Notebook
The latest to attack the Li b-Lab coalition is .Lord Beaumont. He reminds us that social ism and liberalism are—in his characteristically call), trite words—'very different animals. The pact has indeed had a most hostile reception in many quarters, uniting Professor von Hayek and Mr Paul Johnson. But IS there not something important to be said 1.0r it, which commentators and pontificators have missed ? The Liberal alliance formalises what we knew already, that this government is incapable of doing anything except to stay in office, ticking over. No contentious legislation—little legislation of any kind—looks like being passed this session, particularly after the failure of the guillotine on the devolution Bill, which roust nevertheless, and most happily, clutter oP the legislative timetable as it fades away. I. lie Labour Party and the Liberals, united in fear of a general election, will no doubt cling together as long as possible. What could be happier, given the records of successive recent administrations, than a ?°Yernment which refuses to leave office but is Incapable of action ? At last it will be true, 4,,,s Palmerston so wrongly put it, that, 'Parliament cannot go on legislatingforever. In all the talk of coalitions over the last few Years it has been assumed that any coalition Must be one of the centre. Perhaps the sort of coalition we should look for—if we want a Positive rather than negative coalition--Would be — orte of 'extremists.' A coalition uetween the Labour Left and the Tory Right Would produce an interesting and attractive Programme: a balanced budget and import controls; siege economy and publ
:uts. Co ic spending
mpromise would obviously be neces,ary on both sides. The Left would have to ;ccePt that high unemployment and low I ublic sPending today will prevent calamitOus unemployment and state bankruptcy nclnorrow; the Right would have to swallow tcaostrong dose 0t ..
'war socialism' as a prelude
any return to economic liberalism. The ':_uggestion may sound jocular; but, after all, _rnooderates' of one sort or another have held w P er for decades, and look where they have got us.
11 Beaumont of Whitley signs his letter lin, Beaumont.' The use of pet names in aniublic life— or as journalists' bylines—is an ; OStinfallible sign of silliness. It is interest at it has become a fashion among younger, would-be trendy, Tory MPs—it ns once the preserve of the Left. The Times has found a good way of satirising such ,..13"Ple: in a report of the Young Socialists, %-onference it refers to `Mr Andrew ("Andy") lievao,' and `Mr Nicholas ("Nick") Brad
ley.' But there is an un-Timeslike inconsistency. Lower down the very same article we read of 'Mr Reg Prentice.' Shouldn't that be `Mr Reginald ("Reg") Prentice'? Evenhanded justice applies to 'moderates' as well.
As a connoisseur of sports commentators' idiocies I relished the recent ping-pong tournament on television, The commentators were unusually patronising, unusually inaptly given the stupefying athletic display by the Chinese players. One BBC buffoon said that 'With two Chinese partnerships in this final it must be like looking into a mirror for each pair.' But the outright winner in this line comes from a football commentator on Kenyan radio, picked up recently by a Nairobi paper : 'Our lads were totally castrated by the opposition.'
The hero of the week is undoubtedly Sheriff A. A. Macdonald of Lerwick, who has fined a Russian trawler skipper £10,000 for fishing in British waters. The most disgraceful aspect of the 'Cod War' was the contrast between the bullying of Iceland by the Royal Navy and the continuing indulgence of Russian factory trawlers, which, apart from any legal, question, were stripping the seas bare, especially of .mackerel. Because the Soviet authorities do not—to put it delicately—have to concern themselves with public opinion, their record on conservation and the abuse of nature is deplorable. Left to themselves they would soon exterminate all whales; and no one but the Russians would think of digging a ship canal by means of nuclear explosions.
The recent news that there may be a new inquiry into the assassination of President Kennedy made my heart sink. Long ago
learnt to avoid people with strong views on the subject, although they can always be silenced if I say, truthfully enough, that I don't care who killed the President. My agnosticism is not absolute in practice: the official version, so much execrated by conspiracy theorists, seems to me to carry the overwhelming balance of probability. But life is short, and there are better things to interest oneself in than new evidence about a fifteen-year-old murder. In a word, my objection to the topic is one of boredom. Disraeli said that the first rule of polite conversation was, never ask who was the Man in the Iron Mask, or who wrote the Letters of Junius ? The equivalent for our age is Who Killed Kennedy? Don't ask me.
April showers mercifully presage the end of the football hooligan season. At any rate, one of the compensations for the violence and nastiness of football supporters is to observe the contortions that politicians and social thinkers get into when they take a hand. It has long been fashionable to romanticise the fans, as part of the absurd cult of football over the last ten years. It is said that when the iniquitous Heath-Walker changes in local government were being planned a sociologist suggested that the new local authorities should have boundaries based on the 'catchment areas' of football teams' followers. If true, as I like to believe, the story says something about sociology dons as well as about the frivolity with which we are governed. In fact, fans don't come from neatly defined areas—except perhaps in Glasgow, an historic survival. Manchester United, in particular, draws its enthusiastic followers from all over the country. No doubt Mr Denis Howell will come up with a variety of carefully thought-out plans for dealing with the violence, although it is unlikely that he will resort to the simplest solution of all, which is to ban professional football for a year or two. Or alternatively, to adopt my own modest proposal, which is to lock the gates of football grounds behind obstreperous fans, once they are inside, and to open them again when silence reigns.
The new edition of Who's Who is a regular delight. It is always interesting to see who has been newly included (I don't think anyone ever leaves it), and there are some pleasing additions this year. Some omissions are puzzling, as are some inclusions— at least, it is not difficult to find two pages in a row without a name that means anything. One changed entry is good to see. Mr Nicholas Fairbaim, the eccentric Member for Kinross and West Perthshire, once upon a time gave his recreations as 'Making love, people laugh and ends meet.' After his entry into the House of Commons, this became the gnomic 'Creating,' which suggested that the strains of Westminster were taking their toll. Now it is 'Bunking and debunking.' I think we know what that means. A happy recovery.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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