Notebook
The Italians are always first with everything. Last month, as the newspapers have reported, the Fiat motor company in Turin dismissed '61 Derek Robinsons. Well:not exactly Derek Robinsons. Six of them, for a start, were women, and they all seem to have been a good deal rougher than the eminent trade unionist from Longbridge. Their pamphlets were much more hysterical and inflammatory, and some of them specialised in threatening their bosses with remarks like 'What pretty legs you have. I would take care of them if I were you', which sort of thing is a far cry from the turgid oratory of Mr Robinson. These dismissed workers took their case to an industrial tribunal which decided that they had been wrongfully sacked. That the decision went in their favour was largely Fiat's fault, for — rather like British Leyland — it gave only the vaguest grounds for dismissal, namely that their behaviour at work had been 'incorrect' and reflected a generally subversive attitude. But when the triumphant workers returned to their factories, they were immediately served with new dismissal notices, this time specifying particular instances of incorrect behaviour. The tribunal must now hear their cases again, and it will be a month or two before it does so. Meanwhile, the trade unions called one or two token strikes which, according to the Fiat management, were supported by only 20 to 30 per cent of the workforce. And, again according to the management, the dismissals have resulted in higher production, which shows the effect which 61 professional agitators can have on a workforce of 165,000 people. Although Fiat is in a far healthier condition than British Leyland, its problems have been similar — strikes, disruption, subversion, and trade union resistance to the redeployment of workers. Both companies are taking on their trouble-makers. It will be interesting to see which has the greatest success.
The Blunt affair has been one of those great national celebrations in which everyone, even the humblest among us, has sought to play his part. At the Oxford bookshop of the Oxford University Press the excitement was enormous when it was learnt that Sir Anthony Blunt had been stripped of his knighthood, for there on the shelves were books by the great art historian, with the author's name on the cover still bearing the title of which it had so suddenly been denuded. Urgent discussions among the staff. What was to be done? Brilliant idea. A telephone call was accordingly made to the publishers suggesting that a sticker should be placed over the 'Sir' on each of the offening volumes. The proposal was, I understand, treated with the contempt it deserved.
I promise that the Spectator will shortly cure itself of its obsession with the Blunt scandal but not yet. There is still one thing which continues to worry me. This is that those law officers and government ministers involved in granting Blunt immunity have either only the dimmest recollection of the whole thing or none at all. Such lack of natural curiosity is extraordinary. Imagine an official coming into your office to see you one morning. 'Not much happening today, sir. It seems that Sir Anthony Blunt, the Keeper of the Queen's pictures, was a Russian spy for a couple of decades. It is felt that it would be in the national interest if we granted him immunity from prosecution and let him carry on with his job at the palace."Yup, Okay. Good idea. Any other business?' In her statement to the House of Commons last week, Mrs Thatcher referred to a meeting on the subject in March 1964 between the Director General of the Security Service and the Home Secretary, Henry Brooke. She went on: 'Lord Brooke, who at first did not recall being told, which is quite understandable, has been reminded of the meeting and has, with characteristic integrity accepted that his memory must have been at fault.' Quite understandable? I do not think so, even though it is quite possible that Lord Brooke might have forgotten that he and Blunt were at school at Marlborough together.
I must apologise to the editor of The Times, Mr William Rees-Mogg, who says that I misrepresented him in last week's Notebook. I stated that Mr Rees-Mogg continued to believe that the late Donald Beves, a don at King's College, Cambridge, might have been a recruiter of spies for the Russians. This may have given the impression that The Times's retraction of its original allegations against Beves counted for little. This is not so. If I understand Mr Rees-Mogg correctly, there were at first considerable grounds for suspicion of Beves. The Times's source was a good one, and Beves had been friendly with the circle from which the British double agents emerged. But subsequent investigations failed to yield any evidence whatsoever against Beves, as Mr Rees-Mogg freely admits. He is still puzzed by the whole affair, but that is all.
You may feel that the above apology to the great Mr William Rees-Mogg is inadequate, but if so, I would invite you to compare it with the sort of apology which we have to put up with nowadays in Fleet Street. Last week I was sympathising with the Sunday Telegraph for having made one of the most horrific blunders in recent times, the sort of blunder which is a journalist's nightmare. It is not every day that a newspaper of such standing publishes a lead story so totally unrelated to the truth, backed up by another lengthy article in its feature pages. The story was one which implied that Professor Blunt was responsible for the deaths of various Dutch agents during the war, alleging that he had been in charge of the Dutch section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). In a tiny little item in its latest issue, the Sunday Telegraph states grandly: 'We are now satisfied that this was an error, which arose through a case of mistaken identity, and we accept that Anthony Blunt was not involved in those operations. We accordingly withdraw the statements and express our regret for the mistake.' It is, surely, only because Blunt is a self-confessed traitor that the Sunday Telegraph feels able to strike an attitude of such nonchalance in the face of such a breath-taking libel. As for the paper's diarist, Mr Kenneth Rose, who appears to have been principally responsible for this appalling error, words fail me. He had the impudence last Sunday to write again about some other aspect of the Blunt affair without even referring to the previous week's disaster. Last week's New Statesman also contained a correction, though not an apology. The paper admitted it had been wrong in having declared Blunt innocent of spying for the Russians in its previous issue. It could hardly have done otherwise. But like the Sunday Telegraph, it sought to minimise its error by stating that Blunt had been 'a mole of little substance' and by pooh-poohing the efforts of those, like Andrew Boyle, who have tried to identify the Fourth Man. 'Like a blunderbuss, from time to time a few pellets hit target, but the main result is an indiscriminate mess,' said the New Statesman. Of both papers, all one can say is: some blunderbuss, some mess.
Writing in the Spectator two weeks ago, Christopher Booker in the face of universal denials — predicted that the Metrication Board would soon be abolished. On the day of publication of his article, its abolition was announced. But despite this decision, the process of metricating England by stealth is continuing. By the end of 1982, according to the Motor Agents Association, most of Great Britain's 108,000 petrol stations will be selling petrol in litres rather than in gallons. There is theoretically no compulsion involved, because the Government has decided to eschew compulsion. But for a variety of 'practical' reasons — that the oil companies have already been selling petrol to garages in litres for 14 years, that the ,gauges on petrol pumps are unable to express the incredible cost of a modern gallon, that 'millions of people in the UK have now been educated in the metric system' — the oil companies and the Motor Agents Association are agreed that gallons must go. As usual, of course, public opinion has not been consulted.
Alexander Chancellor
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