Diary
Mr Norman Tebbit and Mr James Prior changed the 1974-79 Government's labour laws in all kinds of ways (though without having the slightest effect on the miners' strike). But there was one change Which they left intact. This was the institu- tion of May Day. The Conservatives have not dared meddle with that. Does anybody Want or need it? Certainly we do not seem to have come to terms with it. In London there was no cricket at either Lord's or the Oval. There was no cricket anywhere except at Edgbaston. There was racing at Kempton, Which would have happened anyway. At this stage of the exposition, at dinner party or in saloon bar, someone always interjects: 'Po You realise that in France (or America) they have however-many-it-is more public holidays than we do?' The same people tend to go on to say that in France (or America) they lose more man-hours throough strikes, or have a higher propor- ti n _ of children being educated privately, than in Britain. As far as holidays go, the difference is that the French treat them as an opportunity to go out, with dancing in the streets, fireworks in the sky, even sometimes free wine in the bars. We treat 1°Iidays as an opportunity to stay at home. ,1 , do not regret this difference. There are few things more calculated to cause misery than the thought that someone else is enjoy- ing himself or herself. One of the saddest sounds of adolescence is of a dance band or fairground carrying across a late summer's esve,„;
mg. Age cures this melancholy. Still,
May or go-out, I see no need for may Day.
There have been numerous examples of t, other changes which have been pushed "rough when no one was looking or paying much attention. There was the 'Short Money', named after Lord Glenamara of -ilenridding who, as Mr Edward Short, was _Leader of the House. He slipped in a Meader
just before one Easter recess to
wive money to the parties at Westminster. It here through virtually on the nod. Then laere was the lowering of the voting age to 07 There was hardly any public discussion th this. We woke up one morning to find ,oat the voting age had suddenly been boat veered. The latest example of this kind of theng is Mr Leon Brittan's proposal to raise ti_ electoral deposit and lower the propor- cof the vote which attracts the penalty. bantrarY to what some commentators tooleved when the change was mooted a few weerlth ago, it was not a conspiracy bet- for " tne old parties. Mr Gerald Kaufman, cost Labour, has denounced it with his ce...OntarY vigour. I should prefer to pro- but through deposits or percentages signal • r°tigh a higher number of supporting for a Candidate, say 1,000. No
matter. Suddenly we shall wake up to find that some quite other change has been made by Mr Brittan, and we shall have to lump it.
One of the consequences of being some- one like Colonel. Gaddafi is that in- evitably you attract horror stories, some of which may well be true. The latest to come my way is that the Colonel asked the late President Sadat of Egypt whether he could borrow a submarine. The President first said he could. He then made enquiries into why the Colonel wanted the vessel. It turn- ed out that the Queen Elizabeth II was off to Israel on some pilgrimage or for some celebration or other, with many rich elderly New Yorkers on board. Colonel Gaddafi thought it would be a jolly wheeze to torpedo and sink the QE II. Hence his need for a reliable submarine. A distressed Sadat accordingly withdrew his kind offer. This is the sort of story which is difficult to con- firm. Sadat is dead, and Colonel Gaddafi would be unlikely to tell the truth. But it all sounds quite possible to me.
Though, as I said earlier, there was no cricket in London on May Day, I have managed to see two days of proper (that is, county championship) cricket so far. This is quite good going for the time of year. The match was Middlesex and Glamorgan at Lord's. Glamorgan have got themselves up in new sweaters. They used to wear chaste white ones with a daffodil in the middle. They now look like Christmas trees, with stripes, a smaller daffodil on one breast and a red dragon, I think it was, on the other: presumably sponsorship. They lost to Mid- dlesex but beat Worcestershire in the next match. I followed this one through Mr
John Woodcock in the Times. On the first day he wrote of `Ellcock, who was pretty fast in his first spell, though without threatening the stumps. Instead, like a good Barbadian (italics mine), he struck Hopkins two nasty blows on the hand.' Was Mr Woodcock praising Ellcock for his liveliness? Or censuring him for his dangerousness? The latter, I suspect. But while it is very nasty to be hit on the hand, it is also very easy. Batsmen are often hit on the hand by slow-medium bowlers. Being hit on the hand is no reliable indicator of unfair or dangerous bowling. Mr Wood- cock, however — who is also editor of Wisden — appears to have an obsession with black men. On the next day he reported that `Ellcock . . . is a West Indian. Warner, though of West Indian origin, was in fact born in Birmingham. With (the West Indian) Davis soon striking again, in more ways than one (italics mine) • . . 12 wickets had fallen since a white man took one.' This kind of writing would not matter so much if Mr Woodcock did not also go on, as he does, in what purport to be straight reports, about the iniquity of our not play- ing South Africa and penalising cricketers such as Emburey and Gooch who have played there. Even this is a point of view, though more properly expressed in features than as news. But what I find distasteful in Mr Woodcock is that he constantly deplores the selection for England of black cricketers, such as Butcher of Middlesex, who are as qualified to play for us as he would be.
T am not, or I hope I am not, persecuting Ithe bloody old Tittles, as the perpetually hectoring Cobbett called it. But there is another aspect of the paper which is causing me concern — the position of my old friend and neighbour, Mr Frank Johnson. I mean where he appears in the paper. Earlier this year he decided to step off the Westminster treadmill and go to Paris, a courageous decision to take. Now I find his many ad- mirers asking: 'What's happened to Frank Johnson? Where is he?' I tell them he is there every Monday. But he is there in the PHS gossip column spot. PHS has its followers but it has also — how can one put it? — a regular non-readership. In any case, a column is, or should be, a column. One cannot just substitute another, quite dif- ferent column for it willy-nilly on one day of the week. On Mr Johnson's occasional excursions to America, he appears where he used to, on the back page — where other foreign correspondents now appear. On his extra-Parisian expeditions he is regarded as a member of the foreign staff but in Paris as a kind of freelance. It is bad newspaper practice to allow the arrangements a jour- nalist may have with his paper to influence his placing in it. For to do this is to put of- fice politics above journalism. These, I may add, are my views rather than Mr Johnson's.
Alan Watkins
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