Social surveys

Whenever I travel far from base, which is New York City, I check into my hotel, go downstairs, pick up the local newspaper and glance over the front page to see what's concerning the natives. This sounds so natural, so obvious, as to be 'bane-al' or even banal. It is, I've decided, a highly sophisticated routine, cluttered with assumptions and prejudices that are unproved.

First of all, who are the natives? The local people, the ones who are noticed by newspapers and broadcasting stations, are obviously people who want to be noticed, which goes for newspaper writers and broadcasters and people who write to the editor, as well as people who commit murder, people who run for political office and people who run for the local football team or the dramatics society. 

But how about all the others – the modest people who have no gift of the gab, the ones mature enough to listen to show-offs and keep their opinions to themselves, the hardworking and the shiftless who equally have their own values and are not interested in letting you know about them? Most of these people vote and, come election day, they register their convictions and prejudices just like the rest of us. 

The fact is that when, as for instance now, I have been in California and I come back to New York and people say, 'Well, what do they have on their minds in California?' I grab at something that's obviously local, like the chicken crop in Petaluma or whether it's a good ski season in the Sierra. I do this because I don't want to be thought a fusspot if I say the truth, which is: Who are the Californians? 

How can I possible know what's on the mind of 21 million people who are scattered down 900 miles of coastline, in every sort of climate, doing every sort of job from growing pomegranates and dates to guiding missiles – a state which has the oldest trees on earth and the youngest nymphets, which has the highest and the lowest points in the continental United States, which ranks second of all the states in commercial fishing, second in orange growing, second in turkey raising, third in oil production, leads the country in the production of aircraft and missiles, is second in frozen and canned foods, has three of the world's largest observatories, 200 institutions of higher learning – and yet, say California anywhere in Europe and people – people identified as typical by statistical surveys not people picked at random – people instantly think of sunny beaches and bikinis and the movies. 

The mention of statistics may save us from this rather irascible argument that I'm on to. Another way of starting this talk would have been to say that lately I've been riffling through old newspapers and magazines and cartoons resurrected from the time of the First World War and then going through some of the diaries, memoirs and official documents of the time – documents, some of which were secret and locked up till long after the war was over. 

My own memories of the First War being those of a small boy who was as lively as a cricket and almost indecently curious about the way, say, a tank worked to why the Tsar was murdered, my own memories are extraordinarily vivid, more vivid than my personal memories of the Second War. Not so much about events and dates, but the flavour and mood of the times. 

What comes through from childhood, like an odour, whether delicious or nauseating, is not so much the facts, as the feel of the facts and, without wishing to go on sounding mysterious, I'll simply say that I did this bit of digging or amateur research because I happen to be the MC, host, or what have you, of a Sunday evening series of television theatre and we are now putting on the First World War series of 'Upstairs Downstairs.' By a rather funny irony, while this series was done with commercial interruptions in Britain, it cannot carry commercials over here because it's shown on the public television network, which bans all commercials and is supported by grants from corporations and by subscriptions from viewers. So, because each Bellamy episode without commercials lasts only 50 minutes, we have to dream up a way of filling the remaining ten minutes of the hour. 

Well, what we do is have me cross legs and pull on the old pipe. I speak figuratively. I would rather subject myself to haggis or fried cockroaches than smoke a pipe. Ah... I talk about the background of each episode complete with photographs, paintings, posters, what have you, that may explain much of the contemporary references to, say, rationing, Zeppelins, the Battle of the Somme, the Defence of the Realm Act, Mrs Bridges' recipes, whatever. 

Well, I've been staggered recently by discovering, for the first time, how much that inquisitive little boy back there between 1914 and '18 was a sucker, a hopelessly naive victim, of what he was allowed to read and see and think. Allowed, not by my father, but by the War Office and the censors and the newspapers. Now I'm not suggesting for a minute anything dark and devious that the official organs of the press, of the military even, were embarked on a sinister expedition to deceive us. Much of the debate between public figures in the newspapers was at white heat, the slam-bang conflict of men with passionate, if opposite, convictions. 

