PATRONAGE AND PREJUDICE

There were ten green bottles

And great and noisy have been the falls thereof. Lord Hall gone, with much noise and fury from himself, from the Post Office workers, from parts of the Labour party: but otherwise, to the general relief of those in the know, and to the presumed good of the Post Office and of the public, which lately it has greatly displeased. Gone, too, Frank Cousins, from the Community Re- lations Commission and its £7,000 a year chairmanship: resigned, but perhaps, who knows, anticipating dismissal. No one really knows what this Commission is supposed to do, or has done, except that it is generally thought of as a do-gooding sort of outfit, and perhaps not merely doing itself good but selected bits of the community also. Gone thence, from the Race Relations Board, Mark Bonham-Carter, moving crab-wise. And also going, those two twins of nation- alised air transport, Messrs Millward and Hardie, but going more or less in their time. We thought of all the men who might soon go, or who ought to go, with or without their jobs, their Commissions, their Auth- orities. All these official people, moving from one job to another, from one committee to another: retired trades union leaders, seat- less ex-MPs, Life Peers and Life Peeresses, certain specific Kings and Captains of In- dustry, all those leftish academics who in their safe and sound and academically un- distinguished way are chosen to advise and recommend our lawmakers what to do about homosexuality, or abortion, or divorce. We thought of these, and of the lawyers, too, who pronounce Conciliar judgments upon the Press; and of the lawyers who pronounce Commissioners' judgments upon the Law. We talked and laughed and were secretly somewhat jealous as we discovered that members of the Air Transport Licensing Board, apart from-the chairman (£5.7501 and the deputy Chairman (£4,000) receive eigh- teen gns for each session they attend: that last year Peter Masefield got £7.800 'for being part-time chairman of the British Air- ports Authority; that the Lord Fulton got £2,000 a year as Vice-Chairman of the BBC, he being also Chairman of the British Coun- cil and in his day member of an appalling list and number of educational and mining committees; that the about-to-depart Mr Hardie got £7,500 as part-time chairman of BoAc, whereas the part-time deputy chairman of REA, Mr K. A. Keith, got £2,000 for his trouble: that the part-time chairman of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, the Lord Howick of Glendale, who turns out 10 have been Mr Evelyn Baring of that ilk and also to be chairman of the Nature Con- servancy, received £10,500; whereas the equally part-time chairman of the Country- side Commission received a mere £2,500 or that; and we saw that the Lord Fiske, vho used to boss the LCC, has been getting 3.500 as chairman of the Decimal Currency oard, which we presume is soon to expire; nd we found out that the part-time chair- an of the Land Commission, one G. B. hetsyynd, was getting £8,250 and that, I hough the headquarters were up in Ne.w- tle upon Tyne, there was a Chairman's ondon Office in swl, and also that the lrector of the Land Commission wis paid £1,150 less than his part-time chairman; and that the part-time chairman of the White Fish Authority (£4,375) turns out to have been, last year, the same indispensable part- time chairman of BOAC. Let no one think that these two part-time chairmanships added up to a whole-time job: for the self-same Charles Edgar Mathews Hardie, in addition so such further state jobs as deputy chair- man -)f NAAFI, was Vice-Chairman of the capitalist British Printing Corporation, chair- man of. the Metropolitan Estate and Pro- perty Corporation Ltd, and director of numerous other bits of private enterprise. But now, from BOAC, he is to fall.

We now consider, in the following pages, some of those great figures of our Patronage who, we consider, should also fall, or will fall, or even, in one shining exception, should stay where he is.

Lord Goodman: Arts Council

Arnold Goodman, fifty-seven, once deri- sive of Labour peerages, surprised some of his friends in 1965 when he accepted the title Baron Goodman of the City of West- minster. He was appointed to boss the Arts Council in the same year after being Harold Wilson's personal adviser and `Mr Fixit'. settling the ry technicians' strike as a nego- tiator acceptable to both sides: to the union because of his proclaimed leftist politics, to the bosses because, as a solicitor, he repre- sented so many capitalist interests, including Tv and newspapers. Goodman has always had a talent for being on noth sides of a fence, has influential friends on Right and Left. A bachelor, he has never been seri- ously linked, even by rumour. with any woman, and former Arts Minister Jennie Lee is about the only member of her sex to have spent much time with him a deux. He .s a teetotaller and a non-smoker, but a corn- -pulsive eater (in and out of the Savoy Grill) and remains obstinately corpulent despite daily pre-breakfast massage and the atten- tions of dietician Professor Yudkin.

