12 FEBRUARY 1983, Page 5

Notebook

Is there another Cliveden set myth in the making and if so, who is the con- temporary Claud Cock burn responsible for its fabrication? These questions are Prompted by an enormous feature in the Times purporting to expose the existence of a right-wing pressure group of dons, politi- cians and journalists, known as the Conser- vative Philosophy Group, who allegedly dine together regularly with the express pur- pose of brainwashing Mrs Thatcher — her a true blue rinse, so to speak. The sensational headline given to this feature was, 'Who thinks for Mrs Thatcher: Secret Battle for the Prime Minister's mind'. As a member of the group in question I can testify that such a description is wholly Misleading. Out of 20 or so dinner parties held so far, Mrs Thatcher has only attended two, at neither of which did she distinguish herself by an inclination to learn. Quite the contrary. It was she who did most of the lecturing, and far from it being us who were Plinking for her, it was she who was think- ing, if that is the right word, for us. She even lost her temper with me, saying that I was a journalist who lacked all intellectual Principles. Battle there certainly was but all e aggression and militancy came from her side. As for the dinners being 'secret', that too gives quite the wrong impression. They are private occasions, which is not at all the same thing, although journalists seem sadly linable to recognise this important distinc- tion. Which brings me to my point. How and why did this ludicrous story ever get in- to the public prints? The answer is that one or the group's founding members, an am- bitious young journalist don called Roger Scruton, chose to encourage Peter Stodhart, the author of the article, to write it up, and even asked him to attend one of the so-called secret meetings with that end III view. I can only guess at Scruton's reasons for so doing. One may have been a desire to give Peter Stodhart a good story. Stodhart is features editor of the Times, in Control of the page in which Scruton writes a brilliant weekly column. So there may have been an element of backscratching in- volved. Scruton, who has political ambi- tions, may also have rather liked the idea of seeing his name prominently associated With a group credited with so much secret influence. Perhaps this will help him get a sale seat. Truth to tell our group was being used, as indeed was the Times. An accurate headline on the story should have read, Young don on the make hoodwinks paper °I record into fabricating myth which eakes him seem more important than he s traighlly is'. I write this to put the record t for the benefit of any future historian who might be tempted to take the story at its face value. Researching the cur- rent period, and coming across the Times story, he might well suppose that our group played some important part in determining Mrs Thatcher's policies. Now, with a little luck, his researches will also include the Spectator files, that is to say, this Notebook, from which he will learn that the Conservative Philosophy,Group played no such role. But were it not for the accident that I happen to be writing the Notebook, which gives me an incentive and opportuni- ty to put the record straight, another myth might have passed into history. For the trouble with lies that flatter is that the beneficiaries soon come to believe them. I was dining at an Oxford College on the day the Times story appeared, and did not feel at all obliged to disillusion the Master who, having read it, treated me with un- customary deference as befits a grey eminence credited with having the Prime Minister's ear. In future, of course, the Conservative Philosophy Group will start taking itself seriously, which is a pity. Hav- ing been told that it is an important body, it will start behaving like one. In its unregenerate days, there used to be jolly oc- casions with Richard Nixon, at one of which the elder American statesman sat at dinner between gambler John Aspinall and Greek playboy Taki, neither of whom .wasted much time talking about Tory philosophy. If the Times had given us those kind of Nigel Dempster details, then its story might have been nearer the mark. But unfortunately Roger Scruton's ambitions do not extend to wanting to be known as part of the jet set.

If the free world was confronted today by a thermonuclear armed Nazi Germany, would the peace movement be quite so sure about the immorality of thermonuclear deterrence? Try to recall the moral horror that engulfed all civilised peo- ple when the truth about the Nazi exter- mination camps first became known, and ask yourself whether you would have deem-

ed a nuclear defence against that scale of evil contrary to the Christian conscience. Would the Bishops in Synod be arguing this

week for unilateral British disarmament if the prospective enemy, threatening world domination, was Hitler, not Andropov? This is not a trick question intended to imp- ly that the peace movement is soft on Russia, or pro-Communist. Of course that is not the case with many of them. But even those of them who oppose Russia and Com- munism do not do so with the same degree of moral passion as they opposed Nazi Ger- many. Whereas Nazi Germany came to be seen as the very incarnation of sophisticated evil, Soviet Russia is still judged as much less absolutely diabolical; more savage and primitive than truly sinister. Even Stalin (pipe-smoking Uncle Joe) was never thought of here as a monster on a par with ` Hitler. A cruel despot, yes, but somehow human for all that, a kind of oriental Idi Amin. Cartoonists portray Russia as a bear. Of course bears can hug you to death, which is unpleasant. But they are not nearly so terrifying as snakes. Most of us refuse to believe the worst about bears; or about Russians. If we did, there would be much less moral revulsion about nuclear weapons. As it is, however, the Russians are not felt to be awful enough to deserve them, rather as it would be indecent to use them against bears. If by some miracle Western television cameras were to penetrate into the Gulag, and expose horrors comparable to those of Buchenwald and Belsen, the peace movement would evaporate over- night. For then people would once again become aware of a scale of evil which mat- ches the evil of thermonuclear weapons. But there is a new generation today for whom thermonuclear war seems the ultimate obscenity. They cannot imagine anything worse. But the generation which looked into the abyss in 1945 can, all too easily. The Bishops are begging the ques- tion. For if the absolute immorality of nuclear defence is to be established, it is necessary to postulate an enemy which peo- ple feel to be cosmically evil as they felt Hitler to be cosmically evil. That is not how they feel about Russia. In other words, this whole peace debate is much more revealing about how little people fear and abominate Russia than about how much they fear and abominate the bomb.

rrhe BBC Panorama programme excelled I itself on Monday with a double-bill featuring both the Butcher of Lyons and Mrs Jeane Kirkpatrick in that order, with no break between the two interviews. First we had the Butcher talking about the irksome problem of choosing between two evils and then America's UN Ambassador doing exactly the same. Monstrous as Mrs Kirkpatrick's behaviour was during the Falklands war, surely she did not deserve quite such a terrible pairing. By the end of the programme it almost seemed as if it was she who was the war criminal.

Peregrine Worsthorne