Notebook
The Metropolitan Commissioner's decision to ban all marches in London for two months has enraged a certain brand of b. ion-pensant opinion 'fighting fascism with its own methods' was one odd description. I suggest that Sir David McNee is to be congratulated, and that we should consider Whether such a ban might not usefully be Made permanent. Certain rights and traditions are the hallmarks of a free society: the freedom of expression and the rule of law above all others. An extension of the freedom of expression is the freedom of assembly, guaranteed in our country not only by custom, but statutorily under the Representation of the People Act. Why, though, should this right be further extended to a right to demonstrate in the Public highway, to the inconvenience and sometimes endangerment of other citizens? At best street marches make a point which cannot be conveyed by rational argument. At worst they are designed to provoke violence or to intimidate. The phrase used by the Left in the late 'sixties — 'militant demonstration' — told its own story. The Trotskyists today do not disguise their desire for violent confrontations with the
Police. Nor can the intention of the National Front in marching through black or Jewish areas be mistaken. Abstractly, it may seem a gross denial of free speech to ban street marches (other than those of a festive or religious character, in Sir David's nicely Chosen phrase). In practice it is not: it is Precisely on the frontier of theory that the anarchist notion of freedom breaks down, for in practice civil order is the conditio sine qua non for both freedom and justice.
Street politics do not often lead to an extension of real liberty: recall the violence between communists and fascists that heralded the end of the Weimar republic. Let polit'Cal activists stick to the flat ephemeral Pamphlet and the boring meeting — and be grateful for a quiet life.
dit. good example of progressive liberal thinking —which is in truth profoundly illiberal — on the subject comes from the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has been busily advocating the right of the American Nazi party to hold a march next month, on Hitler's birthday, through Skokie, a suburb of Chicago predominantly inhabited by Jews, not a few of them survivors of National Socialist persecution. (It could only happen in America, I'm afraid. There IS even said to be in California —where else? —a 'Gay Nazi Movement'.) I will not labour the several good reasons why such a demonstration falls outside the area of essential freedom of speech. Yet this is the same ACLU which ingeniously defends (with coy reservations) the 'commitment', i.e. incarceration without trial, of those deemed 'mentally ill'. Truly our advanced societies move ever further from the old view of the state as the preserver of order, to the new positive view of the big, kindly state which knows. best and nannies us all.
The railway strike-that-wasn't seemed an almost incredibly petulant and tiresome exhibition of union petty-mindedness, not to say of unfraternal ill-fellowship. Yet I do not find it hard to understand the impotent resentment of Mr Buckton's ASLEF men. As technological progress advances working life is divided more and more into those who have interesting jobs, which they enjoy, and those who have boring ones, which they don't. No one who has ever ridden on the foot-plate of a steam engine will doubt that driving one was one of the most skilful, exhilarating and absorbing manual occupations imaginable. Driving a train now requires no special talent .at all — scarcely even the concentration to keep awake, so highly automated has railway technology become. Soon engine drivers will become literally redundant, as they already have on the Victoria Line tube. They may have to accept the development, but it is unreasonable to expect them to welcome it.
Lunching with my bookmaker a month ago I was warned never to bet on anything where someone might know the result in advance. We were speaking of the suc cession to the editorship of the New Statesman. Strictly, his caveat did not appear to apply, since the appointment was partly elective. At any event I was undeterred and proceeded to make a book on the outcome. It might otherwise be improper to comment on the affairs of another weekly paper, but the fate of my book may be of— purely technical — interest. Most money went on Neal Ascherson (a heavy loser for the book) at prices from a rash initial 7-1 (to £10), down to 9-4; James Fenton closed to joint favouritism. Bruce Page ended third favourite at 11-2: as they say in the Sporting Life, little was seen for the rest, even when I extended Brian Sedgemore's odds to 100-1. Mr Page would have been a near 'skinner' had not! laid an early 7-1 to a fiver from the Editor of the Spectator. Gallantly, and luckily for me, Jeffrey Bernard offered to lay off this bet, and has had to cough up £40. More by chance than judgment! have made a profit (or will make one when my clients pay up). This first essay into the arcane arts of the ring taught several lessons, and has made me more charitably disposed towards bookies than before. You cannot afford to offer long prices early except to small stakes. It is no use adjusting prices abstractly, using the field money table in Ruffs Guide to make an 'over-round' book. The question (obvious, except at first to me) is whether the commitment on any runner is balanced at any given moment by total stakes on the rest of the field. After this enjoyable but nerve-racking enterprise I feel not only better natured towards the men in Tattersall's but a boundless admiration for their mental agility. And my congratulations to Mr Page.
An English Test match victory brings a ray of cheer to this grim winter. Equally no one could begrude the New Zealanders their victory in the previous test: never has a sporting 'first' been so long awaited and so well deserved, as those who saw the Lord's Test in 1973 — when New Zealand made 551, including 175 from Congdon, yet failed to win — will agree. It was ironic that Boycott's first success as captain of England should have seen him run out. But at least this time he cannot be censured for caution in his captaincy. (It may be recalled that he recently took more than seven hours to score seventy runs, one for the Guinness Book of Records rather than Wisden.) His declaration on the last morning was essential for the victory. It seems at last that Boycott is learning that there is more to captaincy than just the example of concentration and perseverance. All the same,
his captaincy of Yorkshire over the last three seasons, with an almost inevitable reluctance to avoid chances, compares unfavourably with Brearley's of Middlesex (see, for example, the home match against Surrey last season). And it is not out of simple-minded Middlesex partisanship that I hope to see Brearley back in charge of England this summer.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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