James Bond creator Ian
Fleming may have ruled the world of spy
literature at the zenith of 007's popularity, but what he he
ruled a country? Fleming penned a manifesto, titled "If
I Were Prime Minister" for The Spectator magazine after
the publication of his seventh novel 'Goldfinger'.
Printed in the October 9th, 1959 issue, some of his opinions
were years ahead
of their time such as electric cars, relaxed gambling laws, a
crack down on expenses account abuse, and open access to government
figures and statistics.
If I Were Prime Minister, by Ian Fleming
I am a totally non-political animal. I prefer the name of the
Liberal Party to the name of any other and I vote Conservative
rather than Labour, mainly because the Conservatives have bigger
bottoms and I believe that big bottoms make for better government
than scrawny ones. I only once attended a debate in the House
of Commons. It was, I think, towards the end of 1938 when we
were unattractively trying to cajole Mussolini away from Hitler.
I found the hollowness and futility of the speeches degrading
and infantile and the well-fed, deep-throated ‘Hear, hears’ for
each mendacious platitude verging on the obscene. If this is
politics, I reflected, I would much rather not see it happening
and I swore never to re-enter the Chamber. I never have.
My own particular hero is Sir Alan Herbert, an independent-minded
though admittedly think-shanked man, who swimming alone, stayed
out of the muddy red and blue stream and more or less single-handed
changed a section of our law for the benefit of the common man.
And of course I have the affectionate reverence for Sir Winston
Churchill that most of us share. But in general I regard politicians
as a race apart and if the Bottle Imp were to offer me high office
I would accept, and that with reluctance, nothing less than the
Premiership.
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On taking office, I would concentrate
on small things.
The big things—the H-bomb, the conquest
of outer space, the colour problem—these are too
vast and confused for one man’s brain; I would leave
them to my Ministers and to the wave of common sense, which,
it seems to me, by a process of osmosis between peoples
rather than between politicians, is taking a rapid and
healthy control of the world.
My first ‘Action This Day,’ through
my Minister of Transport, would be simple but significant:
on the road signs displaying a diamond-studded black banana
with the word ‘CURVE’ underneath, I would have
the word ‘CURVE’ removed. By this and other
small tokens, I would proclaim that the English people
are no longer babies and that, after all these years of
universal education, I propose to deal with the citizens
as if they were in fact universally educated. All my education
would start with this assumption. |
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Next, I would try and stop people being ashamed of themselves.
In the United Kingdom we have a basically nonconformist conscience
and the fact that taxation, controls and certain features of
the Welfare State have turned the majority of us into petty criminals,
liars and work-dodgers is, I am sure, having a very bad effect
of the psyche of the kingdom. Tax-dodging in all its forms would
have my attention and I would proceed to reduce income tax, surtax
and death duties by the maximum amount possible in exchange for
abolishing all expense accounts and other forms of fiscal chicanery.
Motor-cars, whether Rolls-Royces or Fords, owned by a company,
would have the name of that company displayed in half-inch letters
in a prominent position so that if a company’s car was
seen disgorging a load of mink and cigar smoke in theatreland
in the evening, any of the company’s shareholders who happened
to be a witness could, if he wanted, ask the company to justify
the use of a company vehicle. But the real deterrent would be
snobbery. I think everyone would gain morally by this legislation
and no real harm would be done to anyone. To begin with, of course,
the restaurants would suffer from the absence of the expense-account
aristocracy who have ridiculously inflated the price of meals
all over the world, while at the same time deflating the quality
of the food. I would hope that the really good restaurants would
survive, but that the hosts of bogus eating places with Algerian ‘Infuriator’ (otherwise
known as ‘Instant’ Burgundy), described as Beaujolais
selling at 15s. for half a carafe, would disappear.
Having looked after the moral fibre of the ‘Haves,’ I
would next direct my attention to the work-shy ‘Have-nots,’ being
convinced that the man who is not returning good work for good
money is basically ashamed of himself. In consultation with the
trade unions, I would devise a scheme of benevolent Stakhanovism.
There would be a minimum wage in every industry, but rapidly
mounting merit bonuses for real work in either quantity or quality.
This would not abolish tea breaks or the games of whist but make
them unpopular with the wives. I would also request the trade
unions to re-examine the whole question of overtime. Having obtained
an eight-hour day and a five-day week, it seems to me wrong that
workers should use two extra days and many extra hours earning
overtime double money when they should be enjoying the leisure
and repose they have fought to obtain.
And while on the subject of leisure, I would
certainly consider appointing a Minister of Leisure, with a small
staff, to make every effort to enhance the pleasure people get
from their increasing spare time.
Having observed at close quarters the great
waste of money on paint and canvases in one of our art schools,
I am not convinced that the Welfare ‘artist,’ copying
as he usually does, one or another, or very often several, of
the modern theories of painting, is worth encouraging any farther.
Instead, therefore, of spending larger sums on the arts, I would
spend them on the crafts. I would encourage the fine metal workers,
enamellers, binders, printers, woodworkers, etc., in a most lavish
fashion and attempt to arrest at once the decline of the craftsman,
even down to the lowly thatcher.
