SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK J. W. M. THOMPSON
Each year, as the party conferences approach, groups of local political activists concoct resolutions on the issues which happen to be exercising them. These resolu- tions arrive at the party headquarters by the sackful, and only a dozen or so are ever debated. The rest achieve the fleeting dignity of print at the back of the agenda and are then forgotten. But, remembering how often we are advised of the importance of keeping in touch with the grass roots of politics, I spent some time this week looking through the 1,250 resolutions which Tory groups up and down the country had hopefully offered for their conference next month.
On a quantitative test, economic policy and taxation loom largest. But a good second in the running, much less predict- ably, is—not defence, or foreign policy, or immigration, or agriculture, or any of the subjects which customarily arouse sound Tories in the country—but social security. The prevailing note is sharply critical, and what is plain is the existence of a deep dissatisfaction with the welfare system.
And this, as it happens, bears out what many politicians themselves testify about their constituents' views. Only a few years ago the welfare state was widely thought to be sacrosanct. Today. a lot of people seem ready to trade it in for a completely new, if unspecified. model.
Commune sense
The squatters' takeover of 144 Piccadilly was a sorry little adventure. What I saw of the onlookers on a couple of occasions when I passed that way suggested that they were taking a perfectly sensible (that it to say, derisory) view of the whole stunt. The incident happened to coincide with some powerful public relations activity intended to stir the public conscience over the appal- ling living conditions suffered by many families in our cities. But it was pretty clear that the main motives were really to be found elsewhere—either in the ancient desire for something for nothing, or in the mess of half-baked ideas and jargon which passes for political thinking in some quarters.
Some of the verbiage dished out at the seemingly incessant 'press conferences' was depressing even to those already familiar with the genre. 'We are the secret agents of a future society free from the routine degradations of work'--the claim might have aroused less mirth if they hadn't been so keen on using the electric power and water kindly provided by other people's routine degradations. 'The London Street Commune was formed to dissolve control of the streets in the area away from the police and back into the community'—a rollicking boast much weakened by the squatters' calls upon the same hated police for help when things turned awkward. And so on. There have always been bums and misfits: but the present crop seem to have a rare talent for mock-intellectual nonsense. I'm not sure. in fact, that it isn't the least appealing of all the various addictions they display.
White man's law
Another tale of eviction has attracted almost no attention, yet it is infinitely more worthy of it. I suppose it might seem a small affair compared with other news
from Africa: nevertheless, the expulsion of the Tangwena people from land which has been theirs for something like 400 years is enough to make even Ian Smith's keenest fans feel uneasy. I have been reading about it in a dispassionate pamphlet by Guy Clutton-Brock which has just reached me from Salisbury. The facts, within the legal fog, are simple. These Africans, some 3,000 people, are being booted out of their ancestral lands to suit the convenience of a European land-owning company.
On this occasion even the law is on the side of the Africans. Thanks to their chief. clearly an exceptional man, they fought their case up to the appeal court and won it. The judges held --courageously -that the land was plainly theirs and had been so since long before Europeans arrived: and that their rights were safeguarded by white man's law. This ruling was then demolished by a special proclamation by 'His Excellency' Clifford Dupont. the man Smith put in to displace the Governor. Hence the evictions.
A great deal of African history is con- tained within this inhuman episode. The oldest of the Tangwena people, so I read, remembers the days before white men appeared, remembers 'Mr Rhodes' arriving, and the gradual encroachment of settlers. Now he is living through the last chapter.
Shocking goings-on
What would 'shock' people was once pre- dictable. Shaw can have had no doubts that saying 'bloody' on the West End stage would set London agog. Nowadays it is something of a gamble, and those who deal in shocks must expect surprises. I don't suppose the trendy new Radio Times people consciously set out to be 'shocking' when they put a picture of Jesus Christ on their cover, but evidently they scored a bullseye. On the other hand, consider the sad case of John Morgan, the television tycoon, as he re- counted it in the Sunday Times. 'I made a film recently for "This Week" in which naked persons were shown simulating copulation on the New York stage: in a conversation with the leader of the Living Theatre, four letter words were freely if pertinently used. The public legions of decency did not rise up.' Pretty sickening for Mr Morgan, one concludes: to take all that trouble and then not to 'shock' anybody!
His explanation is that shock is harder to achieve on commercial telex ision than on the BBC: it's something to do with the middle class nature of the BBC audience, apparently. Does this throw some light on all the hullabaloo about London Weekend Television and its managerial problems'? If the commercial Tv people can't achieve shock by their programmes, at least they can do so with their boardroom battles. 'If there is any consolation in the sacking of Michael Peacock' (to quote Mr Morgan again) 'it can only be in the public realising the importance of the event.' We certainly can have no excuse for not realising it, after all the heated prose discharged on the sub- ject. We are—well, shocked, of course: just as we were, only a few weeks ago, when all the television critics were explain- ing bitterly just how awful the programme., put out by Mr Peacock's London Weeke.. Television were.
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