Arts Council activities under his aegis are far from universally pleasing. especially as regards the provinces, where the hand-out policy seems to be governed by the prin- ciple. 'To him that hath'. A blind eye is turned to the practice whereby well-heeled commercial managements use subsidised provincial theatres to 'try out' subsequent London profit-makers.-Other common com- plaints are that the Arts Council does too much (for coterie culture and its avant- garde `whizzkids) and too little (for sound, proven professionals); that its elaborate committees take too long to produce their reports (three years is not unusual), and that recommendations are implemented only tardily, if at all. Yet while there are below- surface mutterings in the arts about Good- man's administration, his Lordship himself remains relatively popular, which' might be accounted particularly to two circumstances: the fact that he judiciously dissociates him- self from Council reports unlikely to win parliamentary or public favour (e.g. last year's working-party recommendation that artists be placed above the law of the ,..n ' in the matter of obscenity), and the fact that while Goodman himself has a Santa Claus image as a disburser of grants, the dis- gruntled unsuccessful petitioners tend to be dealt with by the man he took on as Secre- tary-General, fellow solicitor Hugh Wiliam partner in the law firm of former Labour MP Lord Silkin. Nevertheless, Goodman would be unwise to overestimate his survival capacity.

Lord Robens:. National Coal Board All Robens, official of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, has made the transition to Rt Hon the Lord Robens of Woldingham, chairman of the National Coal Board, Chancellor of the University of Surrey, Director of the Bank of England, Director of Times Newspapers Limited, television pundit, and current hero of the Tory government, with a great deal of brutal assurance and a fair amount of well-enough justified self-esteem. He was of the 1945 school of young MPS. having spent the war with USDAW. In some ways not dissimilar to a fellow Director of the Times and Chancellor of neighbouring Sussex University, Lord Shawcross of Fris- ton, who also entered Parliament in 1945, with the immortal words 'We are the masters now'. Both of them, had they stuck to their Parliamentary trade, might have become Prime Minister; but both of them deserted the Commons for Industrial power, having first tasted ministerial office.

Robens wound up as Minister of Labour in the dying days of Attlee's 1951 adminis- tration. For the next ten years he did nothing in particular but did it well enough to be appointed Chairman of the NCB in 1961. in which year he also accepted elevation to the Lords as a Life Peer and also, thereby, ac- cepted the end of any Prime Ministerial ambitions he possessed. With typical frank- ness and the absence of false modesty he has more recently admitted that, had he chosen otherwise, he could have ended up in Number Ten.

His own view of his abilities is shared by at least one other notable. Mr Cecil King, who in the last palmy days of his reign as Chairman of the International Publishing Corporation, entertained fancy notions of a Businessman's Administration including himself and Lord Robens. and dobbtless some others, who should be entrusted with the Administration of the Queen's govern- ment. instead of all the silly politicians of various party persuasions who were making such a bungling mess of the whole business. Lord Robens of Woldinghans did not go out of his way to discourage such Kingly finanglings, dotty as they seemed to such lesser colleagues and employees of Mr King fvho from time to time were regaled with their presumptive details.

Robust is the word most advisedly used to describe Lord Robens when one is trying to be nice. Unique among ex-union leaders in displaying administrative ability, he has managed to oversee the unavoidable decline of the coal industry with great successes, not the least of which was the recent avoid- ance of the first national coal strike since 1926. Will try anything once, he even took his wife to Japan to try and sell coal to the Japanese. Sixty in a fortnight's time, the question is whether he will survive to collect his full pension in five years' time.

Verdict: If the coal, "gas; oil, natural gas and electricity industries are not to keep squabbling, Robens will have to go, for he is too good for the rest of them. In a real free-for-all, coal would lose, despite Robens. No obvious replacement. -Nearest thing -the nationalised industries have; to indispensi- which atould mean .he won't last _Jong. Just the :man for the Post Office,.or, better still; steel.

George Woodcock: Commission on Industrial Relations

George Woodcock, cotton-weaver and fel- low of New College Oxford, made an admirable leader of. the .rtic.if for no. other reason than he brought to the post one in- dispensible asset (so far as his union ' colleagues - were concerned) —conspicuous inactivity. Trade unionists do not gladly suffer interference from a central authority, a sentiment to which the Hamlet of the _trade union movement instinctively subscribed.

. . and the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought'. For Mr Woodcock is nothing if not an intellectual and like to many of such a breed can be. relied on to perceive ten different ways around a problem and settle for none. As an intellectual he could always com- municate with and became enormously popular among labour Correspondents, while the rougher trade unionists complained that all they could talk to him about was football.

