Honest is honest

It still can be. If we're honest.

When I was 11 years of age, I gained a scolarship entry to public school. The school wrote to my parents with information about how to prepare their son for entry to secondary school. I read it as well, and one sentence sprang out at me and made me blush, at the mere thought that the school could think otherwise of me: It is expected that, by this age, your son will know the difference between what is his own property and that which belongs to others.

At a Kingloopcentrum in Belgium last week, where they collect old furniture and clothing for redistribution to the poor and those who can’t afford new things, a sorter found a handbag containing 23,000 euros.

Never mind the platitudes, and the “Oh, of course”s and the “Well, naturally”s: what would you have done had you been the finder of this small treasure trove? It’s Sunday. You’ve time to think about that.

Maybe 23,000 euros is what you earn in a day. That helps, doesn’t it, in being honest about 23,000 euros? Or maybe it’s what you earn in a year. Or maybe in 5 years.

My first wage was 25 pounds a week. 1976. Serving in a high-class shop. My first wage as a lawyer was 4,000 pounds. Not a week. A year. I did a paper-round as a boy, to help out Mrs Hatfield. She had no one for a given Sunday, so she gave me two rounds, one after the other. I can’t remember what I earned, maybe 5 pounds, but, by the end of the second round, it was nearing midday, and people were very angry at getting their Sunday papers at that time. I worked for my few pounds that day. Didn’t even know the round. People would have said, “You need to research it beforehand. To know.” For five quid?

The sorter who found 23,000 euros didn’t hesitate. They handed it in, and the centre went looking for its owner. “Honest is honest,” was their explanation. I know this guy who was picked up on a felony, with 122,000 euros in his home. By the time the police got it to the police station, it had become 62,000 euros. Policing is a commission trade.

We don’t know the name of the sorter at the Kringloopcentrum, or whether they were rich or poor. Many such people work as volunteers in such centres and, every bit as much as a copper could, could probably well do with a leg-up of 23,000 euros. But not if they know it’s not theirs. And not if they know that the person who gave the handbag might well be missing it, because of an honest mistake. And their own dishonest mistake.

That’s what such things are, isn’t it? Dishonest mistakes. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see the huge bundle of banknotes. Really, I didn’t.” Honest is honest. But dishonest isn’t ever dishonest.

When I grew up, Harold Wilson was prime minister and my father and mother were Conservative voters and didn’t like Mr Wilson. But Mr Wilson said one thing that struck me. He didn’t like being squeezed by bankers, who he regarded as dishonest, and said so. He called them the Gnomes of Zurich, to be nice I reckon. I don’t know for sure whether he was hypocritical, but there was never an accusation against him for moral turpitude. Only for his politics.

Nor against Michael Foot. The worst he ever did was turn up to a Remembrance Day dressed a bit like a tramp. Britain was outraged. Didn’t even polish his shoes. But his mind shone as brilliantly as Albert Einstein’s. People talk about substance over form, and then rail at Mr Foot for not polishing his feet.

People look back at leaders of the past. The folly, as many Ukrainians would have it, of Neville Chamberlain; the duplicity of Winston Churchill. The honesty of Honest Abraham Lincoln. Anthony Eden and the Suez Crisis. Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands Conflict. Tricky Richard Nixon. I studied my history, I know them. Haile Selassi, the Emperor of Abyssinia, used to nick trinkets from palaces where he was invited as a state guest. Equerries would return them with humble apologies, “His Imperial Majesty appears to have packed this ashtray in his suitcase by inexplicable error.” He was a kleptomaniac, by all accounts.

When I was in tourism, one hotel wanted me to ask the teenage guests from a particular room to return some missing items as we checked out. I was filled with the same indignation as when I’d got that letter from that school, but I approached the chaperones of the guests in question and explained the predicament. They agreed to supervise an opening of the suitcases. It wasn’t an opening of suitcases; it was an opening of Pandora’s box. In there were towels, keys, ashtrays; to be frank I wouldn’t have been surprised if they didn’t have the bathroom fittings in there. So, an order went out. Everyone was to open their suitcases, now. I went into my company’s office in Paris after the tour with a cardboard orange box filled to the brim with souvenirs from the hotels of Europe. And advised them to insert a phrase into their welcome documentation for student tours, not unlike the one I’d received from that public school.

But, there’s a difference these days. Because there’s an assumption that is all too often borne out by fact: that politicians are crooked. They’re in it for themselves and salt money away in secret locations, curry favour to push their own selfish agendas. And the agendas are not Eden’s and Thatcher’s imperial ones; and they’re not Nixon’s snooping, and they’re certainly not Lincoln’s abolition. They’re money.

Someone on LinkedIn this week was railing against corruption. One person said “Welcome to politics.” I said, “Yes, we know we have to get our hands dirty to serve the people. But acquiescence isn’t the answer. Principle is.” Someone else said, “There are tons of reports like this.” I replied, “So why aren’t there tons of outcries of outrage?”

Favour for the wealthy, so the wealthy will support their political campaigns, so they win. With money, instead of argument. Don’t laugh: money wins elections. That’s how stupid I am, and every other voter is. We vote because a party advertises most. Regardless of how persuasive its policies might be. We buy what’s advertised on telly. We want to keep up with the Joneses and look to the Joneses to know what it is we even want to keep up with. Tell me it isn’t true. Whether it’s Apple watches, Tesla cars, latest flat-screen technology. Or fentanyl, for that matter.

We may not know, because he won’t tell us, how much money King Charles has. We know one thing: it’s enough. Donald Trump’s tax returns have to be wrung from him. Chumocracy is how we deal with global viral emergencies. That wasn’t quite what you’d call enough, now, was it?

When I was a boy, my mother once inadvertently left a handbag with 250 pounds in cash in it at Hillard’s supermarket in Town Street, Horsforth. She realised and raced back, by foot, several miles, fretting the whole way. When she got there, she was told the bag had been found and lay safe, in the manager’s office. It was returned to her. My mother reached in and took out 20 pounds, a small fortune in those days, and wanted to offer it as a reward for the honesty of the finder. It was gently refused. “Our staff are not honest for gain, Mrs Vincent. They’re honest because we’re an honest firm. We are glad to see the relief on your face. It could have been one of us.”

Being head of state or head of government couldn’t really be one of us, could it? I can barely think of a head of state or a head of government, or many another person in a position of trust and responsibility, who I wouldn’t credit with dishonesty. And for many, I have proof. But I’ll put my hand in the fire: Michael Foot, Harold Wilson, Neil Kinnock, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Neville Chamberlain and even farmer-boy James Carter, among many, never, ever took a bribe. If they did, we’d have to root to find it. Today, corruption simply comes out of the woodwork, to the point where it’s just old hat.

Last week a humble second-hand clothing sorter proved their moral backbone in Belgium. And sent a small but clear message, not only to Belgium but to the world. That honest is honest. And dishonest is dishonest. And it’s a distinction that is clear, to him who is honest or dishonest, but that some still find hard, oh, so hard, to recognise.