The Spectator Notes
CHARLES MOORE How can a single state school defend itself in court? The question arises because of the 14-year-old Muslim pupil at Wycombe High School who has been forbidden by the headmistress from wearing the niqab, a veil which leaves only her eyes visible. The girl's father is seeking judicial review. The father gets government money, in the form of legal aid, but the school does not necessarily get anything. The local education authority of the Conservative-controlled Buckinghamshire County Council indicates that it will not put its money behind its school. This is cowardly and against its own interest. If the school cannot afford to fight, then the county's entire policy about school uniforms will have to change, and religious fanatics will start putting pressure on all Muslim girls to dress according to their whim. This is a test case for Tories who want to draw a line between legitimate religious freedom and oppressive zealotry. The local MP, Paul Goodman, has come out quickly on the side of the school, but where are the others?
During the 1983 election, a letter appeared in the Daily Telegraph from a retired wing-commander. He said that when voters heard the phrase 'unilateral nuclear disarmament', they did not know what it meant. Once they were told that Labour favoured 'one-sided nuclear disarmament', they knew they were against it. With untypical aplomb, the Conservatives immediately ordered all their spokesmen to attack 'onesided disarmament'. This was successful among working-class voters and contributed significantly to Labour's terrible result. There may be a similar problem with the phrase 'the Union', currently celebrating its 300th anniversary in relation to England and Scotland. I suspect that the English simply do not know what it means, a fact which, in itself, tells you something. I remember my own confusion when, as a teenager, I first heard the Union mentioned: I thought it was something to do with trade unions. We need a substitute phrase which would resonate.
n argument currently deployed against the Union of Scotland and England is 'Look at Ireland'. There, it is claimed, an independent part of the British Isles is forging ahead alone, so why can't Scotland? What is forgotten is that Ireland wasted roughly 70 years and many lives before it reached its present happy state. There was civil war, ethnic cleansing, partition and long, recurrent bouts of terrorism. The polity and economy of the Irish Republic were formulated to express Irish rejection of the hated British yoke. Hence the 'special place' for the Catholic Church, the compulsory teaching of a language that only a small minority actually spoke, the Irish Prime Minister's condolence to the German embassy on the death of Hitler. Hence, too, a siege economy which exported very little except its most talented citizens. Independence sent Southern Ireland down a cul-de-sac until the 1990s. Obviously history would not repeat itself precisely in an independent Scotland. But it seems reasonable to predict a selfimpoverishing 'Scotland first' economic policy, a recrudescence of sectarian tensions, and a nasty conflict between the central belt of the country and the rest. People forget that the Scottish Unionists (as the Tories were long known in Scotland) were so called in reference to the Union between Britain and Ireland, not that between England and Scotland. It was understood that the unity of the kingdom was good for all its parts. Now that the Irish Republic has at last emerged from its adolescence, the best solution would not be further break-up of the United Kingdom, but a re-absorption into a loose Union on more equal terms. Indeed, as our own polity decays, how about a reverse takeover of London by Dublin?
The most surprising thing about the fox shot at Sandringham was that it was there at all. The estate is famous for its wild bird shoot, and such birds cannot be preserved unless vermin are strictly kept down. It is for this conservation reason that Sandringham has so many keepers, and it is therefore slightly unusual that a fox was flushed out during the drive rather than dealt with professionally elsewhere. My Norfolk mole (if that is the right expression in the circumstances) tells me that man who fired the shot is a well-known figure in hunting circles. This, too, is surprising. It is a term of abuse in hunting to call someone a vulpicide. Foxes are best killed by hounds, not by guns, particularly not by shotguns fired by people not trained for the task. Sandringham was not hunted even before the hunting ban, and so foxes have long died from guns there, but one result of the ban is that killings like that at Sandringham have become more common in order to protect game birds, hens etc. When you ban tried, well-organised ways of killing, you encourage more freelance, potentially crueller methods.
(71 an anyone help? I have a vivid memory, after the Labour victory of 1997, of political satirists saying that they felt out of a job because they supported Tony Blair so much that they didn't want to laugh at him But I cannot remember who, exactly, said this. Such a remark now seems beyond satire itself, but it goes to show that our great iconoclasts are actually much happier kicking people when they are down, as Mr Blair now is, than when, because they are up, they need kicking the most.
ore from TV Licensing (see previous Notes). Via my office, I received an email from this authority following up what I had written and inviting me to get in touch. I rang the number, but, after 15 minutes of a voice saying 'Your call is important to us. . . rang off. This week I rang again and got the man who had emailed. He could not remember why he had got in touch with me, even when I reminded him So he asked for my postcode in order to check, and then rang me back. He said he was sorry I was offended by their letters but that another letter had just been sent (I can't stop it'), acknowledging that I claimed not to have a television in my flat and informing me that staff would visit me to see if I was telling the truth. Then he asked me for my postcode all over again. . . .
ne naturally rejoices at the success of one's friends' children, and so I was pleased to see the publication of The Night Climbers (Doubleday) by Ivo Stourton, an exciting novel about students who swindle a rich college. But when I read in the blurb that the author was born in 19821 could hear the noise of time's winged chariot. 1982! Doesn't that make him about ten years old? When I became editor of The Spectator, Wendy Cope wrote a gloomy poem entitled 'The editor of The Spectator is only 27'. Now I'm on her side.
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