Notebook
There used to be something called the Silly Season, during high summer, when nothing real happened. Now August seems sensible --sensible weather, sensible cricket and racing—and it is the rest of the year that is silly. All the events about us have an air of unreality. Were the Geneva talks really taking place? Do the Men From The IMF really exist ? At least in the background of those two marathon, unending news stories there is really real reality (a quotation, I think, from F. R. Leavis). With devolution the Government has gone a step further and conjured up (the cliché is apt for once) a political issue which does not merely seem unreal, but is so. I had meant to avoid the subject this week, but it is kept depressingly in mind by the astounding cheek of the Government. No minister has mentioned in any discussion of the devolution Bill its essential fraud: the continuing over-representation of Scotland and Wales at Westminster, which will be far more flagrant if they have their own assemblies. The central political fact of the day is this: after the latest by-elections the Tories now hold two more English seats than Labour. What surprises me about the Conservatives is not their nervous tangle on the issue but the fact that they have not advocated immediate, total independence for the Scots and Welsh, taking their 107 MPs with them. Then Mrs Thatcher could be Prime Minister of England.
Looking on the bright side, at least most of us do not have to sit through the parliamentary session dealing with the Bill. Frank Johnson has used the word Wagnerian to describe the hours, days, weeks ahead in the House of Commons. Reading the reports of the first days of the debate I was reminded of Noel Coward's description of a dire evening in the theatre: `My dear, it was like Parsifal without the jokes.'
Cobbett wrote, in a classic passage, `Amongst those persons whom I have heard express a wish to see the press what they called free and at the same time to extend the restraints on it with regards to persons in their private life ... I have never that I know of met with one who had not some powerful motive of his own for the wish.' What might be thought of as the ant i-Cobbett faction is out in strength at the moment, led by Mr Brian Walden, MP. He has advanced an argument against reporting public persons' private lives: some of our greatest statesmen have had erratic personal lives; some of the greatest public disasters have been models of Christian family life. Lloyd George was a philanderer, Chamberlain a spotless puri tan. One is usually thought a greater politician than the other.
I was struck by Mr Walden's eloquence, listening to him on the radio recently. And then it came to me that he spoke truer than he knew. There just is no connection at all between 'public' and 'private' lives. Musing about Englishmen of the past, I realised that there was one whose whole life made a nonsense of the `keep privacy private' argument.
Charles James Fox lived with his mistress for many years; he had natural children by many other women; he lost a large fortune gambling. He did all these things, and did not mind a jot who knew. Not minding, he was invulnerable to pressure from others. His only connection with the laws of libel was to reform them in a liberal direction. When he was close to bankruptcy he cheerfully accepted a handout from his friends, but he did not take bribes, in whatever language they might be wrapped. In an age of corrupt hacks he might have been the bestpaid. In fact, nothing swayed him from a public career profoundly based on principle. He would go from a night's (unsuccessful) gaming at Brooks's to see his mistress and then to Westminster--where he would deliver an oration in defence of liberty which still makes the pulse quicken when you read it today. In pious terms Charles Fox was a reprobate; no braver or nobler Englishman has ever lived.
I somehow cannot think of Mr Walden as the Fox of our age.
Wanting to check a fact about political life in north-east England the other day I tried to buy a copy of Eddie Milne's book No Shining Armour, published earlier this year. I did not realise that it was still withdrawn. Readers may need to be reminded that a number of notabilities, headed by the Right Honourable Edward Short, Member of the Order of Companions of Honour (trips off the tongue, don't it ?), threatened libel action against Milne and his publisher; their injunctions still hold. I hope to see the book back on sale soon. Moreover, I hope for the day when it is less easy for plaintiffs—who, unlike Mr Short, may be 'vexatious,' mischievous or gold-digging—to hold up the publication of a book, with inevitable loss to author and publisher, even if they are wholly innocent.
Whoever becomes the next Director General, some things at the BBC are not likely to change. One is its radio religious programmes. There was once a fear among church leaders that 'BBC religion' would be a synthetic amalgam of different creeds. In fact, something quite independent, sui generis, has evolved, with a special brand of social-conscience earnestness. It is heard most mornings on 'Thought for the Day', excellent listening at a quarter to eight. Last week we had someone explaining how the church could harness the energies of the 'punk rock' movement.
But the real home of BBC religion is the Sunday morning 'religious magazine programme' called `Sunday.' My happiest memory is of three consecutive items: a young clergyman telling us about his book called And So To Bed (true), which gave advice on sex matters to young people 'in a commitment situation' ; he was followed by a more senior divine who told us angrily that smoking was a sin against man and the Holy Ghost ; and finally, 'a look at Westminster Abbey, number five in our series "Great Tourist Shrines": One of the temptations of writing a newspaper column is to brandish it at incompetent tradesmen or public servants. I set down purely as matter of record —not in the hope that anything will be done—the fact that my telephone has been out of order for a fortnight. Conversations with Post Office people produce an interesting variety of response, from the Blunt Factual—'There's three hundred phones out of action on this exchange, man, and you is 301' -through the Cunning Civil--`0f course I'll look into it straightaway, sir. We'll do everything we can' --to the Tight-lipped Triumphant--.'Yes, do write to your MP if it makes you feel any better. Write to the Prime Minister. It won't be repaired any sooner.'
I am not, I repeat, asking for sympathy, although it is irksome for a journalist to be without a telephone and although the fault has a particularly irritating feature: if you dial my number it sounds as if it is ringing (but is not), so that all the ladies who want to see me think that I have gone away. My own emotions have followed the classic pattern of men facing death. Terror and rage give way to a serene acceptance of one's fate. Eventually, like Winston Smith at the end, I shall cry in ecstasy, 'I don't want a telephone. I love the Post Office.'
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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