DIARY
ANDREW GIMSON The death by starvation of ten-month- old Dean Scott was a case attended by so many horrible details that it was hard to read the newspaper reports of his parents' trial. Small pieces of his nappy were all that could be found in his stomach. As Mr Justice Owen said on Monday, in the course of sentencing Dean's father to ten years in prison and his mother to seven, 'The agony suffered by this small boy is almost too much to contemplate.' When one thought, remarked the judge, of the extraordinary maternal sacrifice and care shown by lower animals, one had to wonder at the apparent selfishness of Dean's mother. In the course of wonder- ing, the question arises: what was the mother's own childhood like? And the mother's mother's childhood? An emo- tional 'cycle of deprivation', to use the current term, exists no less than an econo- mic one. Among the ideas in the Bible against which I reacted most strongly, on being introduced to it, was the warning that God will visit the sins of the fathers Upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. How monstrous! Yet often it happens. Whether or not by God's, will, children do suffer for their fathers' sins. In the Bible, a doctrine of salvation is worked out, which rescues believers from the despair which this spectacle inspires. On page three of the Daily Telegraph, less comfort is to be found. A spokesman for Dr Barnardo's said, in reaction to Dean's case, that 'the skills of parenthood' should be taught as part of the school curriculum. You need not be an extravagant sceptic to fear this may not be enough. As Margot Asquith put it: 'If it is hard to believe in God, it is no easier to believe in man.'
The idea that events in childhood affect, let alone determine, behaviour in later life can, however, be taken too far. My great- grandfather, the Revd Bertie Walton, was at one time Rector of Avon Dassett in Warwickshire. The Profumo family, bear- ers of the title of Baron (of the United Kingdom of Italy), lived at Avon Carrow, a country house in the parish, and were faithful supporters of the church. When John Profumo, known as Jack, was going to Harrow, the Rector asked him to choose a hymn. He chose 'To Be a Pilgrim'. Unfortunately, this is not in Hymns Ancient & Modern, the book used at Avon Dassett, and the young Jack Profumo had to make do with another choice. In 1963, When scandal broke over his head, my great-grandmother was convinced that if Only he could have had his first choice, none of this would have happened.She was with difficulty prevented from writing to the Baroness to tell her so. Mr Arthur Scargill's tirades against the 'new realism' in the Labour Party strike a more and more fantastic note of old unrealism. In an interview earlier this week, he attacked 'the Filofax-carrying yuppies' who want to let the opinions of the electorate influence the party's poli- cies. The miners' leader is developing into a Tory idealist (as opposed to pragmatist) of the highest order. Working-class respec- ters of tradition should, he suggests, carry party membership cards, not Filofaxes. They should set the preservation of their mining villages above the money-grubbing approach of the so-called 'Conservative' Government. They should cherish their long-established ways of going about their work, even though these include keeping blacks and women out of the mines. After Mr Scargill had been interviewed, Mr Roy Hattersley came on the air. He denied possession of a Filofax, but said that if Mr Scargill 'goes on like this', the prospects of a Labour victory in the Kensington by- election will be low. He asserted, however, that Mr Scargill was now 'lacking any sort of influence or authority'. Would it were true. The middle classes sleep easier in their — in our — beds, for the thought that King Arthur has been defeated, but he still has followers. Last year I met some of them at a socialist conference in Der- byshire. They were miners' wives who had been persuaded to build an absolute trust on Mr Scargill. In return, he flung these brave but hopelessly ill-equipped troops into the class war. Mr Scargill cannot be treated altogether as a joke, when one remembers how he used the people who believed in him.
Is there a cure for bibliomania? I become no fonder of reading, if anything am turning into a mere skimmer of books, but my desire to possess them grows. On recent outings I have bought a volume of Stalin's speeches (a beautiful red cover, besides being unfashionable), Carlyle's French Revolution (nicely meretricious Victorian binding), The National Health Service in Great Britain by James Stirling Ross (OUP, 1952; sure to be interesting, given the present debate), Into Battle, a volume of speeches by Winston Churchill (lest I am ever asked to write for Margaret Thatcher), a volume by Philip Guedalla and two novels by Joyce Cary. With the exception of the novels, I doubt whether I shall read any of these. Guedalla I bought for a single sentence: 'There is a charm in endings . . . athletes become almost in- teresting in their last lap.' I guffawed. The Egyptian who happened to be standing next to me asked me to explain; laughed politely before I had reached the pun- chline, which sounded weak the way I said it. 'I'm through with Mum,' he volun- teered. 'With who?' I inquired, fearing family trouble. 'With Somerset Mum,' he said. 'I am looking for Hemingway.' These stalls in the Ezbekiya Gardens, Cairo, are delightful, despite quantities of out-of-date textbooks about electrical engineering and liver disease.
Junk mail is often the subject of com- plaint by its recipients, but I like getting it. An editor has to aim off a little when assessing the opinions of readers from their letters, because cranks are disprop- ortionately keen on writing, but is unwise to ignore the evidence of the post. So too the private individual, when every allow- ance has been made for the idiocy of the people who compose direct mail. The addressee can at least gauge what people reckon there is a chance he or she will buy, from huge loans to subscriptions to obscure periodicals. The finest piece of advertising I have received through the post in recent months takes the form of an invitation to stay, for free, in a resort in southern Spain. 'You have been selected because your gracious lifestyle shows that you appreciate the best things of life: exclusive holidays, fine cuisine, a tasteful environment and, most of all, the need for regular relaxa- tion.' I have never been sent a more accurately targeted advertisement.
, Andrew Gimson is associate features editor of the Independent.
Previous page
