Still puzzling over my dad’s attitude

I WAS only a little boy of 10 when I lived in Edinburgh in the 1930s, but many of the children who lived in the slum tenements of the Causewayside had no shoes upon their feet, on the cobbled streets.

So I asked my daddy, who certainly was in the working class – but both my parents always voted Conservative – what was the reason for this state of affairs, that surely all children should be able to afford shoes like me?

My father took me aside and explained to me that if all the money was taken from all the rich people so that it could all be shared equally around, I could be absolutely certain that, in no time at all, all the money would gravitate once more, to exactly the same people who possessed it before, and all the poor people would be poor again.

Well, naturally, I did not question my daddy, who actually was a well-informed, selfeducated man who must know better than I. But even at the time I wondered, since he was so absolutely certain of the outcome of his view of economics, where was the harm in putting his theory to the test?

I can see that I am never going to get an answer to my question before I pop my clogs (if you will excuse the symbolism).

During the interim, between 10 and now, I have talked to many adults like my daddy, and I have not yet diagnosed if the sickness is in their hearts or their minds, or both. Certainty, which is called bigotry, is one of the symptoms.