DIARY
ALAN WATKINS
The life of President Home is drawing peacefully to its close. The question is, who is to succeed him? The Conservative plan to slip in Mr Douglas Hurd — which would both please Mr Hurd and resolve some of their own difficulties — looks like coming apart. For Lady Thatcher's supporters have made clear that she too will be a candidate. Sir Edward Heath, who has no supporters to speak of, has indicated that he sees no reason why he should not be one as well. Lord Owen, we are told, is taking much the same attitude with Lord Jenkins. He is not going to withdraw in favour of a 'Centre Europe' candidate. Under the rigorous dis- cipline imposed by Mr Tony Blair, howev- er, Labour is solidly behind Lord Callaghan (`Trust Jim to Do the Job'). Is this what we want? Maybe it is what we will get. Those who say that Mr Jonathan Dimbleby's book on Prince Charles 'leaves the constitutional position unaffected' are, of course, correct. But this is precisely the trouble. If Charles and the Princess of Wales do not divorce, he becomes king and she queen on the pre- sent Queen's death. A coronation ceremo- ny is unnecessary. If they do divorce, he alone becomes king. Unless he remarries (which might affect his position as Head of the Church, one he says he does not want anyway), we have no queen. And unless the press can be persuaded to change its ways, he is more or less condemned to a lifetime of celibacy. Perhaps the solution is to send for Lord St John of Fawsley instead, to become King Norman.
t was W.T. Stead of the Pall Mall Gazette who invented the interview, by recording the views of prominent Ameri- cans as they disembarked from the then novel ocean liners. Since his day this sim- ple journalistic form has expanded alarm- ingly. Not only is it, as Miss Lynn Barber and others have demonstrated, a route to what Francis Bacon called lucre and pro- fession. It is also a means of free publicity for the interviewed. The arts editors of our great broadsheet newspapers embrace this form of corruption with the enthusiasm of any chat-show host. A few months ago I could not open a paper without reading about Miss Jeanette Winterson, which I did not particularly want to do. Last week the omnipresent subject was my friend Mr John Mortimer, who jumped reluctantly through the hoops like an old performing dog. This week it is Mrs Doris Lessing's turn to tread the boards. She is about to publish a book, as were the others. Instrumental- ists, singers, conductors, actors and actresses whose shows are about to open are indulged on, if anything, an even greater scale. As this complicity suits
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both parties, newspapers and performers, I do not suppose it will ever end.
On those rare occasions when I have been asked to go and see somebody, I have said, 'I don't do interviews.' The only inter- view I have ever conducted was with Anthony Crosland when he was Environ- ment Secretary. I was then writing a col- umn in the Evening Standard, ostensibly about London, and thought it would be a good idea to interview Crosland, whom I knew, about the problems of London's housing. I turned up at his room in the House with my son's tape recorder, then bulkier devices than they are today. We were talking merrily away when Crosland said, 'I'm sorry to mention this, but that machine of yours seems to have stopped.' So it had. At that moment Mr Tony Benn put his head round the door and made as if to withdraw. 'Come in,' Crosland said. 'The very man. You understand these physical things, Wedgie.' Mr Benn knelt by the tape recorder, twiddled a bit and announced, `It's perfectly simple. You just reverse the spools.' The interview having been com- pleted, transcribed and edited, I sent a copy to Crosland, as I had reluctantly agreed to do. He then circulated it within the depart- ment. As anyone could have predicted, the civil servants tried to insist on alterations, 47 of them, in fact, such as that 'squatting' should be changed into 'unlicensed occupa- tion'. I refused to do this. Crosland did not seem to mind. But I am still surprised at his initial foolishness. No doubt he was obey- ing the rules — as a more worldly and robust politician would not have done.
`It didn't include the Royals, then?' For nearly four years now, every six months or so, we have been reading that Mr John Major has 'abandoned Thatcherism'. Yet in this time he has presided over a government which has pri- vatised the railways and would like to do the same with the Post Office — both pro- jects from which Lady Thatcher shrank. It has extirpated the coal industry and betrayed the Nottinghamshire miners. It has hastened the destruction of the health service and multiplied the quangos. It is, true, doing its best to persuade Northern Ireland to join the Republic. But then I have never been able to see why handing numerous Protestants and freethinkers over to the most theocratic State west of Tehran is a specially progressive cause. One can only wonder about the horrors which Mr Major's administration would have wreaked if it had tried to remain true to the lady.
This apart, I enjoyed the Conservative conference. This was largely because I suc- ceeded in spending most of my time away from it, either walking in the sunshine or sit- ting in my dressing-gown watching the pro- ceedings on television. I was in the hotel's annex, an Edwardian villa which was sup- posed once to have been Lord Derby's house. I have since consulted Randolph Churchill's Derby (an invaluable source on the politics of the 1918-31 period) but, among the details of his numerous estates and resi- dences, can find no references to Bourne- mouth. Perhaps he used the house for enter- taining his mistresses — an arrangement which Prince Charles could have enjoyed in less intrusive and censorious times.
Subwatch (2): Social engineering. This is one of those phrases which have come to mean the opposite of the original. Karl Popper approved of and commended the activity. Here is what he actually wrote:
Just as the main task of the physical engineer is to design machines and to remodel and ser- vice them, the task of the piecemeal social engineer is to design social institutions, and to reconstruct and run those already inexis- tence . . . The piecemeal technologist or engineer recognises that only a minority of social institutions are consciously designed while the vast majority have just 'grown, as the undesigned results of human actions [Popper's italics] . . The characteristic approach of the piecemeal engineer is this. Even though he may perhaps cherish some ideals which con- cern society 'as a whole' — its general wel- fare, perhaps — he does not believe in the method of redesigning it as a whole. Whatev- er his ends, he tries to achieve them by small adjustments and readjustments which can be continually improved upon.
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