A Spectator's Notebook
The Prime Minister, whatever may be thought of the content of what he had to say at Lancaster House, •has never been more confident and assured in manner. He spoke without notes or text. He showed himself to be master of all necessary detail. When asked how to explain his total change of mind over incomes policy he bluntly put it down to the Government's defeat at the hands of the miners. When asked why his incomes policy should work when others had failed, he made clear his belief that the other policies had gone wrong when they came to end. His policy, it is to be inferred, is to last forever. He is sure that the public will like it and that the unions will lump it. He seems positively to thrive and to glow on disaster and near-disaster. It is impossible not to admire the manner with which he eats his words, for all the world a's if they were the finest delicacies he had ever swallowed. 'Perhaps he thinks they are. Perhaps he still does not believe in an incomes policy, but thinks that in the 'circumstances socialism is really unavoidable and is best therefore left in his safe Tory 'hands.
Record maker
It is very rare indeed that an individual manages to challenge great public bodies and the present arty-conformist establishment of the trendy left at one and the same time, and get away with it. Mr Ross McWhirter must surely include himself in the next year's Guinness Book of Records for his successful litigation in getting Associated Television's documentary on Andy Warhol temporarily banned. I admire the despatch with which, in the same day, having lost his case before Mr Justice Forbes, he then won his case in the Court of Appeal before Lord Denning, the splendidly unbumptious Master of the Rolls, and his two colleagues. The Independent Broadcasting Authority quite rightly were defeated: they had not themselves seen the television film. Nor had McWhirter, but newspaper critics had, and their descriptions and comments, in default of any other evidence, were decisive.
I'm not too keen on the Court of Appeal acting as a censor; but I am delighted that, once again, they have shown themselves capable of dispensing swift justice; and am even more delighted that they should respond to an individual. Ross McWhirter was questioned on television later that evening, it being suggested that he, as an individual, had no right to interfere in such a matter, and get in the way of the desire of the public Independent Broadcasting Authority and the commercial companies. He was more than a match for his interviewer.
Warhol's trash is symptomatic of the almost total collapse of discrimination and aesthetic sense in New York; his success illustrates (as I dare say he would proclaim) the rubbishiness of those who applaud him. It is said that in order to get the interview with him on which the television programme w4s based, David Bailey, the ageing young photographer, had to sit next to him in bed.
Ross McWhirter's next step is to take the Attorney-General before the European Court of Human Rights, on the grounds that the Government acted illegally over taking us into the Common Market. Naturally, the country will wish him well.
Foot note
At the Granada lunch for its annual press awards, the journalist of the year, Paul Foot, regarded himself as placed in a quandary when the company at the Savoy was asked to rise for the loyal toast (which came commendably early, before the main course). He got half-heartedly to his feet and explained, "I decided to stand but not to drink." I said he'd have done better to have sat and drank. He muttered something about his republican principles. He is a most amiable fellow, who agreed warmly with me when I replied to an inquiry of his that I thought Reggie Maudling was an honest man.
I suppose the Granada panel gave Foot his award for apparently destroying the political career of Maudling. I admire muck-raking journalism. I cannot however feel anything but unhappy that the Granada judges have decided to set their seal of establishment approval upon Paul Foot, who received his gold medal from guest-of-honour Harold Wilson with every sign of gratification.
Wilson was back in top form, using his speech to lay about him in all directions. Apart from his habit of quoting himself, which is getting worse, he seemed younger and fitter and more confident than for a year or more. He certainly acts as if he believes he has got his internal problems with the Labour Party sorted out and that he has the Tories on the run. He made his own awards. "I award my humbug of the year, for the third time running, to the Times, which thus wins the humbug outright," he said.
Garden party
Half a loaf is always better than no bread, and for that reason a qualified welcome can be extended to the way in which Geoffrey Rippon has messed up Desmond Plummer's plans for Covent Garden. Behind Plummer's smiling response to the Secretary of State's pronouncement lies a considerable worry — that the delay which Rippon has caused will mean that the whole project is still in the air when, as he expects, the Tories lose control of the GLC in the forthcoming local elections. Plummer knows, too, that, after Anthony Crosland's aggressive statement on Monday, there is every chance that the Labour legions will go to battle in the GLC elections with a promise to throw the whole Garden scheme out, thus doubly ensuring their victory.
Now, Peter Walker, who is a much cleverer, and more ruthless, politician than Rippon, had every intention of himself sending poor Plummer and his planners right back to tne drawing board by turning the whole set of redevelopment proposals down fiat, thus abandoning Plummer, but giving himself a shining image, and making certain that Labour could not exploit nationally any advantage won by taking the right side on the Covent Garden problem in London politics. Peter Walker is now said to be throwing his hands up in despair at his replacement's unwillingness to cut the Gordian knot. All this intrigue and scheming aside, however, the essential thing now is not — as some papers have done — to rest content with the Rippon modifications, but to go on fighting the whole wretched, barbaric plan.
Dinner date
I find it impossible to restrain chuckles of satisfaction — though there is little enough to chuckle at in Ireland yet — at the latest news from Dublin about the decline and fall of Sean MacStiofain, who has been hunger-striking on tea, water, orange juice and oxtail soup. On Monday the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau issued the following statement, which I quote in full: "The leadership of the Irish Republician Movement has issued an instruction to Sean MacStiofain to terminate his hunger strike forthwith. After fifty-seven days of hunger strike no useful purpose will be served if Mr MacStiofain continues his protest against his unjust imprisonment." The terse brutality of this statement signifies, I am told, that, though MacStiofain has not been expelled from the movement he is, to quote one of my informants, "now regarded as the lowest of the low."
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