abrupt end and I am sorry. I felt we were perhaps rather straying from the point. Let me give you the text of a talk I gave to the Bridport Women’s Institute, before the Scandal, and when Julian and I were still developing our blueprint for the world of the future. They were attentive listeners. Housewives, like the readers of Aura, are not idiots! Here goes—
‘The rich have got to come to some accommodation with the poor. The poor are winning; they are all around, making themselves felt. They are victims, which means that though not necessarily good, or pleasant, they have a moral ascendancy over the rich. Those who are in the right tend in the end to win: those who are in the wrong to let them win. The war is hotting up. The poor creep out of alleyways while the rich put the BMW in for the night and hit the rich over the head and steal the tyres. The rich do not dare to be alone at night in their grand houses: who lurks to rape around the panelled corners, swings to attack from the ropes in the work-out room? Their talk is of property prices, hired bodyguards and stun guns, because the poor are at the gate, inside the gate in the form of the Mexican nurse, the Filipino maid, the Irish girl, the Yugoslav lass; the ones who stand while others sit, and wash the dishes while others eat. The ring on your finger is their dinner for a year. The homeless sleep up against the air vents of the great hotels, supping on the scent of hot fudge sundae and clam chowder.
‘Do not suppose the rich have taste: they spend for the sake of spending, to spite the poor, to say “see what I have that you don’t”. The poor have standards, dignity, taste, conviction: they live honestly, full of hate, shitting in the houses of the rich if they get a chance to break and enter. And why should they not? For the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and no one troubles to hide it any more; to shut the poor away in poorhouses, the old in almshouses, the mad in madhouses, the orphans in orphanages. They are all out in the street now, in every city in the world, and their eyes follow the rich and plan their revenge. And why not? The rich live as fearful princes: the poor live as angry beggars. And there is no pleasure left in the life of the rich: for who can tell lumpfish from caviare any more, and caviare is cholesterol-rich anyway, and forbidden: and when the rich grow old and hired nurses dab away the dribble, can you trust the nurse to love you, or does she hate you? She hates you. She will twist your poor rich senile arm to pay you out, because you have an airy house on the hill, and she goes home to a room in the damp and humid valley. No, the rich must come to some accommodation with the poor: must acknowledge their existence: must open their houses and their fridges and their bank accounts and let the poor in. And there will be no poor.
‘In Darcy’s Utopia this lesson will have been learned. That if the poor are hungry they will eat your food, and why should they not?: that if they are dirty they will infest you with disease, and so they should: that if you ignore them they will mug you and steal what you have, which is no more than you deserve: that if they sit barefoot at your door they will hurt your conscience and you will have to let them in. That therefore there must be no poor, and for there to be no poor there must be no rich.’
So you see, Mrs Jones, something has to be done. The proportion of the underclass to the rest rises yearly, both nationally and internationally. We have grown too good, kind and sensitive to mow them down with machine guns, starve them out of existence. We must incorporate them, or die ourselves. They’ll see to that. We must build our Darcy’s Utopia before it is too late. Our systems, our structures, have to change. I do not expect you to agree with me on everything. I do not maintain I am even necessarily right. I just want you to think about it, and the readers of Aura too.