Personal column
Brian Inglis
Attending a.television debate in Belfast earlier this month I was surprised to hear an aspiring Unionist politician disparaging the Irish. Did he, I asked, watch rugby internationals? He did. Then whom did he shout for at Lansdowne .Road? He would not dream of going to Lansdowne Road, he replied; but when he went to Twickenham, he shouted for England. It happened that earlier in the day Ireland had just thrashed France in Dublin; all over Ulster, people had watched Willie John MacBride scoring the final try; and doubtless it was being mulled over in every pub in the province, while we were talking, regardless of political or sectarian affiliations.
In the hospitality room afterwards, where Sir Charles Curran's economy drive had evidently been successfully held at bay, the prevailing opinion was that the speaker had not improved his political prospects. Yet the fact that he had expressed such a sentiment was revealing. In the old days it used to be said that the southerner hated the Union Jack but loved the English, while the Ulsterman hated the English but loved the Union Jack; and this was not far out. The deepest-dyed Orangeman regarded himself as Irish. The fact that the native 'Croppies' had been in Ireland centuries before him no more disturbed this assumption than the existence of Red Indians leads an American to doubt his right to call himself such. But now? I wonder if Faulkner still goes, as he used to do, to Lansdowne Road? I suspect he does; but would Craig? Or Paisley? And if they went to Twickenham, who would they support?
Whose saint?
The debate was on the prospects for the shamrock, and for St Patrick; and though the intention was to keep it fairly light-hearted, there was an undercurrent of seriousness. St Patrick's Day used to be celebrated, and his emblem worn, by Irishmen of all persuasions. He was, after all, a Northerner by adoption, and both Prods and Papishes could claim him for their own (historians have found that there are two St Patricks, or perhaps one and a half; and botanists deny there is any such thing as a shamrock; but no matter). Recently, however, both the day and the emblem have shown signs of becoming identified with the South; partly, perhaps, because the shamrock is green; partly, I suspect, because that happens to be the bias of the most publicised event, the New York parade (I had my first-ever St Patrick's Day card from New York this year: What do the Irish do, it asked, on March 17? "Hop in the Volkswagen and go out for a pizza"). The parade brings no joy to the Irish in Ireland, North or South; in fact, the Irish-American, as a species, is loathed throughout the island, President Kennedy having been a rare exception. But the tendency is for the shamrock, which used to be a real unifer to become identified with the campaign for political unification. A pity.
Defamatory report
I have not read the text of the Report of the Committee on Defamation, published last Friday by the Stationery Office; but Michael Zander's summary of it in the Guardian suggests that it must be awe-inspiring in its silliness. Many of the arguments in favour of retaining juries in libel actions, the Committee claim, have been based on the erroneous belief that judges are remote from the life of the community; but judges today have "a vast experience of ordinary life. They travel by bus and train, watch television, and hear cases mainly involving ordinary people." I happen to be back in the middle of Bleak House at the moment; I wish Dickens could have been around to savour this defence. Much of the support for juries, the Committee feel, is 'emotional'. I'll say it is. The last libel case I attended was the affair of Bevan, Phillips and Crossman v. The Spectator, and Chief Justice Goddard's behaviour was disgraceful. The jury, admittedly, did not save The Spectator on that occasion; but then, they could not know that perjury was being committed, and that the defence, which knew it was being committed, was unable to say so, because of some legal nicety or other. Granted that the jury system is antiquated and in many ways unsatisfactory, it is still some protection against judges who, even if they do watch television, are still predominantly Establishment figures. When they and barristers shed their idiotic wigs, it will be time to begin to look on them as possibly human.
Hard stuff
I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked, over the past few days, whether I experimented with any drugs in the course of my research on the subject. My reply has been that I have been experimenting since childhood, with tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol; which questioners often regard as an unworthy evasion. The assumption that alcohol is not a drug is widespread, yet palpably absurd. As Lord Kimberley told the Lords last week, there are getting on for half a million alcoholics (he was one himself) in the country; and the social disruption for which they are responsible, in the home, on the street, and in the car, is far more serious than that of any other drug (contrary to a common opinion, heroin addicts are rarely violent except when they cannot get their 'fix'). Not long ago I heard a well-known businessman graphically describing what he would like to do to those who had introduced his sons to 'pot', at Eton. It had evidently not occurred to him that their drug-taking might be related to the fact that he got fairly drunk, most lunch-times, and very drunk, most evenings.
All right, then; so I did experiment, the odd time, with pot; with no discernible effect -whatsoever except, after the first occasion, an unusual type of hangover. I had to go the morning after, a Sunday, to the steps of the Economist building, there to be interviewed for an American TV network on the situation in Northern Ireland, at the time the troubles were just beginning. In the course of it I had the strong impression that there was another self, situated a few feet above and behind, sardonically watching the proceedings and saying "What in the name of Himself do you think you are doing on a Sunday morning, on the steps of the Economist building, being interviewed for an American TV network on the situation in Northern Ireland?" — a question to which I had no satisfactory reply, except than an elastic conscience makes cowards of us all, so we do not say, when asked to make such contributions, "Why don't you get somebody better informed?"
Exclusive views
As part of their duty to God and the IBA, London Weekend TV have a Sunday programme, currently running on Mondays at ten past midnight, called One Point of View. Accordi,ng to the TV Times someone is asked each week to review a play, a film or an exhibition currently showing in the London area, and to talk about it "from a religious or Christian point of view." I rather like that.
Brian Inglis, who was editor of The Spectator 19596Z has most recently written The Forbidden Game: a Social History of Drugs (Hodder and Stoughton £4.95)
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