they drop them. Clare Short of International Development, Mo Mowlam of Northern Ireland, and Harriet Harman of Social Security were all too powerful and popular not to be given office when the transition from old to New Labour was made. Clare Short is manoeuvred into taking the rap for Foreign Office bungling over the evacuation of Montserrat when the volcano erupted: Mo Mowlam is held personally responsible for failing to solve a two-hundred-year-old Irish problem within the year: sweet, pretty Harriet Harman, taking the rap for doing no more than mouth Treasury policy, is now universally disliked as cold and cruel. Oh, stepmother’s a smooth operator, all right.

When Diana died, when the black Mercedes crumpled, when the gender switch was finally thrown, when the male-female polarities reversed, when we all took to weeping in the streets and laying flowers, there was, let it be said, an ugly moment or so. That was when Monarchy, male in essence, headed by a head-scarved Queen, refused to show itself as emotionally correct. The Queen wouldn’t lower the royal flag to half-mast: the Prince declined to share his grief with his people. (Nor was that grief allowed to be in the least ambivalent: it was as if the divorce and the infidelities had never happened.) For an hour or so the milling crowd outside Buckingham Palace took on a dangerous mien. The people were angry. For once they wanted not bread, or circuses, not even justice – just an overflowing female response to tragedy. Forget all that dignified ‘private-grief’ stiff upper lip stuff. The crowd got their way. The flag was hauled down. The Prince shared his grief.

Since then the Palace too has shown a female face. Prince Charles is photographed with the Spice Girls, is seen tie-less with his arms around his boys, turns up somewhere in Africa to apologise for Britain’s behaviour in the past and has never been so popular. Even Prince Philip, that dinosaur out of the old patriarchal era, turned up on the occasion of the Royal Golden Wedding Anniversary to apologise to his wife. ‘She’s had a lot to put up with.’ The Queen glittered terrifically in a gorgeous outfit and looked pretty and smiled. Tony Blair escorted her once again as might an affectionate and indulgent daughter.

Women win.

Taking the plough to the Garden. The earth’s so stony: nothing blooms any more without effort. Written for the New Statesman as New Labour prepared its manifesto, preparatory to taking over the reins of government.