It is, perhaps, not insignificant that in his footballing days with Huddersfield Town, he played not as a forward whose aim is to achieve goals, but as a -hull-back whose activity is largely confined to preventing anyone Or anything getting past. It is better, therefore, for • the trade unionswhose opposition to.the cm is undisguised—that George -Woodcock is there than anybody else. But it, is far less certain' that-the GovernMent is of this opinion. Followers .of Mr Woodcock will. remember him as saying he found it easier to deal with Tory

. . than with Labour leaders (they will also, no doubt, remember the reluctance with .which

' Barbera Castle appointed him to the CIR in 1969). And indeed he 'may have 'a point—* - there is a tradition -among sections of the party of being somewhat romantic about trade unionism. Mr Carr may yet be -cast

:• in this 'mould, but infinitely 'more likely is . that the 'tradition is changing and that The • cm with its woolly 'terms of reference and Mr Woodcock with his vague perambulations . are in for a stiff shake-up. Months and months have gone by since the Commission was set up apparently to examine why strikes happened. Since then almost nothing has happened, except that the Commission's first two reports were re- jected outright by management and that a further dispute followed on its third. It was six months before one senior (f6,500 a year) member was given his first case. Indeed for nearly two years most of the Commission's staff of fifty have had almost nothing to do. . All of which is very much in keeping with Mr Woodcock's instincts to leave things well alone and let them work themselves out. For what is potentially a beauraucratic post, George ,Woodcock was a strangely anti- bureaucratic choice in the first place. How could a -man who had failed to persuade the trade unions to modernise themselves in ten years at the nic be expected to 'do if in three years under a different name? -

Verdict: Now that the Government is beginning to show stirrings of interest in the "CIR they will probably assign to it a much "more active and 'legalistic role in industrial reform, which will be totally un- suited to George's temperament. If Mr Woodcock hasn't been seen for some-time lunching at his -favourite Lyons Corner 'llouse, it is not, one May be sure, beciuse he has only had time for sandwiches in the o. ice-. A self-confessed 'fish-nn-friday, -- church-on-Sunday sort of Catholic' be -said, when he was General Secretary of the ruc, that he thought it was like being Pope—the same approach applied.

And if he was Pope? Well, 'if I were Pope, I don't think I'd do very much'.

Lord Fulton: British Council

The Lord Fulton of Falmer (along with the -Lord Annan, who now, however, chiefly occupies himself with the running of Univer- 'sity College, London, and appears. to be seeking no especial stately preferment) is a fine example of that increasingly' fertile sub- species, the academic in the hinterland . of power. 'Chairman of the British Council, a , Governor and Vice-chairman of the BBC, he has also been on such seminal commis- sions and committees as that on the Royal University of Malta and on University Teaching Methods. Academically and poli- tically he has- come a long way for. a 'man who lists his total publications thus: '(with C. R. Morris) In Defence of Democracy, 1935; various articles.)' It is difficult to account for his success, or why he should hOld 'Honorary Doctor of _Laws degrees from such various institutions as the Chinese University of Hong Kong and California, Yale, Sussex and Dundee,- or, comet° that, an Honorary Doctor of-Letters from Ife (sic). His Hon Litt. D. from the ' Royal University of Malta, like his Hon. tL D from the University of Wales •Erre •less

obscurely 'earned. -

The story toes that while if Fello'w of Balliol he taught both 'Heath and Wilion, Heath being himself _at Balliol .and Wilson, visiting from Jesus. Be that as it may, it' seems • hardly sufficient reason for the im- pressive .career this academic Scotsnian has made for himself, except that he was o of these who went into Whitehall during ill war, where his Balliol background suited hi for the Department of Mines and sub sequently the Ministry of Fuel and Power Mr Hat-old Wilson, it may be recalled, wa also at the Ministry of Friel and Power.

Anyhow, when the search was on for Principal for - the University College 0 Swansea; John Scott Fulton was found t be the right chap for the job, and there h -stayed, from 1947 to 1.959, To. those wit still wonder, as well they might, what exact) it is; or was, that Fultorihai, or had, an en while colleague Answered: 'He knew what h thought. What tie thought was no blood good, but he knew what it was. This wa entirely characteristic of the administrator and, not of the academic. Remember Yeats "The best lack all conviction while the worst ' Are full of passionate intensity". When th Government and the University Grant Committee and that sort went around aski what the proper size. of new universitie should be nobody knew except Fulton. wh rattled off "They-should have 3,000 student and 300 staff". And that was bloody that. An-anecdote froth Fulton's Swansea stia • goes thus: &student from some Asian Ian called, 'let us say, Said, was admitted to th University College, At the end of his firs

