Notebook
Given that trade unionists are, on the face of it, no more likely to want other People to die than anybody else, why did the strikers at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cam- bridge refuse last week to release medical records on which a patient's life was thought to depend? It is a perplexing ques- tion. Fifteen members of the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) Were blockading the medical records office as part of the union's national agitation for higher pay. Surgeons begged them to release the records of an old man on whom they wanted to operate. The strikers refus- ed, and the man died. 'We regret the death but it is not on our conscience,' said Mr Haddu Mohammed, the local strike leader. We have given a solemn undertaking that we will not touch any of the 650,000 notes which are stored in the library.' Mr Mohammed blamed the management for the failure of negotiations on an emergency library service — the management saying that only two people were needed to operate It, and the strikers demanding six. Another Problem was that those on picket duty at the time did not include staff 'with the ap- propriate experience'. A series of feebler excuses it would be difficult to imagine. But Mr Mohammed's complacency and self- righteousness remained intact, even after the patient's death. The story illustrates how introverted trade unionists can be. They are so obsessed with their own grievances, so mesmerised by their own elaborate dispute procedures, so distrustful of everybody else that they find it hard to comprehend any realities outside their own little world, even if they involve questions of life and death. The undertaking not to touch the medical records had been, after all, a 'solemn' one, and against such solem- nity the surgeons were powerless to prevail. The Spectator is going to press early this Week in order that our printers may join in the Day of Action on behalf of the health service workers, so we do not know how in- active this Day of Action will turn out to have been. We know, however, that the trains will have been running. This is not because the railway unions are concerned about the effects of a strike on the public or on the economy, but because they want to ferry as many demonstrators as possible to
industrial Perhaps the only way of ensuring !ndustrial peace is to turn the entire country into a gigantic closed shop.
It also seems reasonably certain that trade unionists who have broken the law by taking part in sympathy strikes will not be called upon to pay any legal penalty. Mr Arthur Scargill will, unfortunately, be thwarted in his desire to go to prison. Employers have shown reluctance to seek injuctions preventing their workers from striking on the Day of Action and, at worst, may dock some of their pay. The trade unions thus remain to some extent above the law. Marcia Falkender, in her lively col- umn in the Mail on Sunday, was rightly at- tacking Mr James Callaghan for urging them to break it. But did she think what she was saying when she accused him of thereby breaching 'the convention that former oc- cupants of Downing Street avoid, where possible, current controversies'? Only last Friday her former boss, Sir Harold Wilson, who made her a life peer in gratitude for her services as his private secretary, weighed in with a speech undermining the leadership of Mr Michael Foot. Comparing the Labour Party's 'pantomime performance in these recent years' to its glorious era under his own leadership, Sir Harold predicted elec- toral disaster unless it pulled itself together. He may be right, but he is more pessimistic than most in his assessment of his party's prospects. Labour's Gower by-election result was respectable; and, as Teddy Taylor pointed out in these pages a few weeks ago, Mrs Thatcher's popularity could easily wane if a world recession thwarts Bri- tain's economic recovery, and several of Labour's policies — on job creation, on nuclear disarmament, and on Europe, for example — enjoy great potential populari- ty. More important even than the Falklands to her survival as prime minister will be a shambles at next week's Labour Party Con- ference.
'1\To one will preach to us ethics and respect for human life, values in which we have educated, and will continue to educate generations of Israeli fighters.' Yes, I'm afraid they will. And they have
every right to do so. An appalling massacre of Palestinian civilians took place in an area of Beirut under the control of Israeli forces. The Lebanese Christian militia who carried out the slaughter were permitted to enter the refugee camps by the Israelis. Not until Saturday morning did the Israeli army in- tervene to stop the massacre, although Israeli officials knew what was going on by Friday morning. And yet the Israeli Cabinet continues to believe that Israel's moral credit is inexhaustible, that its righteousness should not be questioned even in the cir- cumstances which its invasion of the Lebanon has created. It is the history of the Jewish people which itself makes the Israeli government's denial of any blame for the tragedy more difficult to believe. Of all peoples, one would expect the Israelis to be sensitive to the dangers of genocide in this case. What view do the Israelis take of those Germans who turned their backs on the Holocaust and pretended not to know? Mr Begin has even tried to inculpate Helmut Schmidt, though he really'couldn't have known. Yet, in its communique on the Beirut massacre, the Israeli Cabinet not on- ly admits no error on Israel's part; it shame- fully plays down the horror by saying mere- ly that the militia 'caused many casualties to innocent civilians'. Fortunately, most Israelis appear to share the world's shock at should take to restore Israel's moral authority is to get rid of Mr Begin and his government.
Ihave just paid a rare visit to Scotland and was struck once again by the brutali- ty of the 1972 re-drawing of the county boundaries carried out by the Heath Government. It was even worse in Scotland than it was in England. Its 30 counties were reduced to nine, and one of them — com- bining Stirlingshire and a bit of Perthshire — was given the romantic name of Central (`My heart is in Central, my heart is not here; My heart is in Central, a-chasing the deer'). It is still a mystery to me why hardly a murmur of protest was raised against the invention by bureaucrats of such absurd new regions with absurd new names. Such docility seems even stranger in Scotland than in England, given the apparent obses- sion of the Scots with their own traditions. They are always eager to emphasise their differentness from the English, even to the extent of wearing a kilt, yet they were perfectly happy to accept county reorganisation imposed on them by Whitehall. Talking of kilts, I do not think they have a very good effect on their wearers. A scotsman in a kilt seems to ac- quire an inexplicable sense of superiority over his fellow men who, on the other hand, may regard its wearer as a relic of some primitive tribal society. A Scotsman in a kilt and full of whisky is someone to be avoided at all costs. I am always a little distressed when I see a member of our wonderful Royal Family wearing one.
Alexander Chancellor
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