On the Rocks/Shaw Answers Some Questions

Act II § v

On the Rocks Shaw Answers Some Questions written by George Bernard Shaw

Title page

Shaw Answers Some Questions

(Replies to a questionnaire by Andrew E. Malone, from the holograph manuscript in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. Published as an interview in the Sunday Chronicle, Manchester, 19 August 1934)

In On The Rocks, which was staged a few weeks ago at the Abbey Theatre, The Prime Minister capitulates when he had, apparently, won over all his more important colleagues in the Cabinet to his programme. If Prime Ministers consistently behaved like this government, as we know it now, political power must inevitably pass to militant Dictators everywhere. Do you believe that Militant Dictatorship is the only form of government which will get the nations off the rocks?

The P.M. in On the Rocks did not win over anybody. The proletarians attacked and repudiated him at once; and the Conservatives, though quite approving of the items in his program which favored their private affairs, deserted him and followed their Die Hard leader the moment he called them to heel.

As to militant Dictatorship, it means no more than Gas and Gaiters. At present all the countries which are not, like England, merely sticking in the mud, are dominated by dictators: Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Kemal, Roosevelt, Pilsudski, and De Valera. But none of these dictatorships is like any of the others. The only feature they have in common is the abolition of party government and of Oppositions. The notion that the only alternative to the party system is a Tsardom masquerading as a Republican Dictatorship is only a symptom of political ignorance and thoughtlessness, which is unfortunately an almost universal disease at present.

Do you believe that your stage Prime Minister's way, of conceding everything to the powerful ones, or that of your King Magnus, of threatening to make an appeal to the country, is the better way of preserving and continuing the system of Representative Government?

A Prime Minister cannot help himself within the limits of the Constitution. Power is to the powerful. King Magnus outwitted his ministers at the party game, but was left entirely helpless in the face of Big Business and the threatened absorption of England by the United States under cover of Re-Union. Representative government is not at stake. It existed before party government (a dodge hit upon by a Scottish adviser of William III of glorious, pious and immortal memory) existed; and it will exist long after party government has ceased in England as completely as in Russia.

Do you think that a limitation of the franchise to those who really desire it, and take some trouble to secure it, would be of assistance in making parliamentary government really effective?

There should be no limitation of the franchise. Everybody who is capable of suffering by misgovernment must have a means of squealing loudly when he is hurt. Otherwise the Government cannot possibly tell whether it is doing harm or good. It is only when fools and robbers pretend that the man in the street can legislate and administer and govern that it becomes necessary to bind the man in the street hand and foot and gag him, which is exactly what the robbers want. Parliament is for the ventilation of grievances. An organ for that purpose is an indispensable part of any stable political structure; and it should be available for everybody, even for children—perhaps especially for children.

F. S. Oliver holds that a parliament "Where none was for a party, But all were for the State" would be "no more than an impotent Babel of virtuous voices." What is your opinion on the subject?

What is wanted is a parliament in which no one is for a party and everyone for his own fireside. Then the Government will be able to find out what is wrong with the firesides. If it is an honest Government it will set its wits to work to right the wrong. If it is a Gombeen Government it will study to maintain the wrong and, if possible, to intensify it.

In Ireland Mr. de Valera has expressed the opinion that when once the electorate has given a decision by electing a majority of any party to be the government all opposition to the policy of the victorious party should cease. All vocal opposition is then merely factious, and all active opposition treachery. Would you agree that this should be so?

Of course Mr de Valera is only talking the plainest common sense. He is exactly and finally right. The business of an Opposition is to oppose, even when it is opposing measures of the desirability of which it is so convinced that it passes them itself when it gets into power. How could any sane business be conducted on such a principle? Let the Irish people by all means choose whether they will be governed by Mr A or Mr B, or if you prefer it, by Mr de V. or Mr O'D (or their wives); but to ask Mr A to govern the country and then send in Mr B to prevent his doing it is an act of political lunacy which can be advocated by people who want to prevent the country being governed at all. Mr de Valera is forced by the very nature of things to refuse to govern under such impossible conditions.

Do you think that Ireland, or the Irish Free State, is on the rocks? Or, Is it heading for the rocks? Or, Do you think that it has escaped the rocks?

Yes: of course she is on the rocks, the same old rocks. And when a Catholic Irishman tries to get her off, a Protestant Irishman immediately tries to keep her on; and vice versa. Contrairyness is the curse of Ireland, as fatheaded snobbery is the curse of England.

If we are on the rocks, with most of the world, do you think we are on the same rocks? Or, Have we struck a specially national reef of our own?

Just the same old rock, on which idleness and parasitism are idolized, subsidized, and glorified, whilst useful labor and honest self-support are starved and despised. . . .

If we are all on the rocks—What must we do to get refloated? What must we do to be saved? You cannot, like your Prime Minister, just wave your hands ineffectively and vanish from the stage.

My Prime Minister vanished because he was fit for nothing but being Prime Minister in a party government. But his program remains. There is no longer any doubt or obscurity or indefiniteness as to what needs to be done. Of course it is not clear to muddleheads: nothing is clear to muddleheads. And it is not known to invincible ignorance. But the muddleheads and incurable ignoramuses will have to do just what they are told or they will be the ruin of us. Good morning.

G. BERNARD SHAW

Great Malvern

25th July 1934

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