'''Year, Said gofabaut 3 per cent in Economies 2 per cent in English and 7 per cent History. At the -FacultY everyone said Sai must go, that he was no good, that he woul

. never pass. Fulton overruled the others arguing that the government of Said's 'country insisted that when people failed they had to repay all their fees. So Si stayed on a, further year, 'At the. next year „meeting Said had scored about 3 per cent in Economics, 2 per cent in History and I per ' cent in English. It so happened 'that at that meeting Fulton was not present,- being away on business and unobtainable. Result: Said was kicked out, and had to repay his :government two years' grants, instead of the one year's grant he'd have had to pay i Fulton had not insisted.

Verdict; Now aged 68, he will probably stay on at the British Council until the new year Should then go, will then .go; but will lease behind him a lot of poor-little students.

Lord Hill: • British Broadcasting Corporation

One important bottle which, if it doesn't fall, should be placed very securely on the shelf; is known to its friends and Subordin- ates as Lord -Hill, Baron of Luton. Chair- man of the mtc's Board of Governors. ...Coming into prominence as the Radio Doctor, he moved . from . strength 10 strength, moving from weakness to weakness ..By. 1963 he was _firmly established as Chairman of the Independent Television AuthoritY, watching -benignly as Lew Grade over the next four years -chalked up the -most massive profits to be • seen in the medium. His-appointment to the nnc by Harold Wilson Was more directly political than most and, not surprisingly. infuriated a majority of the Corporation's hierarch Charlis Curran was appointed. as Director- General, to say 'yes' at intervals; conciliato

attitudes were taken towards the Govern- ment (noticeably at this General Election), towards audience ratings, and, not uncon- nected, towards the Viewers and Listeners Association headed by his very old friend Mary Whitehouse.

Although no drastic operations have been undertaken, the patient has been bled— mostly of morale. The streaming of radio was mismanaged, as far as most radio pro- ducers were concerned, and the gap that exists between those who have joined from outside, on the one hand, and the majority of younger people who have grown up in television, on the other, grows no smaller. His. first book, What is Osteopathy? (1937) might have convinced him that gentle mani- pulation would be the best way to cure the BBC's nervous afflictions, but obviously not so.

Mark Bonham- Carter: Community Relations Commission

Most importantly, the son of Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, the least un-mellifluous plat- form speaker of recent years and one of the sharpest-tongued public women in private conversation, herself most importantly the daughter of Asquith. Born and bred into the purple of the Liberal party. Mark Bonham- Carter's greatest achievement, apart from escaping' during the war, was to win, with mother's help, and sister's help, and sister's husband's help, the Torrington by-election of 1958. Since then he has never looked for- ward, losing the seat in the General Elec- tion of 1959 and failing to regain it in 1964. With his mother, and his brother-in-law, Mr Jo Grimond, he felt deeply the continuing failure of the Liberal party under their fam- ily leadership. With each passing year, his inbred priggishness and primness have further asserted themselves, and no more natural and unpaid founder-chairman of the Race Relations Board could have been im- agined than Mark Bonham-Carter, unless it had been Sir Learie Constantine, who, in fact, become one of the humbler members of the Board.

Mark Bonham-Carter used to be a very pleasant fellow. Easy in his relations with his natural inferiors, and. conscious of no natural superiors, he must have struck the class- and .race-conscious legislators of the Race Relations Act as an ideal chap to put its class and racist principles into practice. He cannot himself be held responsible for re- bukino and threatening the Scots doctor who wanted a porridge-maker to cook for him in Bournemouth, for he is himself undoubtedly one of nature's porridge eaters. The fact that the Race Relations Board and Act are a hit of a bad joke is the fault-of our legis- lators. He can hardly do worse at the Com- munity Relations Commission than did Frank Cousins. In one way he will do better: the chairmanship is worth £7,000 a year. instead of nothing. On 28 March 1958. it being a Friday afternoon. Mark Bonham-Carter emerged onto the platform of Bideford Town Hall and said 'This is the greatest moment of my life. And it has been given to me by You. We asked the voters of Torrington to

give the country a lead. Torrington has given that lead. This is your victory and Liberalism's' and the exultant Liberals car- ried the Liberal revivalist aloft. His mother, Lady Violet, declined but passed through the crowd like a queen. Orpington was still to come, and Rochdale had been; but this was the greatest moment of the Liberal revival; and it was then, and still remains, the greatest moment in Mark Bonham-Carter's public life. It is, what is more, likely thus to remain.

