SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
It seems that the gospel of self-expression by means of violent protest is still pretty well confined to places of higher learning and scholarship. To date, at least, the patience (or docility) of railway travellers during the miseries of the semi-strike has been remark- able. First they waited in glum droves during day after day of heavy rain, then they sweated through some of the hottest and most humid weather for years. Yet there have been no clashes between militant commuters and railwaymen, Mr Sidney Greene remains undaubed by red paint, no railway station has been occupied, no signal box taken over. Nothing stronger than a few angry shouts is reported. How long order would prevail in such conditions is conjectural: for the present, at least, we re- main a peaceable people. There is even a good deal of sympathy for the railwaymen (deserved sympathy, I think). And it must not be for- gotten that years of exposure to the deficiencies of British Rail have produced a sort of re- signed, trench-warfare cheerfulness in adver- sity among their customers.
One incensing detail has been the doleful Mr Greene's repeated expression of his regret at the 'inconvenience' the dispute was causing to the public. This lament is always heard at such times. But if Mr Greene and his men really mean it, why are they not more imagina- tive about the form their industrial action takes? Since their quarrel is allegedly solely with the management, their obvious course would be to refuse to collect fares, not to refuse to transport the neutral public. This might even attract some fresh traffic to the railways in future, instead of driving more and more people to rely on private transport.
My Lord Pangloss
The courtesies of public life are important, but there are times when they become treacly. It's odd that Mr Ray Gunter, whose platform oratory runs all too readily to the flowery- emotional, should be the man to shatter effete verbal convention with a few stark words: 'I no longer desire to be a member of your Government.' This bluntness seemed all the more admirable to me because, by chance, I had just been reading the exchange in the Lords over the Government 'investigation' of Mr Jocelyn Hambro's salary. (He is the banker, it will be remembered, who said recently that we now had 'the worst Prime Minister since Lord .North.') Lord Erroll, for the Tories, firmly stated his belief that there was no 'political malice' in this investigation; Lord Shackleton, for the Government, seemed pained at the mere thought that so sordid a motive could even be contemplated. I was left with the feeling that courtesy and high-mindedness can lead one straight to cloud-cuckoo-land. I don't quite know how, in this vale of tears, one attains such freedom from impure sus- picion. Perhaps these noble lords have led far more sheltered lives than most of us are able to achieve.
Whitehall's class war
'Class' is one of the master-words of our time, loaded for marxist and non-marxist alike with intimations of injustice and privilege. One of the Fulton Report's most-applauded recom-
mendations has been the abolition of the 'class structure' of the civil service, and the Prime Minister hastened to accept this suggestion as soon as the report was published. In principle, of course, a more flexible and less frustrating pattern of promotion within the service is to be welcomed; all the same, I wonder whether this particular point would have attracted quite such fervent attention if some other word had been chosen, generations ago, to label civil ser- vice grades. 'Class structure' suggests a hand- ful of segregated groups with a bunch of mandarins ruling the roost from the top class. Anyone who actually reads Fulton, however, can learn that altogether there are 1,447 differ- ent 'classes': if they were really classes in the modern political sense, then they would make the Versailles of le roi soleil look like an open democracy, and not even a Saint-Simon could pick his way securely through such an intricate hierarchy.
I shall retain a small personal interest in the well-being of the last body of recruits to the uppermost, mandarin, class, doomed like the rest, since one of the tasks set in their quali- fying examination was writing a rejoinder to a paragraph from this 'Notebook.' It is, I find, faintly unsettling to think that the ability to deal with heretical views such as mine should be thought a necessary part of a senior civil servant's equipment.
Signs of the times
A small but worthwhile economy in public spending could be achieved by applying a little restraint to the current mania for planting traffic signs Wholesale all over the country. Evi- dently the rule is that no little rural lane or by-road is to be without its quota of the new and garish injunctions to motorists. Many, perhaps most, are useful and may well avert accidents, but excess in such things defeats the purpose. I made an experimental count in one small village which I was driving through: there were fourteen large signs, most of which told the motorist what he could see with his own eyes. On a journey of any length a driver is likely to be exposed to hundreds or even thousands. Presumably the theory is that he will develop a Pavlovian response and auto- matically pay heed to each one, but my guess is that when so many seem superfluous, he is more likely to learn not to bother. Why, for example, has a small country lane I happen to know, not much more than a track, and obvi- ously leading nowhere in particular, to be given a large metal hoarding with a symbol indicat- ing that it is a cul-de-sac? And in the Welsh mountains last week, I followed a wild hilly road which was joined, some two thousand feet up, by another; both were unfenced, and from the junction you could see the empty tracks stretching away for miles; yet at this point someone had installed, in accordance no doubt with Ministry regulations, a massive notice saying 'GIVE WAY.' Even the sheep, I dare say, thought it looked silly.
A word in edgeways
'The cm is angry because it was -given only five minutes, out of a twenty-five minute inter- view with Mrs Castle, to voice its views.' (From The Times, 2 July.)
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