Notebook
There is a tendency among Europeans to assume that Americans are auto- matically more dynamic and efficient than themselves. Even Mrs Thatcher's Govern- ment believed that only an American would be capable of saving British Steel. It was a similar touching faith in American managerial skills which, 1 believe, must have persuaded Pope Paul VI to make Bishop Paul MarcinkuS head of the Vatican Bank in 1969. There was no other obvious reason for the 'appointment. Marcinkus, although possessed of Dr Owen-type energy and ambition, had had no experience as a banker. He had come to prominence mainly as the organiser of papal trips abroad, con- tributing in no small manner to the at- mosphere of frenzy surrounding them. But to a frail old Pope, presiding over a slow, cumbersome and devious bureaucracy, the American's drive and 'can-do' approach must have had considerable appeal. And who more suitable to run a bank than a Man brought up in Chicago? The Pope may have forgotten Chicago's other associa- tions. Be that as it may, Papal confidence in Marcinkus has if anything increased since Pope John Paul II was elected. While reconfirming him as President of the Bank, the Polish Pope gave him the additional job of governing the Vatican City State. Since then there has exploded a most embarrass- ing scandal. The Vatican Bank turns out not only to have been deeply involved with Michele Sindona, the Italian financier now serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud in the United States, but also to have been hopelessly embroiled with the Banco Am- brosiano in Milan, which was recently declared bankrupt owing 1,200 million dollars and whose President, Roberto Calvi, was found last June hanging by a rope under Blackfriars' bridge. The Vatican Bank may be responsible for some of Calvi's debts. ' Marcinkus is being in- vestigated by the Italian authorities and could possibly be charged. He says — and why should we not believe him? — that his conscience is clear. But it is interesting that Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, Pope Paul's Secretary of State and a man of undoubted shrewdness, felt able to declare to an Italian magazine: 'If there was any imprudence, it was because of incompetence and inex- perience'. Benelli was in charge when Mar- cinkus was appointed.
The deplorable indifference of the British trade union movement towards the Plight of Solidarity and the persecution of its members in Poland has been fully con- firmed at this week's conference in Brighton. As I wrote last week, the TUC was the only national trade union move- ment in Western Europe to ignore the an- niversary of Solidarity's first congress in Gdansk. In Brighton, the TUC General Council has been wriggling desperately to avoid offending the Soviet or Polish governments. First, it threw out a resolu- tion on Poland from the electricians' union on the bizarre grounds that it was submitted under the wrong section of the agenda. Then it baulked at an emergency motion submitted by the Civil and Public Services Association because it was considered to be too critical of the General Council (Mr Len Murray's dignity having to be preserved at all costs). Finally, while the wording of this motion was being re-examined, the fellow travellers on the General Council thought up another obstructive tactic: if the fate of Solidarity was to be regarded as an emergency subject, then there should be similar time for a debate on the Middle East, -a proposal which had the merit of creating an anti-American diversion while consuming some of the time allotted to foreign affairs. As I write, this dispute has still to be settled, and it is far from certain that the TUC will be allowed to debate the crushing of Solidarity at all. For Solidarity's friends, however, there was one gleam of light amid the prevailing gloom. This was the narrow acceptance on Monday of a plan to reform the way the General Council is elected. Its effect will be to remove from the TUC's governing body some of Solidarity's most implacable enemies and Mr Brezhnev's warmest ad- mirers. They include Mr Ray Buckton of the engine drivers' union who favours the Crimea for his holidays and prefers Russian hospitals to the National Health Service; Mr Alan Sapper of the televisibn techni- cians who likes to refer in conversation to the 'Gdansk rabble', by which he means the Polish workers rather than their oppressors; and Mr George Guy of the coppersmiths who has publicly called for the 'liquidation' of dissidents. But, alas, not every baddy on the Council will get his deserts. Survivors will include Mr Alex Kitson of the Transport and General Workers who is one of Radio Moscow's favourite commen-
tators on British life, and Mr Arthur Scargill, the new miners' leader, who af- fects to see no difference between General Jaruzelski and Mr Norman Tebbit.
Last July the Greater London Council declared London to be a nuclear-free zone. What on earth did this° mean? That London is presently 'nuclear-free' seems beyond question, and one naturally hopes that it will remain in this happy condition. Perhaps it was the equivalent of declaring London an 'area of outstanding natural beauty' — an invitation to the Russians to circle it on their maps as one of those areas which should not be bombed, like Rome or Jerusalem. In any event, the GLC seems to have believed its own propaganda, for it is now dismantling the wartime control bunkers at Wanstead, Cheam, Norwood and Southall and planning to turn them over to other uses, as museums, community centres and so on. The reason given was that the Government's civil defence plans are directed not towards saving the people of London (70 per cent of whom, according to Mr Ken Livingstone, would be dead within three months of a nuclear attack), but to the preservation of a mere handful of public officials. Still, it seems strange to get rid of the only existing civil defences against nuclear attack when there is as yet nothing to put in their place. And why is it one of the GLC's duties to defend us against the Russians? At the same time, the GLC has appointed the New Statesman journalist Duncan Campbell to be its civil defence ad- viser — the purpose of the job being honestly described as to highlight anomalies in the Government's civil defence pro- gramme. Oh, if only one was a 'committed' journalist! What jobs one could land!
Mr James Callaghan has been quite rightly criticised for his advocacy of law-breaking by trade-unionists in support of the health workers. When he was Prime Minister, he was adamant that there could be no excuse for breaking the law, even if the cause might seem a good one. But few people seem to have pointed out the hyprocrisy of Mr Denis Healey, who argued last week that the world banking system could collapse unless western governments abandoned their deflationary policies. His words seemed to be aimed principally at the policies of Mrs Thatcher's Government. But these policies have at least sustained the value of the pound, reduced inflation, and obviated any need for international bor- rowing. When Mr Healey was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1976, his inflationary policies resulted in a huge decline in the value of sterling and enormous borrowings from the International Monetary Fund, which — so it was reported in the Sunday Times — demanded in exchange for its largesse the sort of policies that this govern- ment is now trying to pursue. He is not real- ly the right man to wax indignant against Sir Geoffrey Howe.
Alexander Chancellor
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