Notebook
It is right and proper in these dark days that journalists should search for little beacons of light amid the gloom. This is considered good for public morale and it acquits us of the charge that we do nothing but report the 'bad news'. But the task has become extraordinarily difficult. At the Spectator, we do our bit. Last week for example, Mr AubeTon Waugh praised the television partnership of Reginald Bosanquet and Anna Ford as a significant cultural achievement in our time. But the newspaper in which one expects the public need for optimism to be most effectively met is, of course, Mr Victor Matthews' Daily Express. So my heart leapt when, flicking gloomily through the pages of the issue of 5 January, I chanced upon a ten-column headline 'The Spirit of '79', with the 'o' in 'of in the form of a circular Union Jack. 'Enterprise, ingenuity, bravery, inventiveness — they're the qualities on which Great Britain built a world-wide empire,' it said. 'And despite the economic and political gloom that seems to shroud us, they are qualities that still exist in abundance in every corner of these islands. From the Shetlands to the Scillies, Britons, young and old, are engaged in dedicated daily activities that lift the spirit and lighten the heart. Meet them in the Daily Express. They'll make you proud to be British . And who was the first spirit-lifting, heartlightening individual we were invited to meet? It was 'Simon — the biggest maniac in magic' — an escapologist, magician and fire-eater (a youthful Harold Wilson, perhaps). If this was the best that the Daily Express could do, I am afraid that the Queen in her Christmas broadcast did hardly better. Hers too, quite properly, was a message of hope, and one expressed in more dignified terms. But the specific examples she chose of British vigour and enterprise were confined to emigrants and athletes, neither of which group, for all its virtues, is likely to contribute much to our national recovery. Why, too, must she place so much emphasis on the Commonwealth, which is merely a poignant reminder of the past? And why, above all, does she allow her Christmas broadcast to be 'packaged' in the form of a television commercial? But I am reverting already to the 'bad news'.
'These difficulties do not yet constitute a national crisis', said Peter Jenkins in Wednesday's Guardian, 'We are nowhere near a civil breakdown. The crisis is one for the Government'. Crises are always very hard to identify. In Italy, the politicians decide when they will precipitate a 'crisis' and newspapers have headlines like 'Crisis due on Tuesday week', but there it seems merely to be a technical term to describe the period between the fall of one government and the formation of another. The government has not yet fallen here, though, no doubt, it will eventually. We will then be handing each other smarties and maltezers in the streets as the disgraced Callaghan flies out for a 'holiday' in the West Indies. Meanwhile, life does not seem to me abnormal. There was a pre-Christmas spending spree and a post-Christmas spending spree. More people than ever before have booked foreign holidays earlier than ever before (encouraged, perhaps, by Lord George-Brown's television commercial for cross-channel ferries in which he declares, with no doubt unconscious irony about the depths to which our politicians can sink, that 'Everyone's going cheap). The shops have so far survived not only the distribution difficulties caused by the weather and by the lorry drivers' strike, but also a wave of 'panic buying'. I do not wish to underrate the industrial disruption caused by the lorry drivers' strike; merely to emphasise that Mr Jenkins is right. There is not yet a national crisis, but the germ of one is there. It lies in the evident growing anger and resentment by the public towards trade union power (aggravated by the complacency and thuggish attitudes of the union officials as shown on television) and the reluctance (or, in the Tory case, inability) of both major parties to offer 'any really convincing solution. As for the Spectator, we have a little crisis of our own caused by the disruption on the railways. We apologise to those readers who this week will have received their copies late.
It is with trepidation that we say goodbye to the Shah, who departed this week for Egypt — a country with which he has sentimental connections having married, at 19, the sister of King Farouk. Like Farouk, he can now look forward to spending the remainder of his life in luxurious exile. The Shah may not be very likable, but if his departure is not followed by horrifying bloodshed, it will be little short of a miracle. Throughout this century, the Shahs of Persia have been dogged by ill-fortune. The last Shah to die on the throne was Muzaffar-ed-Din in 1906 — but even he died unhappily, having just been forced to sign away much of his power to a new parliament. After him, the last two Qajar Shahs were deposed and the present Shah's father — the founder of the new upstart dynasty — was forced to abdicate in 1941, dying three years later in Johannesburg.
When the Listener was founded fifty years ago, it aroused petulant opposition from several newspaper and periodical proprietors who felt it was not the job of the BBC to compete with the press. The New Statesman was particularly sniffy about the Listener's intention to review books. 'If the controllers of the BBC are to be allowed to set up as literary critics, why should they not set up as pork butchers?' it asked. But the Listener survived to become a paper of distinction and to take a reputable place among the other weeklies. This week, to celebrate its fiftieth birthday, it is publishing a special 84-page issue which includes a dozen of the best ''articles it has printed during its first half-century. The Spectator was not among its original critics — nor is it a critic now, except in respect of the subsidy which the Listener enjoys from the Corporation. Without subsidy, it is hard to believe that it could hold its price at 25p — and it has the additional advantage of free television and radio advertising. While we continue to regard this as unfair competition, we believe that the Listener would deserve to survive without subsidy.
In his television column two weeks ago, Richard Ingrams wrote that he preferred having a black-and-white television set because he found 'the sight of Reginald Bosanquet or Alistair Burnet in colour, including hideous make-up, a deeply upsetting one'. I used once to work at ITN, and I cannot remember Reginald Bosanquet putting on make-up, but there is no doubt that he plasters it on now. Why? It is all the fault of poor Anna Ford. She wears make-up, as many women do, so he has to wear it as well. You cannot apparently have one shining newscaster and one powdered one. The camera doesn't like it. However, I am assured that Reggie is trying, despite all these difficulties, to be as unmade-up as possible. The news, also revealed by Mr Ingrams in his column, that the Spectator has generously agreed to pay the rental for his new black-and-white set has also made a deep impression on the country's newscasters. They, r understand, receive a contribution of only £20 a year towards the cost of their television sets at home, while company executives get free colour sets, videocassette recorders and so on.
Alexander Chancellor
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