Notebook
Those of us in the press who have defended the judiciary against the attacks made upon it by Michael Foot and his defender, the Prime Minister, have been extremely ill- served by the preposterous decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of Guardsman Holdsworth. It is not so much the mercy shown to which I object, but the shoddy way the judges reached their decision. They based themselves upon the false opinion that the army would not discharge the guardsman if the sentence were to be reduced to less than ninety days. They were wrong. The army, quite properly, decided to discharge Holdsworth. This has left the Judges looking extremely silly; and when judges look silly, they damage not only themselves but all who uphold the inde- pendence and integrity of the judiciary.
One odd aspect of the case is that the lady barrister who persuaded the judges into their lenient view and who thereby made her own contribution to the scandal which has seemed to many to amount to male chauvinism, is a well-known and vigorous defender of women and their rights. Mar- garet Puxon is a formidable lady — and a very pleasant one, too — who has a con- siderable reputation at the bar, much of it earned on behalf of women in matrimonial matters. It is ironical in the extreme that, in the Guardsman Holdsworth case, her advo- cacy should have been so successful and in its outcome, so unfortunate.
There is, I suppose, nothing surprising now- adays in the fact that Maurice Wiles, a canon of the Church of England who is also chairman of the church's Doctrine Com- mission and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, no less, should be one of the authors of a book called The Myth of God Incarnate. The book apparently sets out the view that Jesus Christ was not divine and did not claim to be so. For those of us who have never been or have ceased to be Chris- tian, such a view presents no difficulty; but I do not myself see how a man can be a Chris- tian in any normal or useful sense of the word and maintain that there was nothing supernatural about Jesus.
The Regius Professor is very much in step With present university orthodoxy, which is so concerned to make Christianity accept- able to those who challenge its fundamental Precepts that it is constantly throwing the Paby out with the bath-water then slithering about on the bathroom floor trying to pick it tip and put it back in again. No doubt Chris- tianity as a habit of worship, will survive the attacks made upon it by its own academic apologists; but it really is odd when clerics take the church's money and vestments and
titles and set about bringing down the tem- ple upon their own heads. Maybe the Dean of Peterhouse, Edward Norman, will attempt a rectification when he delivers next year's Reith lectures. Norman is one of the few academic clerics who protest against the modern humanisers in their church's midst.
An interesting piece in The Sporting Life has been pointed out to me by someone whose bible it is. There is a column in that paper written by Michael Rolfe which, I am told, every. bookmaker reads. Rolfe last week wrote about the loss the bookies will suffer now that Brian Walden, the bookies' friend at Parliament, has quit the Commons. Wal- den's appointment to London Weekend Television, Rolfe regrets, is 'unfortunately one which could make it necessary to dis- continue his business associations as well as his duties as an MP. Had it been otherwise, even outside the House of Commons his extremely valuable services would have remained at the disposal of the bookmakers
' The inference is in its way quite remarkable. It is alright for an MP to be tangled up with the bookies: but a telly chap must be sea-green incorruptible. Will the bookies ever find another Brian? Appar- ently not. 'There are few,' writes Rolfe, in whom they could place the same confidence — I believe at the moment there is none.' I am not at all sure what that says about the bookies' opinion of the remaining 634 MPs.
I see that lobby correspondents have been told, presumably by Mr McCaffrey, that senior Cabinet ministers have been pro- foundly disturbed about the impression created 'at home and abroad' by television
reports of the violence outside the Grun- wick factory. I don't know whether they need to bother too much about the impre- ssion created abroad. This country long since created its bad impression abroad; Grunwick will only confirm what many foreigners already believe, that we are going to the dogs fast. What the Cabinet should most certainly find disturbing is the impression created at home. I would have thought that any lingering chance the Labour Party had of winning the next elec- tion disappeared outside the Grunwick gates last week. If I am right, then those Liberals who want to get out of their deathly embrace with Callaghan are prudent in their approach; those like David Steel, who clings to Callaghan as desperately as Cal- laghan clings to office, are wrong.
I do not blame Callaghan. He is fully entitled to cling. But what does Steel think he is doing? His latest list of demands has a wet and soggy feel to it, the exception being the requirement that the Queen's Speech will include a commitment to prop- ortional representation for the elections to the Scottish and Welsh assemblies or, fail- ing that, that there should be referendums on the subject in Scotland and Wales. No referendum for the poor bloody English, of course. Callaghan, as he considers Steel's latest list, must also be wondering what more the Liberals will require. Will there be no end to the payments? Will he ever get Steel off his back?
And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane- geld You never get rid of the Dane.
The connection between trade/ unions and gangsterdom in the United Stakes is old and well-documented. The use of strong-arm methods by the Teamsters, for instance, is a chilling example of what can happen when power corrupts a trade union and its offi- cials. There has been more than a hint of gangsterdona at Grunwick. But even more scaring is the example provided by Hous- ton's police force. Tom Curtis in the Guar- dian quotes a Houston lawyer as saying: `We are a police state. This is the case more here than in any other city in the United States. It even transcends the situation in some of the totalitarian countries.' The Houston police force is apparently not sub- ject to any civilian control but is run by its own union, the Houston Police Officers' Association.The way the union runs itself is such that Houston now possesses a 'shoot- first-and-ask-questions-later' police force which is the most violent in the entire coun- try. A police force, through the power of its union, has become its city's chief gang.
Dear Politicians and Journalists, Please stop writing Open Letters to one another. It is a sloppy journalistic habit.
Yours sincerely,
George Gale
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