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To give the craftsman, the designer and,
of course, the artist an outlet for his capabilities, I
would take the Rolls-Royce motor-car as an example and
persuade all manufacturers that, let us say, 5 per cent.
of output should consist of an absolutely top-grade, luxury
product in which price is an entirely secondary consideration.
Every firm would then be producing, perhaps only in small
quantities, the Rolls-Royce of its particular line of manufacture—real
grain whisky and gin, quintessentially distilled, ice-cream
made with real strawberries and real cream, lavatory paper
as luxurious as a peach skin, scissors that actually cut
your nails, and so on through the list of all our products.
By this means I would make quality goods
available to those here and abroad who like these things
and can afford them
and I would hope to educate the admass to eschew the shoddy.
Coincidentally, in the world’s markets, ‘British
made’ would go back to the place where it used to
belong. |
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Next I should proceed to a complete reform of
our sex and gambling laws and endeavour to cleanse the country
of the hypocrisy with
which we so unattractively clothe our vices. To deal only with
my most far-reaching proposal, I would consult with my Minister
of Leisure about the possibility of turning the Isle of Wight
into one vast pleasuredome (cf. Fr. Baisodrome) which would be
a mixture of Monte Carlo, Las Vegas, pre-war Paris and Macao.
Here there would be casinos (they are building one on Gibraltar
and they have one in Nassau; why not one on the Isle of Wight?)
and the most luxurious maisons de tolérance in the world.
Bingo, poker, faro, fan-tan, craps—even whist drives with
money prizes! This would be a world where the frustrated citizen
of every class could give full rein to those basic instincts
for sex and gambling which have been crushed through the ages.
At last our cliff-girt libido would have an outlet and the sleazy
strip-tease joints, rump-sprung street-walkers and backroom card
games would be out of business forever. Since it is impossible
to suppress the weaknesses of mankind, I would at least put an
honest face on the problem and do something to release the homme
moyen sensuel, or femme for the matter of that, from some of
their burden of shame and sin.
After dealing with the spiritual comfort of the electorate,
I would proceed to his physical state, and my first step would
be the abatement of noise, carbon-monoxide gas and exasperation
caused by the traffic problem in our big towns. I would solve
these with the help of Mr. Francis Bacon’s recently invented,
much-publicized battery. Our present internal-combustion engine
is a ridiculous steam-age contraption which turns only a modest
proportion of fuel into energy and spews the rest out in the
form of petrol vapour of a more or less solid consistency. When
there is no wind, this lies in a dense layer in our streets and
we breathe it in day and night. It then rises into the upper
atmosphere, where I am told, it forms a kind of envelope round
the world which has the effect of interfering with the beneficial
rays of the sun. Whether that is so or not, the petrol engine
is obviously a noxious and noisy machine, and I would gradually
abolish and replace it by some form of electric motor. This would
take some time, but I would hope that, within three years of
assuming office, I could have converted the whole of central
London to electric transport. Very cheap, State-owned garages
would be built at the point of entry into London of our main
roads and drives would there transfer into electric buses or
the Underground and later into cheap, State-run electric taxis.
There would be quiet, no smell and no parking problems. Gradually
I would extend this system to our other great towns and in due
course the problem would be solved for the whole country.
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In an attempt to make government more
honest, I would face up to the fact that my Exchequer battens
fatly on the vices and follies of the electorate and I
would have HM Stationery Office publish quarterly a periodical
entitled Hazard. Hazard would give, without comment, the
very latest information obtainable anywhere in the world
on the ill-effects of smoking too much, drinking too much
and consuming white bread, TT tested milk, refined sugar,
foods too long frozen, etc. Hazard would also give the
correct odds for football pools and Premium Bonds and,
from time to time, publish the annual accounts of the bookmaking
firms throughout the country. Road accident figures would
be given in detail, and in cases where mechanical failure
(those shattering windscreens, for instance) attributable
to faulty manufacture was involved, the name of the manufacturer
would be published. There would, as I say, be no editorial
comment in the magazine, but I should be able to face with
a clear conscience the fact, from the Exchequer’s
point of view, the most valuable citizen is the man who
drinks or smokes himself to death. |
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There are other various small matters I would
attend to, such as men’s clothing, which I regard as out-of-date, unhygienic
and rather ridiculous; press reform—we have the grimiest
press in the world; the matter of titles—I would greatly
reinforce the Orders of Chivalry and, if a Lord or a Baron or
an Earl did not behave as a lord or a baron or an earl should,
he would lose his title after the third offense (as is more or
less the case with Service rank); rich State prizes for all inventions
or innovations that were even of remote benefit to the Commonwealth;
enthusiastic encouragement of emigration, but more particularly
of a constant flow of peoples within the Commonwealth; a Commonwealth
super-Parliament; and less fried food for the constipated masses.
All these, as I have said, are small, workaday things—too
small, alas, for the attention of either Mr. Harold Macmillan
or Mr. Gaitskell. So I look forward, with squared shoulders and
glazed resignation, to five years of Summitry, pensions and the
11-plus.
Thanks to MI6
Community member 'Revelator'.
