Notebook
The Falklands war returned this week to haunt the Social Democratic Party. n --g sq in its way through the con itself, unable to find a united line n ,Ine with anybody's mood, and greatly Iakened as a result, the SDP had the ritiIsfortune to be assembled in Cardiff on 6e sane day as the Falklands Parade in the ( feel of London. What do Social Democrats iiiet now about the whole business? Accor- ihtg to Dr David Owen, they are people. of Lunhe subtlety, capable of harbouring ical!ltaneously an enormous range of con- vileittug thoughts and emotions. 'Today is the Falk home day for those who fought in lands,' he told the SDP conference of Tuesday. 'There will be many thousands don Democrats in the streets of L. on- DaYing tribute — their mood neither virtgoistic nor bellicose, not glorifying in si et (31Y, still anxious to know why the inva- he'a was ever allowed to take place, but resist saying quietly to all those who vi,sliist aggression that it was a necessary job 0`" done and bravely done.' Our reporter Rothe the spot could find nobody among the ilin°‘1,,,ds fitting such a description. .The Vvils'U was not one of quiet introspection. 8,4en People were not lustily singing Rule , they were shouting 'Well done, 114' 'SOCk it to 'em, lads', or — quite fre- difently 'Cot, I fancy him'. Back in Car- klrf' Mrs Shirley Williams, still bitter about DI:. Thatcher's Falklands victory, corn- foritleod that there were no victory parades pit, the unemployed, the poor, the single ei:!nts, the isolated old. It would be enr1911s if there were. While Mrs Thatcher fortinired k up the 'Falklands spirit' as a stick tryC'eattog everybody with, Mrs Williams is pain& to do the same thing with the 'anti- haskiands spirit'. Neither, it seems to me,
nttich chance of success.
War has broken out between the Gov- in, eroMent and the press over the break- it of the Falklands awards embargo. In a se of rage, the Prime Minister's press etear„ ' tetaii ',Y. Mr Bernard
. anon Ingham, urged
will by government departments who doe,. !IOW be holding back official tinlurnents until shortly before publication ied.e The effect of this will merely be that liket°118 government White Papers and the stn:Y.ill be reported with even greater Mbar u ia 1 i ty than they are already. The \ re go is a useful device which gives
Hers time to think a little before they
write. It was the invention, I believe, of Baron Julius von Reuter, founder of the news agency which still bears his name, who in 1858 persuaded Emperor Napoleon III of France to give him the text of a speech he was making in advance of its delivery. Since then everybody has followed suit. Conve- nient though it is both for officialdom and the press, the embargo has never been fail- safe. If an embargoed speech or document contains any news of extraordinary interest, that news will always get published early in some form or another. And it can almost be guaranteed that if one newspaper breaks an embargo, the others will do the same. This latest collapse of the system originated with a Times scoop last Friday about Colonel Jones's VC. Confronted on the same day with official confirmation of this scoop in an embargoed Whitehall announcement, other editors gave way to an irresistible temptation. Anyone, apart from Mr Ing- ham, could have foreseen the consequence. It hardly merits an inquiry.
Anew peak of hysteria has been reached in the Labour Party's attacks on the capitalist press. It has been scaled by Mr Norman Atkinson MP, the Party's former Treasurer, in a pamphlet published by Tribune. He accuses Fleet Street of a 'pathological hatred of Socialists' and credits it with devastating subtlety in its ef- forts to destroy the Labour Party — efforts which he seems to believe are only too likely to be crowned with success. One particular- ly devilish technique which he identified is the practice of spelling out a person's name in full: describing 'Bob Mellish' as 'Robert Joseph Mellish', claims Mr Atkinson, is to make him seem like a prisoner in the dock. 'Nowadays the mere name in full signifies something unsavoury.' So how is the Labour Party going to fight back against the new McCarthyism which is bringing all Labour politicians into disrepute? Mr Atkinson's solution is for Socialists neither to read anti-Labour newspapers nor to con- sort with others who do so. 'The Daily Mail used psychologists against Ken Livingstone. Should the Labour Party now employ psychologists to warn the public on buses and tubes not to sit next to men seen reading the Mail or the Sun because they could be either insecure or compulsive sex- ists? A properly waged campaign against certain anti-Labour newspapers could reduce their 25 million readerships con- siderably.' Perhaps this campaign is already under way, for somebody was spotted not so long ago on the top of a bus reading a copy of the Spectator concealed inside the New Statesman.
Lst Monday I spoke at the Oxford Union in support of a motion saying that tele- vision reporting was destroying good jour- nalism. The motion was defeated by a ratio of three to one. I do not know why the vote went so decisively against my side. Maybe it was because the chief proposer, an African undergraduate of Hitlerian gifts, was so ex- hausted by the force of his own oratory that he fainted before reaching the subject under debate. Perhaps it was because my fellow guest, Mr Trevor McDonald, ITN's West Indian Diplomatic Correspondent, spoke with such charm, sincerity and moderation in defence of his own medium that few peo- ple could bear to vote against him. Or maybe it was because nobody could under- stand the motion. I am sure it cannot have had anything to do with my own speech, which was a searching exposure of the in- adequacies of television reporting as wit- nessed by one who worked very briefly and unsuccessfully for ITN. But it doesn't really matter. What matters, if anything, is whether there is any point any longer in university debating societies. This question may seem inappropriate, coming from the editor of a paper which is sponsoring a number of university debates this autumn. It may also sound offensive to my Oxford hosts, who treated us all with such courtesy and consideration. But I have to admit that, on the very rare occasions on which I have attended university debates, I have been surprised by their futility. There seems to be very little interest among students in the motion being debated. The way the vote goes is of even less interest to anybody. All that matters is the capacity of the speakers to entertain the House, and this is in- variably judged by the extent to which they manage daringly to avoid the subject they are supposed to be talking about. This might indeed be funny if done occasionally by a talented speaker. But when it is done the whole time by untalented speakers, it becomes a bore. In any case, the impression one gets of the Oxford and Cambridge Unions is somewhat miserable. On one side there are the ambitious, dinner-jacketed union officials, each with his own secret reason for seeking office; on the other, there are the mass of bored undergraduates, hoping for some light entertainment to relieve the tedium of their daily lives. The gulf between the two is considerable — and uncreative.
Alexander Chancellor
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