DIARY
DOMINIC LAWSON It is time to reveal the role of Mr Charles Wilson, the former editor of the Times, in what has now become known as the 'Ridley Affair'. On the evening before we typeset last week's Spectator I was at a party at his home, thrown by his wife Sally O'Sullivan in her role as editor of Harpers & Queen. I arrived with a briefcase con- taining the galley proofs of the Nicholas Ridley interview. I left the party without the briefcase and went on elsewhere to dinner. It is an easy thing to do. It is a very annoying briefcase, actually. I bought it in the Leather Lane market for only £10, reduced because the lock is defective and has a habit of springing open of its own accord. When I returned home it was far too late to telephone the Wilsons and I had some difficulty in sleeping, trying to recall exactly where the briefcase had ended up, and wondering, if it had been stolen, what a thief would have made of its contents. But an early morning telephone call to C. Wilson confirmed that the thing was still lurking unopened in his hall, and Charlie sent his driver round to our typesetters with the UXB. Thank you, Charlie, and I'm sorry if I sounded a little tense on the 'phone.
It is time, too, to answer the question put to me by every taxi-driver I have met over the past week, viz (and I condescend) `Didja know, Guy, when yer wrote yer article, that there'd be all this bovver?' The answer — embarrassing as it is to have to admit it — is, not entirely, and I think I can prove it, by way of a story. On Friday, the day after the sky fell in, I felt obliged to complain to Mr Kelvin MacKenzie, the editor of the Sun, because he had repro- duced the interview over his centre pages In clear breach of our copyright. 'You may be a good journalist to get the story, Mr MacKenzie informed me, 'but not good enough to realise just what a story you had. Otherwise you would have printed thousands of extra copies.' And he is right, although we did do a second print run last
week, when the dramatic effect of the 'first edition' became apparent. By the way, Mr
MacKenzie, since you obviously read The Spectator so attentively, can I ask you here to send us the cheque you promised as Payment for reprinting our interview with Mr Ridley. Or is it in the post?
That edition of the Sun also carried a leader on the Ridley Affair written entirely out of its own intellectual resources: 'Your great strength, Mr Ridley, is that you speak your mind. You are no hypocrite. But next time, present those thoughts in more moderate language.' In particular the sensitive souls at the Sun objected to Mr Ridley's mention of Hitler in connection with the erosion of British sovereignty in Europe. Now where did I read this: 'Herr we go, Herr we go! We beat them in 1945. Now for 1990!'? Why, it was on the front page of the Sun, in block capitals, on the morning of England's World Cup semi- final match against West Germany. Mr Ridley is indeed no hypocrite. But what about you, Mr MacKenzie?
0 n Saturd4 I was playing cricket for my team, the Old Talbotians, against the Mihir Bose XI, when a man from ITN and a woman from the Sunday Times came running onto the pitch — I have notified the Test and County Cricket Board waving pieces of paper and asking for my comments. They were holding Nicholas Ridley's resignation letter to the Prime Minister, in which he said that the views he expressed 'are very much in line with those of the Government. But I recognise the difficulties which my failure to use more measured words have caused.' It is precise- ly because I too thought that Mr Ridley's views as expressed to me were a trenchant rationale of the Prime Minister's opposi- tion to speedy imposition of European Monetary Union, that I never dreamed as
we went to press that she would ask him to resign because of our interview. The truth is that Mr Ridley has been expelled — to my enormous regret — for bad language, in particular about the Germans. And the fact that a British Cabinet minister has had to lose his job for being rude about the Germans is in itself evidence that Mr Ridley was right to warn us of the increas- ing German influence over our own politic- al life.
They're a nation of bankrupt shopkeepers.'
In the last few hours before Nick Rid- ley's resignation a group described as 'Mends of Mr Ridley' — actually one man, and not Mr Ridley, by the way — began putting it about that the remarks quoted in last week's Spectator were from a part of the interview that was off the record. Of the newspapers that I read, only the Independent swallowed this porky pie. In fact all the quotes came from a two-hour recorded interview agreed — almost a month in advance — to be entirely on the record. Furthermore all the quotes are on my transcript of the interview, which has been seen by the man calling himself 'friends of Mr Ridley', and he therefore knows very well that none of the remarks I quoted are prefaced or followed by the phrase 'this is not for quotation' which appears two or three times on the tape. I will offer only one hitherto unpublished extract from the transcript and here it is, a response to one of my questions: 'I think I'd better not [answer] — you might publish it.' Not the remark of a man completely off his guard, or unaware that he is speaking on the record. Nor this, from the published interview, in response to my question about differences of opin- ion within the Government: 'I'm not going to divulge those, or talk about them.' Cabinet ministers speaking off the record rarely talk of anything else.
So what is the explanation for Mr Ridley's talking on the record about 'Ger- man takeovers' and 'French poodles'? Cast your mind back a few months to an interview given by Mr Norman Tebbit to a newspaper on the west coast of America, in which he spoke of a 'cricket test' to judge the patriotism of blacks and Asians in the United Kingdom. That was no great shock for the inhabitants of Los Angeles pledging allegiance to the flag is an Amer- ican habit — but it was a shock for Mr Tebbit when the story was picked up by the British press. Similarly, I believe that Mr Ridley's remarks to me were well judged to appeal to the readers of The Spectator, as our post bag clearly testifies, but did not go down so well with the readers of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But could Nick Ridley, looking at me, imagine them? I certainly didn't, when I wrote the article out in longhand, on the day of The Spectator summer party. We were both naive.
This week we say a reluctant farewell to Rodney Milnes, our opera critic for the last 20 years and superb for every one of them. He passes the baton to Rupert Christian- sen.
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