Another voice
Suppressio \Teri
Auberon Waugh
When I first learned that Lonrho was going to buy the Observer I rejoiced. I have never met Mr Roland 'Tiny' Rowland and know nothing about him which is not common knowledge, but one was bound to have feelings of warmth towards a man who contributed £5,000 towards Private Eye's legal expenses in its protracted battle against Sir James Goldsmith, the ambitious grocery tycoon and political thinker. The gift seemed to have been inspired by the best of all possible motives — that he disliked and mistrusted Goldsmith. Here was a man, one felt, who put his money where his mouth was. As for his influencing the Observer's attitude to African affairs, I felt Mr Rowland's views on that continent would certainly be more interesting, and probably no more objectionable, than the stale, fatuous and infinitely predictable views of Mr Colin Legum which have been regaling Observer readers for as long as most of us can remember. Moreover, if I had to decide which set of views had done the unfortunate Africans more harm I should choose Mr Legum's.
With the decline of the Sunday Times and the collapse of the New Statesman one tends to turn more and more to the Observer for an alternative commentary on the great truths contained in the Sunday Telegraph.
Its editor, Mr Donald Trelford, wrote a few weeks ago that 'what a reader expects from a good paper are the honest opinions of free men and women', but I am not sure he has captured the whole truth. What a reader expects from a good Sunday newspaper is an emphasis on those aspects of the week's news which interest him, and a commentary which will entertain, stimulate or catch the imagination. The actual views themselves — whether left, right or 'moderate' — are of little interest or importance. Nobody really cares whether the Observer comes out for Labour, Social Democrats or Liberals at a general election. Few people read leading articles, in any case. Their function, as I see it, is not so much judicial as rhetorical, a contribution to discussion.
Donald Trelford's views never struck me as very interesting while those of his deputy editor, that pipe-smoking, left-wing Ulster Protestant John Cole would generally have looked better in the Daily Herald of the Fifties than they did in a bright modern newspaper for thinking people. The newspaper needed a minor shake-down and it seems a happy accident that those most opposed to the new ownership seem to be those whose disappearance from its pages would be most beneficial. On Sunday, Mr Trelford wrote: 'If we hadn't the courage of our own convictions, we would not be worth owning or reading.' Perhaps they might form themselves into a little magazine of their own, giving traditional Observer views on Africa, Ulster, industrial relations and — groan — the modern world generally. That is what they must mean when they talk of having the courage of their own convictions although I am not sure that 'convictions' are very useful equipment for a journalist in explaining and reacting to developments in the modern world. Principles, yes, convic tions, no. The Observer would be a better paper if it had more courage and fewer convictions. Perhaps Mr Richard Hall will improve all that.
But the agony of Donald Trelford is not really central to the journalists' dilemma nowadays. Editors have been sacked and' worms have eaten them but the public interest is seldom much affected.
A much more worrying case of proprietorial interference in the proper function of a newspaper seems to have gone more or less unreported. Some newspapers devoted a line or two last week to the appointment of a new editor of The Universe, the mass circulation Roman Catholic weekly, chiefly because the new editor is a woman — the first in the newspaper's 120-year history. Both The Universe and the Catholic Herald are now edited by women. This seems to me a point of only minor biological interest although it may have graver implications for those who share my own perception that there have always been two identifiable religions within the Catholic Church: the religion of women, children and male homosexuals on the one side — an intuitive, emotional faith, given to occasional extravagance — and the cooler religion of normal adult men, given to occasional lapses and moments of forgetfulness. But it was not this aspect of the changes to which I wished to draw attention, rather to the circumstances of the last editor's retirement.
Mr Christopher Monckton, who is 29, was appointed editor of The Universe two years ago, after serving on the Yorkshire Post and in Conservative Central Office as a Press Officer. His contract was for three years, to run out in June of this year. Last June all the bishops of the Catholic Church received a letter from Cardinal James Knox, Cardinal-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worships, asking them, among other things, whether the demand for Masses in Latin persisted in their dioceses, whether there were groups which still insisted on the Tridentine mass, if so how many, who and why.
A version of this letter, correct in every important respect, came into the possession of The Universe which printed it, along with a ballot form asking readers, among other things, which they personally preferred out of four choices: a) Mass in English, using the present translation, b) Mass in English, using a better translation, c) Mass in Latin in the new rite, d) Mass in Latin in the old or Tridentine rite. The result, published in the issue of 24 October 1980, seemed to reveal that of 14,000 people who responded, 10,000 gave the old or Tridentine rite as their first preference. Immediately all hell broke loose. Bishop Hugh Lindsay, of Hexham and Newcastle. , who is episcopal representative for Catholic Information Services, condemned the ballot as 'unnecessary, uncalled for, divisive and likely to be misleading.' The Bishop wrote of the ballot: neither gave it irly approval nor permission to continue.' one did not need to be a particularly astute observer to see that Mr Monckton had the skids under him.
I am not in Mr Monckton's confidence, indeed I suspect he has been avoiding IhY strenuous efforts to contact him these last two weeks, but I spoke to Mr ROY McGuinness, managing director of The UN' verse who, since these unhappy events, has also been appointed Editor-in-Cluef, although without previous journalistic eifr perience. He denied that there had bee" further pressure from the hierarchy to get rid of Mr Monckton while agreeing that there had been a meeting between Bishl, Lindsay and the editorial trustees. mu McGuinness disagreed particularly with the way the ballot had been conducted;he said' The answers were weighted and there Wa, s almost certainly some intervention by Latin Mass pressure groups. Mr Monckton nei./et intended to stay very long, now he is moving to a better job on the SundayTelegraph magazine, everybody's happy so what is ati the fuss about? The Catholic Herald went through a similar convulsion when another Conserva" tive and mildly traditional editor, Stuart Reid, was edged out after three months. This was long before last year's massive, National Pastoral Congress of hand-pickeo Catholic laymen endorsed everything the handful of modernists stood for and dental" ded more. I would know nothing of Mr Monckton's fate if it were not for a cyclostyled news-sheet sent out by Mr Hamish Fraser, retired schoolteacher front 1 Waverley Place, Salcoats KA 21 5AX.. But having spent two weeks checking his account, with no encouragement .frninf anyone involved, I tend to see the point o Mr Reid's observation, quoted by Wir Fraser: `My position in 1975 was that the changes were banal rather than sinister: Today, I regard them as both banal and sinister.' And I persist in regarding the history of Catholicism's first genuine_ attempt to consult the laity about .its continuing revolution as more disturbin.g than the widely publicised Agony of Donal° Trelford.
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