Notebook
More than 370 broken or missing light bulbs; 130 broken or missing lamp shades; nine fire extinguishers stolen; six windows smashed; a door ripped off. That was part— but not all—of the tally of damage and destruction on a train carrying so-called football fans from Grimsby to Sheffield last Saturday. Vandalism and violence were occurring elsewhere on the same day: at Swindon; at the Rochdale v Blackburn and the Bury v Preston football matches; and at other 'sporting' assemblies.
It is, of course, a commonplace nowadays, the rule rather than the exception--and the culprits are invariably young. What could be done ?
For a start, greater responsibility should be placed upon football clubs. They should be held more fully to account for the costly behaviour of their 'supporters'. British Railways might also reintroduce restrictions on 'football specials'. More fundamentally, the Government could sensibly consider the restoration of National Service, by way of engaging youthful energies more constructively. The proposal has much to commend it. especially in an era of social and economic dislocation. Many parents would agree —and so would more of their children than is commonly supposed by the leaders of the two goyerning parties, who always fight shy of a return to National Service for fear of offending the electorate. A good part of the electorate would in fact welcome such a decision.
If you are a gardener suffering from water restrictions you may at least consider yourself more fortunate than the owners of canal cruisers. Their movements have been restricted in some places by closed locks. The situation is now so bad that the Oxford Canal and sections of the Grand Union Canal have been completely closed, causing a bottleneck of escaping craft in the lower reaches of the Thames. Even on those canals which are still open, journeys are taking fifty per cent longer because all locks are closed between 7 p.m. and 8 a.m. Of the six hundred craft expected at the National Rally of Boats this month, only 130 were able to make the journey. The danger is that if water levels are allowed to drop, the banks dry out and are no longer watertight.
With government subvention of the arts at a high level, many of us have worrying thoughts about the dangers of creating, inadvertently, a set of art commissars who will regulate not only taste but the very means by which taste and knowledge can develop.: the visibility or non-appearance of individual artists through the various channels of per
formance or exhibition. The need for subvention is beyond question; the methods employed to implement patronage are not. With the opening of the National Theatre, we are faced with a new problem in the form of passive acquiescence from the public that is so conditional as to constitute a breakdown of the usual channels of response, of communication, between audiences and the stage—and the management.
At three evening performances and a matinee during the last few months of four widely different plays, the Lyttelton Theatre was packed—with an equally uncritical audience to each performance. Extremely variable, often low standards of acting, ensemble playing, direction, set-design and lighting—above all, direction—were greeted with the same blank enthusiasm. The reasons are obvious enough : institutions attract mass audiences, in the sense that a large part of the National Theatre audience comes from block bookings, coach parties and clubs with a lot of tourism thrown in and official outings. None of us is so rarefied as to want to put any brakes on simple pleasures, but if the National Theatre is indeed a national institution it should not be frozen into set reflexes, like a Tussaud museum. Above all, how is the management to know when it is doing well or doing badly if box office returns are practically constant ? Audiences may level out, but if the National Theatre continues to be an attraction in itself, like the Tower of London, the problem will not be easily resolved.
Dr Joseph Needham is retiring as Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in October. He is to be succeeded by Professor William Wade, himself an old Caian and an authority on constitutional law. Dr Needham is not, however, going to vanish into obscurity. His massive work on the history of Science, Technology and Civilisation in China will continue. He is to have an institute, to be based near the Cambridge University Press—which publishes his volumes on China—where his considerable library will be placed. It can consequently be expected that Dr Needham, who is seventy-six, will produce many more volumes in the coming years.
Frank Field, director of the Child Poverty Action Group, who risked imprisonment by leaking Cabinet secrets and then refusing to give his source, is now in the running for a fairly safe Labour seat. He has been interviewed by five of the seven ward Labour parties in Fulham, which ex-Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart will not be contesting at the next election, and where he had a 5,000-odd majority last time.
Among others seeking the nomination are Ivor Richard (former Labour MP for Baron's Court and now our representative at the UN), Michael Barnes (former Labour MP for Brentford and Chiswick) and Humphry Berkeley (former Conservative MP for Lancaster, who joined the Labour Party in 1970). But Mr Field must have a
good chance of being chosen, because he is far enough to the left to appeal to local party activists, while at the same time his work at CPAG has won him friends in all parties. He has proved himself a most formidable lobbyist. It looks as though the Government will be forced to go most of the way to meet him on the policy issue that he raised. It is nOw likely that the child benefit scheme will not be abandoned, but will be 'phased in' over the next two years. And the Field case seems also to have caused the Prime Minister to change his mind about reform of the Official Secrets Act, which he was previously blocking. Meanwhile the Attorney-General has given Mr Field immunity from prosecution, without being asked for it.
Aged only thirty-four, he would reinforce the younger element in a party whose MPs tend to be older, on average, than the Conservatives. He was educated at a London grammar school, took an economics degree at Hull and then taught in three further education colleges before going to the CPAG in 1969. He has been a London borough councillor and stood for Parliament in 1966, against Ronald Bell in South Bucks.
Incidentally, the CPAG has been run very largely on money subscribed by capitalist individuals and foundations. The trade unions, which might have been expected to be its most generous backers, have in fact contributed verylittle to its funds.
Many prominent people must be relieved to learn that Lord Bradwell (formerly ToM Driberg) had not completed his memoirs before his death. There is much prurient speculation as to what he might have written about his sexual affairs with famous men: He was also indiscreet on political matters. He was, for example, almost the only British journalist with the British troops in South Vietnam after the surrender of Japan in 1945. There he came to know Lord Lbws Mountbatten, who was unhappy with his task of returning Indochina to French control. Asked about this episode last year Tom Driberg replied in his splendidly mockpompous drawl: 'It's funny you should ask that because only yesterday I was looking through sonic letters from Mountbatten written about that time, each of which started "Dear Tom, please burn this as soon as you have read it ...".'
The Irish government awaits with dread the forthcoming ti ial of the British Special Air Service troops arrested for crossing .the border into Republican territory. Cabinet ministers are explaining in private that when the soldiers were apprehended in the night, the local Kurd& rang up the Director of Public Prosecutions ask ing. f° advice. Without consulting any cabinet minister, he ordered the soldiers to be charged. The outcome is especially ernbarrassing since it appears that the SAS incur' sion into Republic territory was made in 3 genuine chase after IRA gunmen.
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