Notebook
What Dr Owen considers his impartial and statesmanlike posture over Rhodesia has become much more difficult to sustain following the massacre of twelve British subjects near Umtali last week. While it is true that killings of both blacks and whites go on all the time at a terrifying and Increasing rate, there is still a residual feeling that any government, however toothless and clawless, has a special responsibility towards its own citizens. But Dr Owen is so obsessed by the duty, as he sees it, to stick consistently to his policy of keeping the door open to Mugabe and Nkomo, a policy which involves saying nothing that might offend anybody apart from the government of Rhodesia, that he cannot even respond with spontaneous horror to an event such as last Friday's massacre. And among the applecarts which he appears frightened of upsetting is the disgusting love-in between Jimmy Carter and Jim Callaghan, of whom Walter Mondale said in Washington this week: 'There is no other leader to whom President Carter turns more frequently or trusts more completely than Mr Callaghan . . . We have a great world leader in our midst.' Such cosiness is very far removed from the atmosphere in Rhodesia, where a mood of defeatism and desperation seems to be taking over, Dr Owen should realise that his hopes for a negotiated settlement with the guerrillas — hopes which many people including some Conservatives, like Lord Carrington, have shared — are beginning to look pathetically unrealistic. Lord Home in the House of Lords was sensible enough: 'It is necessary to tell the leaders of the Patriotic Front that unless they come to the negotiating table within a set time — and that .should be within days or at the most weeks — the British Government will have to give the fullest possible support to the Salisbury provisional government.'
Jimmy Carter's wife Rosalynn displayed much righteous indignation over Alexander Solzhenitsyn's claim that America is a country of 'unchecked materialism' and 'social irresponsibility'. In an address to the National Press Club in Washington, she pointed out that private citizens, foundations and corporations spent over 35 billion dollars in 'philanthropic contributions' last year. "This is not a sign of unchecked materialism', she said. True (if one ignores tax advantages), but to understand what Solzhenitsyn was talking about she need not have looked further than her husband's own family. Jimmy Carter's brother Billy mercilessly exploits his rela
tionship to the President for materialistic purposes, mainly by giving his name to a brand of beer. Hugh Carter has done the same with a trashy book about his cousin Jimmy. And we should not forget the President's sister, Ruth Stapleton, who, although deeply into religion, is also deeply into Hustler magazine, the most notorious of America's pornographic publications.
Having never worked on the Sunday Times, I often wonder how articles with twd or more authors get written. It must be rather like drafting a communiqué. The new Conservative report on youth policy has a foreword of a mere 154 words jointly composed by two eminent politicians, Mr James Prior and Mr Norman St John-Stevas. They begin by saying 'The appearance of this discussion document is very timely' (an odd comment, I would have thought, when the document has predictably raised the hackles of so many Tory MPs, enhancing the impression of disunity before an election) and later go on to declare that it undoubtedly constitutes an outline charter for youth'. Did they read it? I ask myself. Did they read it any more than the Archbishop of Canterbury can have read the book by a canon of Westminster Abbey which he launched in London this week — a leftwing manifesto entitled Britain Today and Tomorrow which dismisses the 'periodic doses of mild socialism' we have had as an illusion and calls for further redistribution of wealth? Do great men ever read the books or pamphlets to which they attach their imprimatur? The Conservative document A Time for Youth is extraordinary, for, at a time when the Conservatives are rightly looking for major cuts
in public expenditure, it wants to spend £700 million a year on pocket money for school leavers taking part in a proposed universal training scheme. It also wants full and mandatory grants to be paid to all students over the age of eighteen on the whimsical grounds that 'young people cannot be adults unless they are financially independent from their parents'. How nice for parents. Even worse than these, perhaps, are the report's proposals on Social and Political Education in schools. One of the eight 'aims' of social education is to ground young people in "lifeskills", such as the principles of income tax and a mortgage and how to deal with births, marriages and deaths'. While religious education is regarded as 'not within the scope Of this report', sex education is. Furthermore, as part of its proposals . for compulsory political education, it says that 'representatives of the political parties should be allowed into schools to declare their political beliefs and their reasons for holding them'. It is unbelievable. However, even the study group itself knows it is on to a loser, for the nine authors, headed by Mr Alan Haselhurst MP, admit in their inimitable style that 'youth policy has scored no marks for political sex appeal.' True.
Americans and other tourists visiting London automatically head for Harrods which, they have been told, is the most dazzling department store in the world, the shop that has everything. They find instead the most impressive collection of things that nobody wants. My most recent visit to this increasingly dismal supermarket, where self-service baskets are now supplied in the groceries department, provided evidence of its decline in standards. I wanted to make three purchases — a protractor for one of my children, a glass tank for keeping snails in, and a tape recording of The Magic Flute. None of them was in stock.
In 1928 a book entitled The Story of the Spectator was published to mark the centenary of the foundation of this journal. Its author, William Beach Thomas, attempted rashly to define the political position of the Spectator. It combined, he said, 'an intellectual admiration for tradition' with 'a deep sympathy for "those who live in small houses", as a contemptuous autocrat once said; yes, and for those lesser animals who suffer needless pain, for those who live in burrows and nest in trees, as well as those who barely exist in slums.' Later the author writes: 'The need of a serious weekly paper was perhaps never so great as today (though the extinction of the class has been prophesied) if only because personality gets less and less chance of expression in the daily press'. Apart from the fact that most of us now live in small houses, the situation is much the same today in what is (as the quick-minded reader will already have calculated) our 150th year.
Alexander Chancellor
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