But in those days we all accepted much more limited privileges in a democratic system. We didn't, as I recall, go on so much about democracy and no wonder – women, both in Britain and America, didn't have the right to vote before the war was over. Anyway, we accepted, as we wouldn't today, the wisdom of secret negotiations between great nations and the necessity of censorship at the front. But what has, I think, more than anything, stripped us of our pretension to knowing what people think, what any given body of people think – a county, a state, a nation – is the great advance in our time of the science of statistics. The doom of much sloppy thinking and many cosy, social assumptions were sounded the day they isolated the statistical sample and applied it to the measurement of public opinion. 

It really became possible, beginning with the 1940s, to know at least the balance of prejudice and opinion on all sorts of issues. And I remember, after the war, persuading a distinguished pollster, we came to call his type, that it would be a great help to reporters, foreign correspondents especially, if he could use the same statistical method on finding out not so much how people felt about political issues, but about how people lived because we all cherish equally strong and unproved illusions about how a Scotsman lives, a Texan, an Arab, or whoever. 

Well, way back there, perhaps 30 years ago, I remember they came out with the first social survey based on a genuine statistical sample and there were some shockers in store about what they then used to call 'the American way of life'. Well, they've done it again and there are two or three big surprises. For instance, I was talking the other evening with a lady who is certainly one of the absolutely typical New York City types. We got onto the subject of social habits and she absolutely refused to believe the solid, objective findings of this latest, social survey. 

At what time do most Americans go to bed? 10 p.m. is the answer. What percentage of the population drinks any form of alcohol? We think of Americans, surely, as the great social drinkers, since they invented the cocktail and have a literary tradition, if no other, of being hard-drinking, carefree, easy-come, easy-go people. Well, 34 per cent of Americans ever touch alcohol – that leaves 66 per cent teetotallers. When do most Americans have their evening meal? Dinner at eight, as the movie title says? Not at all. Five-thirty is when most people take dinner. Incidentally, drinking among teenagers now down among the 14- and 15-year-olds is way out of all proportion to the national figure. 

Well, having demonstrated at length how unlikely it is you can ever know what is on the minds of one region of the country, let alone a nation, I will now tell you what is on the minds of San Franciscans, among whom I now am. How dare I perform this audacity! Well, since only a minute proportion of the population subscribes to social surveys, most people must believe what the headline writers and the composers of the front page tell them they are thinking. 

I arrived in San Francisco at the beginning of what it was generally expected would be the last week of the Patty Hearst trial and that might be on the front page of papers in Bangkok or Birmingham or Sheffield, but it was not on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. They've lived with it. I have no doubt that most people, except the jury, have made up their minds and, saving some last-minute sensational witness, people here have had it. 

On the front page of last Monday's San Francisco Chronicle there were six stories and I don't believe anybody listening to me now could win more than twice in six guesses. The second main story was datelined 'Beirut', carried the only front-page picture and was about the uncertain truce and unrest in the Lebanese army. The main story, carrying the biggest headline, was from Washington and was about a new attempt by the United States to negotiate a Middle Eastern settlement. The next most prominent story was from Los Angeles, the clothes' manufacturing centre, that is, about the amazing, national revival in the sale of brassieres. A four-column, bottom-of-the-page story from Washington warned about asbestos fibres being found in some baby powders. The last two stories, the final drive of the candidates in the Florida primary – a snippet, that. And Governor Brown has vetoed a bill which would turn a state's anniversary into yet another, long, three-day weekend holiday. 

Governor Brown is a throwback to the vigours and rigours of Puritan New England. He thinks we spend too much on comforts. He's cutting back on welfare programmes. He says we have enough three-day holidays as it is. He's fed up with money values, show-off politics, he refuses to live in the governor's mansion, lives in a small flat, walks to work – just what you'd expect of a governor of California. Or would you? 

Oh! And on the streets – airports, restaurants, news stands – they stop me everywhere, and I mean in New York and Florida and Vermont, to tender their sympathy over the death of Mrs Bridges.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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