Iron Lady Pearced
Years of unmitigated high quality are never as much use for a magazine as a public row about attempts to 'gag' it, so Encounter, the distinguished intellectual monthly, must be delighted that Mrs That- cher has found it necessary to complain about its 'London Commentary' by Ed- ward Pearce. Mr Pearce, who is inap- propriately misprinted as Peace in the con- tents of the offending May issue, is leader and parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Telegraph, and it seems that it was to the Telegraph's editor, Mr William Deedes, that the Prime Minister protested. Mr Pearce has apparently been given to under- stand that he will prejudice the Telegraph's status as an 'independent Tory paper' if he continues to put forward his highly critical and emotional views in other publications, so perhaps we can look forward to reading his diatribes in the pages of the Telegraph itself. In fairness to the Prime Minister, one must admit that some of Mr Pearce's remarks were rather offensive. He says, for instance, that: 'There is about some of Mrs Thatcher's subordinates that quality of sen- sibility which in 1917, if shown the correct documents from Headquarters, would dutifully have shot Nurse Cavell!' But it is still puzzling that Mr's Thatcher has the sense to read Encounter and the folly to protest about anything that appears in it. Does she believe that she has successfully squared the whole of Fleet Street, and that she must now turn on the intellectuals? If so, the prospects are rosy for thousands of would-be dissidents. If Encounter were a samizdat publication, instead of the: splendidly available magazine it is, people would be sure to buy it.
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