Where Frank Cousins notably failed, it is not easy to see this Old Wykehamist grand- son of Asquith succeeding; for although to do good is, undoubtedly his endeavour, and although he may well have a higher per- sonal standard of ethics than most publishers (he was once a director of Collins), he is not likely to have any more direct exper- ience of or an easy familiarity with the problems of 'community relations' than any other of his fellow Directors of the Royal Opera House, Governors of the Royal Bal- let, and members of the now defunct Con- sumers Association.

Verdict: The Community Relations Com- mission should either be abolished or its chairmanship handed over to Des Wilson, Mary Wilson or Peter (from The Paper you can Trust) Wilson, each of whom knows more about people, and the People, than Mark Bonham-Carter. Prophesy: Mark Bonham-Carter will stay, and so will his Commission.

Lord Melchett: British Steel Corporation

Julian Edward Alfred Mond, unlike our other bottled heroes, is an hereditary Baron, the third Melchett, no less, of Landford. and a Baronet to boot. Ever since the Labour Party made him chairman of the British Steel Corporation, he has been regarded with quite remarkable distaste by the more con- vinced Free Enterprise apostles of this coun- try. who think he has, in effect, sold out to the enemy.

He's not a bad fellow to meet, with his hair all crinkly and polished, like a Cherry Blossom boot advert, and you would never guess. if you did not already know, that his grandfather was a dynamite king and that his father managed to be one of the principal architects of Imperial Chemical Industries without in the process securing for himself and his heirs any outrageously notable for- tune. By the standards of the rich, he is not particularly well off. and certainly the fI6,000 now risen to £25.000 he gets as Chairman of nationalised steel does not con- stitute a mere drop in the bucket.

Melchett enjoys a farm in Norfolk. not far removed from that of his former deputy chairman at merchant bankers Hill. Samuel and Co. Sir Kenneth Keith. whose recrea- tions are shooting and farming. According to Who's Who. Lord Melchett has no recrea- tions. or at any rate lists none. In Norfolk the Melchett farm possesses an airstrip upon which an aircraft British Steel was toying with came to grief not many months ago.

He is a great business party giver and goer

and at his London home in Tite Street, Chel- sea, his wife. Sonia. is a noted society hostess.

But whether any, or all, of this will save Melchett's bacon when the new hatchet-men of the Tory Government get down to the serious slaughtering remains very much to be seen. An issue of great principle may within a year be involved: the issue, How much, if at all, should Steel be broken tip and sold off?

Upon this issue of great principle, where will Lord Melchett, erstwhile merchant banker, erstwhile Tory peer, take his stand, if anywhere? This, too, remains to be seen.

Verdict: Should not have gone to steel in the first place, should not be there now, and is unlikely to last the next year out (always excepting that, should he he critised enough, he may become immovable).

Lord Wigg: Betting Levy Board

George Wigg, seventy last Saturday. former Labour MP. a life peer and chairman of the Levy Board since 1967, is 'bottled' only with reluctance. He has largely overcome the pre- judice and opposition of the Jockey Club 'old guard' that greeted his appointment; but there are still a few influential diehards. resentful of his 'democratisation' policies. who would like to see the back of him. They are unlikely to have their way, but the pos- sibility is noted.

Whatever Wigg's political performances in twenty-two years in the Commons. as Minister for War and Defence, as Whip and as Paymaster-General. his present niche is one he might have been born to fill. A long- time betting man himself and even a race- horse owner (in a small and not very successful way), he has thrown himself fer- vently and forthrightly into improving the health of racing in Britain. The Levy Board collection (now four million a year) has been doubled in the last two years and the money is put shrewdly into racing to make it more attractive, and thus to raise the betting turn- over to the benefit of the Treasury at a time when the effect of the betting tax might easily have been to reduce it. If racing is at last coming to be administered as the sport not of kings but of the masses (as it clearly must he if it is to survive). Wigg is the man largely responsible. Only implacable oppon- ents of racing and betting could decry his achievements.

Last week, though, he surprisingly sug- gested that the Levy Board was 'not pre- pared to go on spending large sums on pattern races ... [which attracted) only three to five runners.' Wigg knows well enough that stakes races aimed at bringing out only the best horses are never going to have the big fields that the bookies and the betting public like. and this is where he allows his concern with betting to defeat his concern for British racing. for any policy of cutting down support tot the really important events will send top British horses hotfoot to France and elsewhere in pursuit of the bigger purses. It was a rare lapse on which his enemies can seize. a chink in his armour of logic. Let us hope it is not the death of him.