Notebook
Last Sunday, while waiting to watch the historic television broadcast from Jerusalem, I started to read George Ward's account of the Grunwick confrontation in the Sunday Telegraph. Grunwick, said Mr Ward, had been subjected. to a state of siege. 'I have written this account,' he declared, 'because I would like people to understand what the experience is like; why all of us at Grunwick have persisted in taking a stand that some may feel to be unreasonable or obdurate . . . One thing must be said straight away. I did not pick a fight, and I do not want to continue fighting for a moment longer than necessary. Our oPponents have said more than once that they want to wipe our business out: on my Side, I do not want to wipe them out.' By novv my thoughts had returned to Jerusalem to President Sadat and to Mr Begin, who, It occured to me, might soon be echoing the sentiments of Mr Ward. And so he did. The siege mentality is the same the world over.
According to the press reports, President Sadat displayed greater powers of oratory than Mr Begin, though, if this was the case, the interpreters failed to convey it. The President repeated the same phrases so Often that an interpreter had him calling at one point for a 'lust and jasting peace'. But nothing could detract from the extraordinary drama of Sadat's visit. What made it breathtaking was the President's seeming nonchalance and his willingness, before the horrified eyes of the Arab world, to appear on the matiest of terms with his former enemies (his televised chat with Golda Meir being the most striking examle). Even a British Prime Minister might hesitate before referring in public to the Israeli Premier as 'my friend, Mr Begin'.
To those who have enjoyed reading the Pictorial history of the Waffen SS, I have a.00ther book to recommend. It is a slim little red volume entitled The Hip Pocket Hitler and is published mysteriously by the Hassle Free Press' whose address is given as a P.O. Box number in central London. It Co. nsists of twenty-five pages of Hitler's say,Ings, grouped under headings such as Lawyers', 'Christianity', 'Qualities of 'Nations' (this last section including some of h is filthier remarks about the Jews). While most of the Fiihrer's sayings seem to me not SO much wicked as meaningless (e.g. 'There I.s no such thing as water, it is merely melted 'eel one or two of them could be regarded aS prophetic, such as 'A Socialist England ould be a permanent danger in Europe, for she would founder in such poverty that the British Isles would prove too small to support thirty million inhabitants,' or 'One day England will be nothing but a vast Holland.' Some of his views are very cosy and respectable, such as his belief that country houses 'should remain not only in private hands but in the family that has tradititionally lived in them; otherwise they lose their character.' Others are more eccentric. Unlike my colleague Auberon Waugh, he might have approved Princess Anne's wedding, for he said 'There should be a law prohibiting princes from having intercourse with anyone except chauffeurs and grooms' (royalty being, in Hitler's view, 'a classic example of the laws of selective breeding operating in reverse). Hilter also claimed to have found the answer to inflation, which he said was not caused by increasing the money supply. 'The essential reason for the stability of our currency,' he maintained, 'must be sought in our concentration camps. Currency remains stable when speculators are put under lock and key.'
People continue to say extraordinary things. S. Pearson and Son, which owns among other things Chessington Zoo, is trying to take over Madame Tussaud's but has said it will, keep on the present Tussaud management because, according to one of Pearson's directors, a Mr Hare, 'they have special skills on the non-animal side'. What on earth can this mean?
My friend and colleague Patrick Cosgrave, who should know, tells me that English journalists are too often taken in by Irish charm. After visiting Dublin last week as part of an Irish Government public relations exercise directed at British journalists, I plead guilty to the offence. There is a special hero there whose praises require singing; in fact, I nominate him the Spectator's trade union leader of the year. He is Mr Rhaidhri Roberts, General Secretary ot the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. His office is in a handsome Georgian house in a quiet backwater of Dublin.
The pace of work within would appear to be civilised. Mr Roberts himself is an elderly, redfaced gentleman, with a delightful smile, a quiet voice and a habit of removing and replacing his spectacles at frequent intervals. He cannot tell you off-hand exactly what the unemployment figure is, though it is certainly very high (the highest in Europe); nor is he quite sure how much British investment there is in Ireland; and if you were to ask him about any possible political affiliations of the Irish trade union movement, he would look puzzled at such an unfamiliar concept. Yet he would appear, certainly no less than any of his British equivalents, to be safeguarding the interests of union members. He has participated in the relatively painless negotiations of national wage agreements which have raised Irish incomes almost up to British levels and has assisted the extraordinary growth of the Irish economy in recent years. A great man.
My feeling about Irish policy on Ulster is that it is not really serious. During a lengthy meeting with a senior member of the new government, which has asked for a longterm British commitment to withdraw from Northern Ireland, two remarks seemed best to sum up his attitude. One was that every Irish political party had to have a Northern Ireland policy (preferably one different from the other parties); the second was that, to the apparent relief of the speaker,, nothing was likely to change in his lifetime. There is, as far as 1 can tell, no politician in Ireland who would really like to see a British withdrawal in the short term, though the desire for a return to limited local democracy in Ulster seems genuine enough.
Some local authorities are not merely overbearing; they are hectoring and offensive as Well. Take Hammersmith, for example. The lamp-posts on Brook Green have always had signs on them warning people that they may be prosecuted if they allow their dogs to foul the pavements. The traditional sign states, quite reasonably: 'Any person who permits a dog to foul the pavement is liable to prosecution.' But now a new sign, in much larger letters, is taking its place. This declares: 'People who let their dogs foul pavements are dirty, bad-mannered, unhygienic and can be fined £20'. In other words, if a person momentarily loses ,control of his dog, he is not only fined, as he should be, but is branded by the little Hitlers of Hammersmith as 'dirty, bad-mannered and unhygienic', even though his personal habits may be irreproachable. Another variant of the notice completely loses its grip on the English language by declaring that 'dog fouling' (it does indeed sound disgusting) is unhygienic and anti-social. The Hammersmith Council is not only badmannered: it is illiterate.
Alexander Chancellor
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