Spectator's Notebook
T BEGIN my notebook this week by recommend- ing two new slim volumes that should be 'must' reading for every Member of Parliament. About the first—Arthur Schlesinger's analysis of the Vietnam war, The Bitter Heritage—I must con- fess from the start that I've got major reserva- tions. This is not simply because Schlesinger grossly overstates his case, accusing the present American policy in Vietnam of causing every evil result he can think of, from the revival of McCarthyism in the United States (premature) to driving Hanoi closer to Peking (highly doubt- ful: in Ho's hour of need the Chinese have been revealed as poster tigers), and from the reduction in American interest in Western Europe (prob- ably on balance a good thing) to poisoning US- Russian relations (the interesting thing is that it hasn't).
The really unattractive aspect of the book is that, behind the facade of an objective academic appraisal (he opens one chapter: 'As one who is by profession a historian,' lauds academic values and is quick to note a lack of objectivity in others) Schlesinger mounts a vicious and fre- quently unfair running attack on Johnson, against which he contrasts the impeccable Kennedys, repositories of all political virtue, a sort of family- size messiah for God's own country. Now, had I been an American I'd have unhesitatingly voted for the late President—and would happily vote for the Senator for New York, too. Yet I've never felt as sympathetic to LBJ as when reading this book.
Trahison du Clerc If we're going to apportion blame for America's catastrophic escalation of the Vietnam commitment and war, let's be frank and admit that Eisenhower was involved at such an early stage that he could hardly be expected to see where it was all leading, that by the time (and in the circumstances in which) Johnson came on the scene it was very hard indeed to reverse direction, but that during the Kennedy Presi- dency it was late enough to recognise the dangers but not too late to stop the Gadarene rush. (According to Schlesinger it seems that Kennedy sensed that what he was doing was wrong, but went on doing it: a human but hardly praise- worthy course. Apparently he was led astray by his advisers—and this after the Bay of Pigs, not to mention the French experience in Indochina!) And if we're going to raise the McCarthyite ghost again and blame those who failed to stand up and be counted, why not a frank admission of the equivocal record of the Senator Kennedy of the day? Instead, in the comic highspot of the book, we're told that 'the nation will have to Icok to stouter and more principled figures if it is to contain another epidemic of political panic' and referred, as an example to us all, to the recent and stirring occasion when 'Senator Robert Ken- nedy of New York read aloud on the floor of the Senate an editorial from the Washington Daily News.'
But in spite of this deplorable trahison du clerc wherever the Kennedy-Johnson feud emerges, read the book. Punctuated by civilised and thoughtful observations on the behaviour of nations and their leaders, it exposes—not for the first time, but succinctly—the historical and poli- tical background to this bloody, costly and pur- poseless war, entered into not out of malice but by mistake, and perpetuated not by military strength so much as political weakness. Schles- inger's own proposals, a 'de-escalation' in the air war as a prelude to all sorts of negotiations leading in turn to a settlement, seem to me over- ambitious. De-escalation, in the context of Viet- nam, will have to be its own reward.
1949 And All That
About my second recommendation I have no reservations whatever. Far and away the best broadsheet to have emerged from the rather dreary Political and Economic Planning (PEP) stable for a very long time, it is, ironically, an 'Inquest on Planning in Britain' by Mr Samuel Brittan, who is not only the present Economic Editor of the Financial Times but was a member of the Department of Economic Affairs during the whole of the time the National Plan (God rest its soul) was being prepared and ultimately published. Written with scrupulous fair-minded- ness from an a-political standpoint, it amounts to the most devastating and reasoned demolition of the Wilson administration's economic policies and performance I have come across, disposing once and for all of the myth that all the Govern- ment's economic troubles were either unpredict- able or unavoidable or both. Not that the Tories can derive much positive satisfaction from the book (which ranges considerably wider than planning alone) either, so long as their boast is that they would carry out most of the same wrong policies but with greater skill. Mr Brittan's con- clusion won't, of course, be unfamiliar to readers of the SPECTATOR: it's that we're doomed to economic frustration so long as we insist on stick- ing to the 1949 exchange rate.
Civil Rights
Mr Thomas.Roe, whose letter appears on page 101, is, I suppose, best known as one of the three leading figures in the disastrous Cadco pig pro- ject in Scotland—the other two being Mr George Sanders, the actor, and the so-called Mr Dennis Lorraine—which collapsed in September, 1964 with a deficiency of flf million. According to the Board of Trade report, Roe was 'far the most alive to the loss and hardship suffered by others.' Today Sanders and Lorraine are in the United States, the one pursuing his acting career and-the
other serving a six-year prison sentence for con- spiring to send £130,000 in counterfeit dollar bills to Switzerland in exchange for genuine Swiss francs. The bulk of the forged notes were said to have been found in Switzerland in the boot of Roe's car, and Roe himself was charged by the Swiss authorities with changing forged notes and sent to prison to await trial.
So far, so good—or bad. But as Roe points out in his letter, he has now been in prison without trial for seventeen months. Under Vaudois can- tonal law (which rules in this case), the lower courts are able, at the instance of .the examining magistrate, to remand in custody indefinitely, subject to monthly review, without the prisoner necessarily being present at these reviews. I'm assured by the Swiss authorities that the accused has the right of recourse to the court, but Roe seems to have been unaware of this in spite of the fact that he's an international lawyer himself and has his own, Swiss, lawyer.
But the real point, surely, is that if any examin- ing magistrate attempted this sort of thing in England the appeal against it would probably have reached the House of Lords by now and the whole affair would certainly have become a major political scandal, with angry questions to Mr Jenkins about the one prisoner who hadn't escaped. Yet in Switzerland. so far as I can make out, not a word has been said or a finger lifted. Some of these efficient little democracies seem to have a strange notion of civil rights.
Not Cricket I've never believed in bringing politics into sport. As far as I'm concerned the South Africans, Chinese and Martians are all equally welcome at Wembley or Wimbledon, provided they abide by the rules. But this doesn't mean that those who do choose to politicise sport should be allowed to dictate to Britain. That's why there can be no question of England playing test matches in South Africa so long as the Republic persists in its refusal to allow the coloured Basil d'Oliveira to tour with the MCC team. That the brilliant all-rounder is being barred on racial grounds is almost irrelevant : the main point is that the Eng- land selectors cannot respectably submit to dic- tation in their choice of team on any grounds.
Of course, if the South African authorities were clever they would suggest a compromise. Rhodesia, in cricket terms, is already part of South Africa, being a member (just like Trans- vaal and the other provinces) of the South African Cricket Association (This is why the world's best fielder, the Rhodesian Colin Bland, represents South Africa at cricket.) But unlike South Africa proper. Rhodesia has no laws pre- venting multiracial cricket matches. So why not play the 1968-69 test matches in Salisbury and Bulawayo? At least this would put the onus on the British Government to decide whether or not to bring politics into sport Side Effect
'Within the past week,' declared the Economist last week. in the blurb for one of its leaders, 'the Labour Government has made three—negative- decisions about industry that for once put it on the -side of the angels' (my italics). What the writer meant, it seems, was that for once the Government was right. Yet the phrase comes— as most SPECTATOR readers will of course be aware—from Disraeli's only recorded contribu- tion to the great Darwinian controversy: is man descended from apes or angels? 'Now I,' Disraeli assured his comforted Oxford audience, 'am on the side of the angels.' Can there be Any other cliche that is so consistently used today to signify the very reverse of what it should mean?
NIGEL LAWSON
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