Spectator's Notebook
During the early days of Mr Heath's administration, I talked with most of his principal colleagues, and, naturally enough, the conversation would turn to the Common Market and the degree of the Prime Minister's commitment. Without exception, I think (although I am writing without reference to any notes), they were all of the opinion that, committed though he was to his European policies, his commitment never to tolerate a statutory incomes policy was overriding. If so, then during his two and a half years of government, a slow sea-change must have occurred, until, at the end, he has become inflexible only on Europe, and prepared to change his mind and his policies on everything else. What a• pity, that he did not change his mind on Europe, but on nothing else. Then, we might have had the best peace-time Prime Minister of the century.
Queueing to order
The other night catching a train at Liverpool Street, I walked towards the barrier, where people were passing through. Two policemen told me to join the queue. "Why should I queue?" I asked. "If we say you have to queue, you have to queue," they said. "Why?" I asked. "Listen, mate, do you want to be booked?" one of them replied. This annoyed me. "What sort of coppers are you, then?" I asked. "Railway ones or proper ones?" This annoyed them. "Go on like that," said one, " and we'll throw the book at you."
The train, needless to say, had plenty of spare seats. The ticket collector was polite and apologetic. A regular on this particular train told me that there were always seats, but that this did not stop the police from officiously ordering people into queues if they felt like it.
King and confidence
Cecil King was at his disarming best at a press conference at Claude Gill Books organised by Jonathan Cape on Monday. Chatting to him, I discovered that all his papers, including the entries in his diary which have been kept out of The Cecil King Diary (which we .will be discussing next week), are to go to Boston University, an institution of which he had never heard, until the approach was made to him. The deal is that the university will pay for all the papers to be put in order, and in return will be given possession of them. Some of his diary, King says, has been withheld so as not to break confidences. Given the nature of what is in the book, the mind is inclined to boggle at what has been kept out. I said to him that I could hardly think of a worse breach of confidence than that which he records, of telling Ted Heath the date that Harold Wilson had chosen for the 1967 general
election. "Wilson shouldn't have told me in the first place,' said King, adding, "he told me even before he had told his Cabinet." Someone asked King what he thought about Woodrow Wyatt calling him " a monumental bore," and he blandly replied, "Oh, I have been called much worse things than that."
Wintour and the NUJ
A Mr George Viner, describing himself as the Training Officer of the National Union of Journalists, wrote to the Times last week to say that he was " astounded " at the statement of Charles Wintour, the editor of the Evening Standard, that "the most threatening development to the quality of journalism is the limitation on staff recruitment to Fleet Street imposed by the National Union of Journalists." If Mr Viner is being honest, he must astound pretty easily. The NUJ is rapidly becoming the greatest scandal in Fleet Street; for it has almost succeeded in its disreputable object of making journalism a closed shop. Mr Viner talks about the "quality" of journalism, as if the NUJ were concerned to see it preserved. One way the quality of journalism has been preserved is through the traditional freedom of entry into it; and it is this freedom which the NUJ (aided and abetted by weak and foolish people in the Newspaper Proprietors' Association, who saw which way the wind was blowing, did not like it, but allowed themselves to be blown along) has virtually destroyed, through its insistence that all recruits to Fleet Street enter having served time in the provinces on training schemes. Several senior journalists, outraged at the NUJ's determination to insist upon closed (or 100 per cent) shops throughout Fleet Street, are considering resigning and joining the more professional Institute. Hitherto, the great majority of the betterknown journalists have not bothered much about the NUJ, leaving it to be run by people whose enthusiasm for union activities has tended to be greater than their talent for journalism. It is only now that the latent hostility to the NUJ throughout Fleet Street is beginning to show itsel', Charles Wintour deserves great credit for his timely and well-justified attack, which is developed in his book, Pressures on the Press, noticed elsewhere in these pages bY Patrick Cosgrave.
Disputing Sun
For several days last week the Sun Was produced by its executives, the NUJ people there being in dispute. In addition, the NUJ has been trying to compel Arthur Brittenden — former editor of the DallY Mail and a distinguished journalist IV anybody's reckoning — to join it — a full member and not as an associate. The distinction is vital. The NUJ's Sun chaPe', (or branch) has tried to insist that Brittenden should join the union as OA ordinary member, because that w09.1: mean that he would be expected to st116` if the NUJ told him to do so. Associate members — those with hire and fit„e powers — are not thus expected t" behave. Last Friday the disputes cool' mittee of the NPA met three represents; tives of the NUJ to discuss the matter; 0'4 as a result, Brittenden has been told he can appeal against the NUJ's refusal t°1 admit him as an associate member. AI being well, the appeal will go through th,1,5 Friday, and a new — and potentialu dangerous — threat will have been averted.
Not enough
It would suit the NUJ to become thde journalists' sole negotiating body; journalists will be very foolish if the allow it to become so by letting Institute of Journalists dwindle away Ina feeble semi-professional body. It is old recently that the NUJ has become involv itself in negotiations on a high level. It catle be pretty inept. One one occasion, °to NPA people had to tell the NUJ chaps go away and come back with a bigfe, demand, their present one not heln° enough.
Stormy weather
A farmer friend mentioned to me ,thbilet driving across Oxfordshire last weekenu had been struck by the splendour of or trees this autumn, saying he had neivel seen such colours. Paul Johnson a„,1‘ nu travelling in Wales the previous we'81.' had noticed the same. The far ill,.; unlike Paul and me, had an explanation:, miserably wet August had, in fact, glvhee the trees a new lease of life, and the subsequent October drought had made d colours. The gales of last Sunday finished off the leaves, and the autumn, in one the most theatrical nights of wee,—+h have experienced outside the tropics.
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