CHARLES MOORE
Appearing before a judge in Paris (see last week's note) turns out to be an unintimidating experience. French lawyers wear gowns with a sort of bib attached to the front, but the heat on Monday afternoon was such that the friendly young judge let my lawyer lay his down. We sat in a tiny little room while I answered the sort of questions (mother's maiden name, etc.) that I could have answered by post. When it came to my place of birth, I said, -Hastings."Ah, la bataille,' said the judge. He remained silent for a few minutes and then, as if the thought were unrelated, Wks condolences pour hier soir.' With only the dimmest consciousness of football, I took a moment to work out what he was talking about. Laughter in court.
T r is interesting to think of French names 1 as if they were English. Thus our country is known in French as Big Britanny (Grande Bretagne). Surely the name colours their attitude to the place. Think what it would be like if we called France Big Yorkshire. Take the nation's capital. Tin pan' in French is a bet, so the city is called 'Bets'. If London were called Bets there would be no end of puns and plays on it in poems, songs and newspaper headlines, but I am assured that there are few in French literature or conversation. Indeed, it is considered boorish even to point it out.
hirac et Schreider reparlent &Europe', says Tuesday's Figaro. The headline, with differing French and German leaders' names inserted, must have appeared after every European election ever. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which Continental politicians are devoted to the EU doctrine of 'ever closer Union'. They often differ strongly about the best structures, the pace, the relative power of Council versus Commission, etc., but they never diverge from the central idea, any more than the Catholic Church would repudiate the Nicene Creed. Therefore no electoral rebuff (and this has not really been such a strong one) provokes a rethink. It is perhaps because they witness this one-track-mindedness in all their European dealings that British ministers — and even British opposition politicians who have been ministers and hope to be so again — shy away from any confrontation with the doctrine. If they are Eurosceptic, they attempt to win mere rhetorical victories against the orthodoxy by complaining shrilly about 'Brussels'. If they are Europhile, they like to say that whatever it is that British
voters don't like won't happen (John Major, for example, said that the call for a European single currency had 'all the potency of a raindance'), but very rarely does either side admit the strength and scale of the orthodoxy. This produces a strange politics in Britain because, judging by polls, less than a quarter of the British electorate are ever-closer-Unionists. There is no subject in which the gap between rulers and ruled is wider. This may help explain the Tories' amazing delicacy about offending its few remaining euro-enthusiasts, who are led by Kenneth Clarke. You may remember that a Conservatives for Europe breakaway party was founded a few years ago by John Stevens and got almost no votes at all. Ukip, on the other hand, got more votes than the Liberals last week, yet still the Tories hesitate to develop a full European policy for fear of the upset it would cause. The upset would be among the elites, at the idea that Euroscepticism was serious at last.
T t always surprises me how clear people [feel about capital punishment, on both sides. Educated people tend to say things like, 'It is the test of a civilised society that it does not have the death penalty.' Uneducated people tend to take the benefits of the idea for granted and fall to arguing about whether rope, electric chair or injection is the best method. Yet surely the arguments are finely balanced. On the one hand are the risk of getting the wrong person and the horror of the whole enterprise — both undeniable. On the other are the power of the deterrent and the collective expression of the supremacy of law over the worst crimes — equally valid. I find myself thinking that I do not want capital punishment in
modern Britain, but I would favour it in extreme situations, such as war or insurgency. The question arises because of the Charter of Fundamental Rights to which we must all sign up if we accept the European constitution. This absolutely forbids the death penalty, and even forbids the extradition of anyone to a country where he might face the death penalty. So if Osama bin Laden is nicked in Neasden, we shall not be allowed to extradite him to the United States. Surely, in principle, extradition should be allowed to any country which has the proper rule of law, including due process. The American death penalty is part of due process, not an arbitrary punishment. I would rather be tried for a capital crime in, say, Houston than for one that carries a life sentence in, say, Athens.
It is the turning of an opinion into a 'right' that causes so much trouble. Take the current drive to get private schools to make their facilities more easily available to the local community. This is a good idea. It is a pity (though not nearly as common as is alleged) when excellent playing fields, theatres, swimming pools, etc. can never be used by their neighbours. But if, as seems likely, the charitable status of private schools is to become dependent on offering these facilities, there will be trouble. The fundamental justification for charitable status — the provision of education not for profit — will be undermined. Cost will be loaded on schools without new revenue necessarily being forthcoming: and those schools which try to limit the local use of their facilities may find themselves legally liable to those invoking the 'right', or cease to be charities.
Afriend of mine is a vet with a thriving country practice. One day he was standing in his high street surgery wearing his white coat when there was an explosion across the road. People came running in saying that there had been an armed raid at the nearby bank (for southern England grows more and more like the Wild West) and that a clerk had been shot. My friend hurried over to find the man, who was one of his customers, lying in a pool of blood on the floor. His arm had been shot through by a deer-slug with the result that the slug was embedded harmlessly, though unpleasantly, in the outer lining of his stomach. The vet bent over the poor fellow and said, 'Don't worry. You're going to be all right.' The clerk looked back at him and wailed, 'That's what you said about my cat.'
Previous page
