We feel for the Libyans and Nepalese, but British charity stops at Calais
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Version 0 of 1. I once asked a newly married friend when she expected to start a family. She looked shocked, waved a newspaper at me and asked: “How could I possibly bring a child into such a cruel, awful world, threatened with global warming and overpopulation?” To have a child, she said, would be selfish. I protested that she was taking the humanitarian gene too seriously. The same might be said of a British general election. How can we worry about giving birth to yet another messy coalition when there are earthquakes in Nepal, a genocide in Aleppo and thousands fleeing for their lives across the Mediterranean? “And now for the rest of today’s news ...” the BBC intones before coverage of such events. Is genocide really “the rest of the news”? There is no formula for the perfect distribution of global concern. Dickens savaged Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House for caring more for the Africans of Borrioboola-Gha than for her own children, malnourished and periodically falling down the stairs. Her eyes were focused on “nothing nearer than Africa”. Jellyby was a satire on colonial improvers, who Dickens felt were sucking money from his London charities for outcast women. I found it hard this week to keep my mind on the tired ceremonial of British democracy amid desperate news from Libya to Syria, Iraq to Nepal. The Libyan refugees are gathering on the beaches of north Africa as if for a D-day embarkation, ready to risk their lives to reach Europe. Their plight would dominate every British news outlet were there no election. The disaster agencies would be inundated with offers of help. How much money must the election have cost the oppressed of the world? An old (and sick) Fleet Street joke asked: how many dead bodies does it take to make the front page? The answer was, one English, four Irish, 10 French and 1,000 Chinese. There was an awful truth to it. When the British army was in Iraq, one Baghdad bomb was news. Now an entire town has to be wiped out before it even reaches a foreign page. One dead Briton in Nepal is news, a thousand dead Nepalese are not. We do care, of course, about the suffering of the world, but we do so in two modes: “caring” and actually doing something about it. The first may amount to nothing more than watching reports on television – irritated, perhaps, when the election takes precedence; the second impels us to private generosity. Giving expresses our sympathy, our desire to relieve suffering. Yet the second form of caring also impels governments to relieve suffering on our behalf. The coalition’s commitment to a ringfenced aid budget was controversial. It channelled resources into British NGOs and consultants rather than “end-beneficiaries”. It also protected the help offered to people overseas when the same budget was heavily cutting money for domestic welfare. That the public will give generously to charity is clear. Live Aid’s fundraising has grown in 30 years from $5m to $150m. But public support for the government aid effort is clearly limited. This was evident in the unpopularity of ringfencing the aid budget and the contrasting popularity of restricting domestic welfare benefits. When MPs give others money on our behalf we become naturally choosy about what they do with it. We want to know their priorities. Thus, by all means show sympathy for the Libyan refugees, we may say, but that sympathy stops short of welcoming them to our shores. Let Italy and France take the strain. British charity stops at Calais. With round-the-clock broadcast news, the demands on the west’s charitable instincts grow – and with them the danger of aid fatigue. The philosopher Steven Pinker may assure us that there is less violence in the world and inhumanity is in decline, but it does not seem that way on television. The UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee is currently fundraising for Nepal and Ebola, but has had to close operations for Syria, Gaza and in support of those affected by the Philippines typhoon. Iraq must be on the brink of some new disaster. Then there is always the Democratic Republic of Congo. It would appear that large parts of Africa may soon be on the move north across the Mediterranean, repeating some of the great migrations of history. We cannot predict how the peoples of Europe and north America might handle this. Britons remain concerned for the world about them. Newspapers cover more foreign news than in any country I know. But we are jealous of our shores. Tens of thousands of African refugees will not get a warm welcome. Caring for foreigners is a subset of caring for other people in general. The conflict of resources between individuals and the community – however widely defined – is as old as Plato’s Republic. For each of us, the preferred resolution is inevitably in favour of ourselves, our families and our local community. “Charity begins at home” may be a cliche, but caring does diminish the further from home the need occurs. That is why the umbrella of all forms of welfare will stretch only so far before taxpayers start to tug it back. The humanitarian urge is a token of civilisation. During Tony Blair’s war of intervention it underpinned, and corrupted, Britain’s foreign policy. But it remains real. Heartrending scenes of human tragedy must evoke a response from any normal person. Governments have duly advanced the boundaries of such charity, often beyond what public opinion would normally accept. A classic case of this was American lend-lease to Europe in the 1940s, a policy that was deeply unpopular at home. We prefer to behave as individuals first and foremost, in charity as in other sympathies. The compulsion to give gifts, including to needy strangers, is among the most puzzling yet most admired instincts of humanity. Most private citizens regard it as the essence of personal freedom. Yet governments, especially leftwing ones, have come to seek a monopoly on such redistribution of wealth, mostly through taxation. They regard welfare as their business. In many countries they even impose taxes on gifts, transfers and legacies. Policing this boundary between private and “nationalised” care lies close to the heart of democratic politics. An election should set the rules of engagement for such policing. So we should vote – and we should give. And my friend should have her baby without feeling the cares of the world on her shoulders. |