"New York Times" April 2 1944

"New Statesman" April 22 1944

MR LOW INTERVIEWS COLONEL BLIMP
POST-WAR BLIMP

by David Low

Low was asked recently by an American newspaper to explain his "Colonel Blimp". Here is his reply)

Because Britain now has a smart up-to-date new army it has been said that Colonel Blimp is dead. Such a wild rumour could not arise except from three misconceptions. First, that he is an exclusively British phenomenon. Second, that he is peculiar to the military profession. Third, that he is mortal. All of these suppositions are incorrect.

Blimp is best identified as Stupidity - the stupidity of the fool who tripe over his own confusion of thought. Stupidity without race, nationality, party or creed. If I draw cartoons mostly about Blimps in Britain, it is just because I happen to live there. There are Blimps in Russia, in Africa, in China, all over Europe. (Germany and Japan speak for themselves). Don't imagine you have not got plenty in America. When I hear some of the things American Blimps say - especially in answer to British Blimps - I often roll off my drawing-board with sepulchral mirth.

No, Blimp is far from dead. But he has Passed On, in the sense of moving to the green pastures of post-war reconstruction. In the old days the economic ideas of the British Blimp were conceived in a spirit of touching simplicity. He used to see himself as John Bull carrying in one hand a cricket-bat, in the other, the latest trade returns, being patted on the head by Britannia, who says with dignity, "Well done, sir. England is proud of you." Overhead, the pound sterling shines fixed in the sky. From 1930 onwards the picture was of himself with stiff upper lip, chin up and back to the wall standing alone (or perhaps with the Empire, which he draws closer with the Crimson Bonds of Kinship, as though it were a bale of goods) seeking a Revival of Prosperity by Restoration of Confidence in something or other ......

But a war like this one, works changes. Up till fairly recently Blimp resembled the famous old lady of the London blitz. Her house had been bombed, leaving only a jagged frontage sticking up in a

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of the nation's money is held by the masses, why should a millionaire be taxed more than one of the masses? Dammit, sir, answer me that!"

Fooling about with money always moves Blimp to indignation. When economists talk about "developing our resources" he is on his guard at once, fearful of financial blasphemy. Mother Money, like Mother Nature, has her laws, which must be left to take their course. Money is the source of all. Labour and the soil are all very well, but Money is Wealth. What Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden without a bank-roll is a mystery.

In the proposals of these economists for constructing prosperity and avoiding slumps after the war, he is quick to smell only subversive dodges for that pampering of the lower classes which he used to deplore so in the past. "Full and stable unemployment, forsooth! Without unemployment how are we going to get people to work? It doesn't make sense. Security and the abolition of want would sap initiative and enterprise. I believe, though I've never experienced it personally, that hunger is a great incentive. Why don't people have Initiative and Enterprise like old Lord So-and-so when he cornered the supply of boots in the last war?" Social security and other policies for expanding home markets by raising the standard of living seem to him unsound also. "Industry has to keep the workers - feed, clothe and house them, give them employment to occupy their time" says he. "It can't afford to give them spending money, too."

It is on the subjects of planning and controls that Blimp becomes most incoherent. He has the fixed idea that all plans, per se, are vague and idealistic. "Gad, sir, much better to stick to solid realities like Restoring Confidence. Post-war conditions are going to be chaotic. Why confuse them further by planning?" He clings, as a high moral principle, to private enterprise, meaning, not merely private enterprise operating to the desired end of the common good, as the planners say they want it, but private enterprise to mess up the nation's affairs too, if that seems profitable. Not that he is unreasonably blind to the usefulness of planning in certain respects. "Some people need to be controlled. The compulsory mobility of labour, for instance, and that sort of thing."

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After all, in the long run it depends on who exercises the control.

"Public control by these dashed politicians and their dashed bureaucrats?
Never! Make an awful mess of it. Control by practical business-men, no,
that's different." Control, that is, without interference or responsibility.
In other words, private control.

Blimp has a sublime confidence in the ability of big bankers and
big industrialists to adjust everything to anything, if they are not
"interfered with." (Why he should have this confidence in those people,
Heaven only knows, for their wisdom and foresight has not been remarkable
in the past. They did not, for example, see the slump of 1930 until it
hit them on the nose, and their shirts were on Hitler and Hirohito right up
to the war.... but let that pass.) "Leave 'em alone," says Blimp, "to
their merging, their concentrating, consolidating, centralising of manage-
ment, expanding of influence abroad and so on, and all will be well,
confidence will be restored, and the liberty of the Common Man preserved."
The spectacle of Blimp and his practical business-men, hard-bitten after
long years of pestering governments for tariffs and subsidies, shouting for
"No Interference!" is only equalled by the spectacle of Blimp and his mono-
polists preserving the liberty of the common man.)

Unfortunately, this dream-world, in which parliament presumably
would act as an office-boy co-ordinating the national policy to the
tortuous secret dealings of an oligarchy of industrial and financial
emperors, displays a fatal weakness. Even Blimp sees that it couldn't do
the job so long as Labour retained the right to strike. And Labour shows
no sign of yielding its weapons just to oblige Blimp. The answer to that
situation takes him on - reluctantly - to a further link in his particular
chain of fantasy; a coalition of interests, Labour taking a (minor) share
of management and a cut of the profits. No interference, efficiency,
smooth working, and to blazes with the middle classes. Good night,
democracy. Good morning, fascism!

Blimp doesn't like that prospect, but sometimes, when he is
filled with fury at politicians, economists, planners and bureaucrats, it
seems a preferable alternative to organisation, management and control,
open and above board for the benefit of the whole people, with the
management of the people being the sole responsibility of the people's representatives.

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to parliament. "God, sir, that's not democracy, its socialism!"

We are all supposed to be fighting the war for democracy against its
opposite, fascism, but if you want a good laugh just ask Blimp to
describe and compare the working principles of democracy and fascism.

"Government of the people, for the people, by the people", signifies
three different sorts of people to Blimp; the people who have things
done to them, the people for whom the things are done, and the people
who do them.

We still have Blimps. So have you. But we both have some
wise men, too, to keep them in their place. Thank God for that.