A Spectator's Notebook

The suggestion from Mr Charles Simeons, formerly Conservative MP for Luton East from 1970 to 1974, that Parliamentary candidates should be drawn from the production ,end of industry — so as to redress the balance within the Tory ranks from a predominance of merchant bankers, lawyers and journalists — is years overdue. Mr Anthony Grant, vice-chairman in charge of candidates, is reported to welcome the idea which will, no doubt, be actively resisted by the swarms of merchant bankers, lawyers and journalists on the candidates list.

More important than their industrial experience is the likelihood that men with an iindustrial background may be x" peCted to support industrial rather than financial or City logic, in many cases bridging the gap between organised labour and capital. This paper has often had occasion to regret the passing of what used to be called the Birmingham and Manchester influence on Conservative thinking, which has been dominated since the war by financially-orientated opinion — to so much less effect than the Conservatism of Joseph Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin, who saw ;industry (together with agriculture) the true source of national prosperity.

British Leyland

There is opposition to the Industry Bill and the nationalisation proposals for the shipbuilding and aircraft industries to such an extent that there is the possibility of the Industry Bill, at least, failing in the House of Lords. The nationalisation of shipbuilding and aircraft has now been deferred beyond this Parliament.

It is difficult not to believe that the hostility to these measures by private enterprise is more apparent than real. Nationalisation of the aircraft industry would, for example, scarcely bother GEC in spite of the protestations in their chairman's statement about their 50 per cent stake in the British Aircraft Corporation. They would receive compensation in cash or highyielding government stock, which is the very thing that Sir Arnold Weinstock has expressed a preference for in the past. British Leyland shareholders may bellyache about the 10p per share they are receiving under the Industry Act rescue, though a British Leyland director, a nationally known figure, told me a week or two ago, that he did not think shareholders should get a penny piece. The firm was wiped out and shareholders had lost their equity, but who is he to complain if Sir Don Ryder's men could not do their arithmetic?

Freeloading day

Michael Ivens, of Aims for Industry, arranged a generous and pleasant luncheon to celebrate Free Enterprise Day on July 1. The 500 or so guests included Mrs Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph, and the occasion deserved a better press than it received from such predictable freeloaders as Michael Leapman of the PHS column in the Times. After taking everything that was going, Leapm an went back to his desk (very slowly presumably, since he said the lunch lasted three hours, and the room was clear by 2.30) to justify his hedonism by biting the hand that had been feeding him.

Jock Bruce-Gardyne, who was sitting near me, pointed to a cleric at the top table, not far from Mrs Thatcher, and murmured, "Who's the parson?" Which drew the reply, "The Bishop of Woolwich — West, obviously."

Freehold redemption in Zambia

It is interesting to observe that the government of Zambia have decided to cancel all freehold real property interests and to put in their place 100-year leaseholds — along the lines suggested in The Spectator two or three years ago, which we called 'freehold redemption.'

Desirable as these measures are, it would have been preferable if they had been initiated in a developed nation, proposed by the radical right as a substitute for direct taxation and capital taxes which are destroying the very thing, capital values, that their architects, the collectivists of the left, sought to acquire. Worse still, it would be surprising if the 100-year leasehold term proposed by the Zambian government is not shortened to a period that would amount to a form of sequestration instead of the economic gradualism of the freehold redemption proposals put forward here.

The literary round

I wish a bright sociologist, bored with battered wives and slum dwellings in Harlow New Town, would take a peek at literary London. It really does repay investigation, as I discovered last week. There are, I found out, really two aspects to what, on the face of it, is an amorphous mass. There are the self-styled 'authors' — some of them quite distinguished and others not, but all of them covered by the general anonymity of publishers' parties — and there are the tradesmen. The authors discuss each other, the critics, and their tribulations at the hands of publishers, and the tradespeople discuss each other, the literary agents and their tribulations at the hands of selfish and scheming writers.

I saw the first group at a reception held on the Martini Terrace at New Zealand House by the Society of Authors. The style here is for over-dressed ladies wearing lumpish shoes, and for men with jackets which look suspiciously suede and with hair carefully combed forward. I asked one distinguished lady novelist about a group of rather anonymous but well-groomed ladies: "Oh, darling, don't ask me. They probably translated Letters from a Portuguese Nun thirty years ago, and insisted on an invitation ever since." I think she was right. The reception was actually being given for a number of prize-winners for a variety of prizes but, quite naturally, the winners got lost in the general melee. Some of them were quite distinguished. I had dinner afterwards with Dr Oliver Sachs, who had been awarded the Hawthornden Prize for his book on sleepingsickness, Awakenings. It is an extraordinary book, and he is an extraordinary man. But he didn't seem at all elated by his prize, or with my company, since he fell asleep during the meal.

I met the bane of the writers, the tradesmen, at a monthly dinner of the Society of Bookmen. The dress here was more formal and certainly more expensive; there was an air of wellgroomed affability about the affair which is generally missing among authors. I knew where the bread was being buttered. I had been invited along by a friendly publisher but since the proceedings are strictly 'off the record' I cannot repeat to you some of the strange and astonishing things I was told. Melvyn Bragg, the novelist and television 'personality' made a sharp and witty speech which delighted me but which would no doubt have caused great consternation at the BBC. But 1 hear that one of his bosses spilt all of his beans in a speech at the previous dinner, so fair is fair. But what is depressing in trade-conversations is that it is simply that: trade. Books are consumer items, to be standardised and sold on much the same terms as scarves or bottles of gin. There was certainly no talk that night, not even from Melvyn Bragg, about excellence or relative merit. It would be a shame if that was left to those malicious authors.

Impudent

I see that a Mr Brian Connell has again been, given the job of reviewing weekly journals such as this one for the BBC's radio feature, The Weekly World', on Saturday mornings. I shall not be taking issue with his comments on the contents of The Spectator or of any other paper, but I find his preoccupation with publication dates excessively boring, and his cavalier attitude to the facts rather tiresome, too. Connell is entitled to his apparent view that every weekly journal should be printed on Fridays, or at the earliest Thursdays, so that it is nice and up-to-date when he himself reads it, but there are, in fact, other days in the week. He chose to admonish The Spectator last Saturday for having no reference to or comment upon Mr Healey's Tuesday statement — an impudent, not to say nonsensical, criticism in view of the fact that The Spectator was on sale, at least in London, before the statement had been made.