The Spactator's Notes
CHARLES MOORE Ivill we look back on the last quarter of the 20th century as the only time since the Reformation when Roman Catholics have really been tolerated in Britain? During the long period in which Cardinal Basil Hume was Archbishop of Westminster, the Catholic Church came out of the ghetto. The row about gay adoption shows that this process is now going into reverse. The New Labour enthusiasm for homosexuality is so great that anyone who does not share it is to be prevented by law from full participation in the life of society. Both Tony Blair and David Cameron accept this public doctrine, though they pull long faces about the effect on children, as if it were not in their power to prevent it. The sad lesson is that the honourable Hume-ian attempt of the Church to engage with the wider world has weakened its position. The letter which Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the present CardinalArchbishop, wrote to the Prime Minister emphasised that Catholic adoption was sometimes permitted to single parents, that homosexuals should be accepted, and that children could be placed with adoptive parents who were not Catholic and not even religious. But it was not right, he said, that the Church be compelled to offer equal rights to gay couples because 'marital love involves an essential complementarity of male and female'. This extreme reasonableness has the perverse effect of making the refusal to accept homosexual couples look almost arbitrary: neither marriage nor religion is necessarily insisted on by the Church as qualifications for adoption, but two blokes shacked up together are beyond the pale. The Cardinal would have been on stronger ground — and won more popular support — if he had conceded less to the new establishment in the first place. In a way, the Church has little to worry about. History shows that persecution wins more recruits to the faith. But as a Catholic convert myself, I feel gloomy. I think that the Church can enrich the life of the whole of society and has been right to try to do so. The new rule of paganism, dressed up in the language of human rights, will prove more oppressive than the vaguely Christian culture that we are leaving behind.
Tony Blair has maintained two consistent 1 but contradictory approaches in office — one is to try to imitate Mrs Thatcher in his leadership style, the other is 'triangulation'. It looks as if he is going to continue this combination in retirement. He clearly expects to make a great deal of money from giving lectures in America, and for this it will be necessary to deliver rousing speeches about the unity of the English-speaking peoples and the global triumph of democracy. At the same time, though, he needs, Clinton-like, to show his caring side, and so he is acquiring a sudden enthusiasm for the environment. I gather that Richard Wilson, the actor, is always being asked to deliver his catchline from One Foot in the Grave — 'I don't believe it!' — and resolutely refused until someone offered him £12,000 to do so at a private party (though the deal fell through due to a disagreement with husband and wife about the price). How much could Mr Blair get for saying, `I'm a pretty straight kind of guy'?
Now and again, one reads little news stories about sects which, believing that the end of the world is nigh, gather on a hill in Montana or in a car park in Geneva to await the Last Day, and then, when nothing happens, rather sheepishly go home. The same embarrassment threatens those environmentalists who say that if we fail to reverse greenhouse gas emissions now, it will be too late (latest Sunday Times headline: 'Last warning: 10 years to save world'). What will they do when the planet stubbornly refuses to die? Their claims defeat their object. All the fuss about climate change depends on the idea that something can be done. If people believe that it is too late, why should they bother to make sacrifices to Gaia? Why not drive up and down the earth in their 4x4s in a last frenzy of consumption before they are themselves consumed?
Many helpful correspondents have written to me about TV Licensing (see previous Notes). Several report that the threatening letters they have received often have prominent messages on the envelope saying things like, 'TV Licensing Officers will soon be visiting X [the address of the occupantr or 'WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE'. They have pointed out that these messages are libellous, and then have ceased to receive them. Another correspondent tells me that he asked TV Licensing what body, exactly, was legally responsible for the libel. The first letter he received said that TV Licensing was the trading name for the agents acting for the BBC — Capita Business Services. He wrote back. Did this mean that Capita could be sued for the libel? No, no, came a second letter: the BBC is the licensing authority. So is it the BBC to whom one should complain? No, it is Capita etc., etc. I have also heard from a reader who does have a television, but refuses to pay his licence fee on principle. He has explained this to TV Licensing, but they enrage him by pretending that he has informed them that he does not have a television, in order to avoid making him a martyr. The picture emerges that TV Licensing's threats are frequent, but also empty.
Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that the number on the door at the top of this column has changed. The Spectator has left Doughty Street. Like most immemorial traditions, the Doughty Street connection with the magazine is quite new. It began under the ownership of Henry Keswick in the mid-1970s, when the magazine moved from Gower Street. Henry paid £27,000 for a 20-year lease, and later owners bought the freehold. It has been a lucky house for the paper, presiding over continuously rising circulation for more than 30 years. The only real tradition of The Spectator is that it occupies a house rather than a conventional office building, and I am glad to say that this is being maintained in Old Queen Street. The only real continuity is the carpet in the editor's office. This large and attractive rug originally belonged, under the ownership/editorship of Ian Gilmour, to him. Harry Creighton, who acquired the magazine from Ian, stripped all the assets (even taking the wall off the back of the Gower Street building before the staff had left), but for some reason left the carpet. When Alexander Chancellor became editor, Caroline Gilmour made a vain attempt to reclaim it. But it stayed put, worn out in one area where Alexander used to pace up and down all day as he smoked. Now its dimensions are wrong for the editor's new office. Sadly, Caroline Gilmour is dead, but the carpet is returning to Ian, 40 years late.
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