Notebook
The recent decision not to reveal the Royal k4ltlily's share-holding suggests some truth uehind the persistent rumour that the .9,1leen holds 4'/2 per cent of Rio Tinto
Such a revelation would greatly
embarrass Labour, whose governments have Always favoured this international Milting house. The first Wilson government gave RTZ a colossal subsidy for its hideous and unprofitable aluminium smelter in Anglesey. It was Wilson himself who °Pened the Avonmouth smelter that later had to be shut down because it was poison?us. It was Tony Senn who gave a contract RTZ for uranium from an immense mine 'u South West Africa. But news of the ?ueen's investment would cause the most urious outcry in Australia, where RTZ subsidiaries own much of the mineral resources. The recent Labour government tried to win control of these by amassing capital for a take-over bid of RTZ in London, When the plot failed, scandal erupted `,...ad Premier Whitlam was sacked by the kio.vernor General, the Queen's representative in Australia.
fter spoiling my vote in the 'Greater Lonuoll Council' election, I went up to Newcastle to see the arrival of President Carter. He was not of course going there to find his — his ancestors come from Northern ;eland — but he may have obtained a true _Picture of modern Britain defiled by mad or q.lthinal politicians and planners. The chief °f these, T. Dan Smith, once boasted that he ws.ould make Newcastle 'the Venice of the Zorth,with ring-roads instead of canals', lincithis once magnificent city over the Tyne „as.largely vanished. Perhaps this was what arter meant when he praised Newcastle's onderful open spaces'. On the way to 1, ashington New Town, he passed by FelAing, the former home of Smith's crony s'I.Iderman Andrew Cunningham, and the bne of the damp, decaying high-rise flats vtvlilt by their paymaster John Poulson. a ashington itself is outstandingly bleak ad depressing even by North-east English shtandards. I once spent a morning there on a I °using estate with political canvassers and have seldom hearrd such a dismal catalogue of complaints.
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When Smith was cleared after his first trial anr. corruption, a ,New. Statesman, leading written by Brian Walden MP (Lads, and the Privacy Bill), defended ci,vir Newcastle' by saying that in the United !tates he would have been the friend and Co he
of Presidents. Since Nixon was _rresident at the time, this may well be true. Both Smith and Cunningham were pally
with most of our own top Labour men, especially Lord George Brown and Lord Glenamara of Glenridding who used to be plain Ted Short. A Newcastle paper wrote last week that Callaghan had suggested the trip to the North-east because he was so fond of the Durham Miners Gala. In fact Callaghan's closest chum in Co. Durham is Andrew Cunningham, who had enraged the miners and nearly lost the by-election at Chester-le-Street by putting in a candidate from his own Municipal Workers. When Cunningham came out of prison last year, almost the first person he met was Callaghan who stopped to take tea with him at Chester-le-Street. I look forward to reading much more on all these friendships in Smith's forthcoming book, and Poulson's too, if only they let the poor man out of prison to write it.
One of the hundreds of journalists up in Newcastle assumed that because I was not wearing a press badge, I must be a CIA agent. He spent twenty minutes attempting to blow my cover story and detecting Americanisms in what he called my 'carefully acquired English accent'. As a matter of fact it is always more fun on such occasions to be in the crowd and not in the press corps that follows the dignitaries. It was fun to join in the cheers for Carter and still more fun to join in the boos for Callaghan. It all took me back to the time about 1962 when Harold Macmillan's government suddenly found a concern for the North-east and sent Quintin Hogg (now Lord Hailsham) as special minister for the region, dressed in a cloth cap. 'If he comes in here,' said the waiter at my hotel pour hot soup on him'. Why was it that politicians and journalists at that time took such an interest in
the problems of North-east England but none in the far graver problems of Northeast Ireland? Had Hailsham been sent to. reform the social and economic injustices of Ulster, we might not now have disturbance there; and President Carter might have felt safe to visit the home of his County Antrim ancestors.
I apologise to those readers who were puzzled by a reference to the late Sir Peter Kirk, who I wrote, had been 'rather absurdly described in The Times as a" dedicated and enthusiastic European": The absurdity of the phrase is best understood if you think of describing an Indian as a 'dedicated and enthusiastic Asian'. What I object to is The ,Times's use of the noun 'European' to mean somebody who supports or is employed by the European Economic Community. The majority of Europeans are outside the EEC, and many of those who are in it, wish they were not. Here The Times is using a fine-sounding word 'European' to glamorise those who agree with its politics. Needless to say, all 'Europeans' are also 'moderates' in The Times. It was The Times that invented 'Newspeak' in Orwell's 1984.
Talking of '1984', a colleague remarked how splendidly Orwell had captured the horror of metrication, as in the dread opening sentence: 'It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen'. Agreed. But then it occurred to me that the sentence disclosed something still more horrific: already in 1977, few clocks remain to strike at all. The mechanics who used to wind up the old clocks are dead; most electric clocks stopped, never to go again, during the power strikes and the fuel crisis. Hundreds or thousands of public clocks have been stolen by thieves who know that a sound antique from a church tower fetches more these days than lead from a church roof. And in 1984, unlike 1977, Britain still has a navy of 'Floating Fortresses' ; the Victorian terraces have not been knocked down; and the flats all reek of cabbage, a vegetable now so expensive that it could only be bought by Big Brother and other party officials.
It was unfortunate for Alex Haley, author of Roots, that his Kinte ancestor turned out to have been called 'Kunta', which sounds rude in English. However our English names sound odd to Gambian ears as I learned in Banjul, the capital. A young man who had studied in London was telling me how much he admired our TV personalities such as Ludovic Kennedy, Robin Day and David Frost. 'And then one evening', he went on, 'I was listening to an announcement, and I heard that a programme was going to be introduced by a Gambian. He had a pure Gambian name — Bamba Gascoin, meaning `Bamba, the road digger'. I was very disappointed when he turned out to be white'.
Richard West
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