A Spectator's Notebook LORD HAILSHAM has every reason to be
pleased that the two Blackpool stewards who were prosecuted by the League of Empire Loyalists for assault at last year's Con- servative Party Conference were acquitted, but I am sorry that in his excitement at their acquittal he, of all People, should have allowed himself to say things which, considered objectively, are simply incor- rect. For one thing, the fact that the two stewards Were vindicated of violence does not mean that everybody else was equally blameless. As a good lawyer, Lord Hailsham should be well aware of the difficulties involved in large gatherings such as Blackpool in identifying the guilty parties. From the ITN film, and from what reputable journalists wrote at the time, there can be no conceivable doubt that disgraceful violence was done at the Blackpool Conference. Yet Lord Hailsham could seriously say : 'An attempt was made . . . by some Left-wing influences hostile to the [Conservative] Party to make out that the Conservative stewards were guilty of undue violence' (my italics). In fact, some of the jour- nalists concerned could by no conceivable exer- cise of the imagination be said to be Left-wing, and if Lord Hailsham really believes that the allegations of violence were the invention of the Left he must be suffering from a particularly virulent, form of political paranoia.
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