Notebook

When Mr Michael Heseltine, bearing the Royal Mace of the House of Commons above his head, advanced on the Government benches last week, some members feared that he was about to use the instrument as a weapon, which, of course, it originally was. It may have been, however, that Mr Heseltine was merely attempting somewhat unorthodox assistance to his colleague Mr Maxwell-Hyslop, whose desire is aPparently to bring the House to a halt unless the Government Makes concessions on the aircraft and shipbuilding industries nationalisation Bill.

Although few realise the fact, proceedings in the Commons have no legitimacy if the Mace is not reposing on the table. Had Mr Heseltine carried it off (perhaps to the Conservative Central Office) all Commons business would have ceased. Indeed, this °nce happened, though the occasion was somewhat more prosaic than last week's near-riot. Sittings had to be suspended on cine occasion in the nineteenth century when 11le Parliamentary official in charge of the P. Parliamentary lost the keys to the cupboard con taining it.

The spectacular nature of Sir Harold Wil

s final batch of peers and knights should not overshadow another, singularly dismal, corner of the Honours List : the new Corn

of Honour. The CH was specifically instituted as a non-political award for outstanding achievement, not unlike the Order 4 Merit, but more extensive in membership t---hsixtY-five as opposed to twenty-four. Now, the OM is directly in royal control, and als'i°,11gh the members of the Order might be to reflect a taste for the respectable ramer than the truly original, the OM has reMained untainted. . Not so the CH. Many of its members are jitist those men of eminence for whom it was )1(ttended: Adrian Boult, Benjamin Britten, enneth Clark, Graham Greene, Peter Met'eavvar. But, being a gift of the Prime Minisasr, it inevitably came to be used, so to speak, ei an inexpensive present for retired politire,ans, Mr Harold Macmillan bears a heavy a`,,sr)PrIsibility for this development, having ovDointed the then Mr Selwyn Lloyd to the wrhcl,er after sacking him in 1962—an honour 41°I1 caused unease at the time. Now Lord Pa sslm-Lloyd is joined in honourable comCnionship by such names from the past as vt(,)rcla Butler, Duncan-Sandys, Gordon

alker and Shinwell.

41811t what are these Companions—let th tie the writers and musicians—to make of appointment to the order of Mr Edward title'"? Mr Short must head the field for the leaf the drabbest party hack to have sat on

the front benches since the war. Sir Harold might have knighted him, ennobled him or created a special T. Dan Smith memorial award for him. Instead he has insulted the companionship of one of the last awards which had some disinterested pride.

That most engaging writer and socialist, James Cameron, has been thinking—like the rest of us—about Sir Harold Wilson's preposterous honours list. He is wondering who will introduce the new noblemen when they take their seats in the House of Lords. Who, he asks, will accompany Sir Lew Grade ? His sponsor can be found in his own office at ATV House: Lord Windlesham, a member of the Heath Cabinet, a former leader of the House of Lords, and now an employee of ATV, of which he is a director. Who could be handier, who more suitable?

Mrs Thatcher, immediately after her triumph at the Christian Democratic Conference in Germany, returned to London to meet the Australian Women's cricket team. This season, the ladies will play at Lord's. It is as yet uncertain whether they will be allowed to walk through the Long Room on their way to the crease. Since they are prepared to face the fastest of bowling they are surely entitled to the small dignity of rights at Lord's. Australian women could not do worse against fast bowlers than British male batsmen. Is this, perhaps, the reason why Mrs Thatcher went out of her way to meet them ?

As evidence of political repression in Iran accumulates so it continues to be ignored or dismissed by most Western commentators. The Shah is such a rich and important ally of Britain, the argument runs, that if he chooses to govern his country with the help of a secret police force (Savak) whose methods of interrogation would give the Gestapo a good name, then it is quite clearly no concern of ours. Nor is it in our interests to make it our concern. According to Lord Chalfont allegations against Iran are made by 'the Marxists of the West'. Perhaps he would reconsider this judgment in the light of two reports issued last week by the International Commission of Jurists. The reports, by two most respected lawyers—one an American, the other French—describe the systematic use in Iran of physical and psychological torture of political suspects.

Mr David Frost is preparing a twelvepart television series on the country with the co-operation of the Iranian Government, which effectively means that we are unlikely to learn much about this one-party state so rigidly controlled by the Shah and the Savak. When will we ever learn about the real face of Iran ? What has happened to change the man who wrote in 1961, in an autobiography Mission for my Country: `So I consider that thy role as King requires that I encourage parties. If I were a dictator rather than a constitutional monarch, then I might be tempted to sponsor a single dominant party such as Hitler organised or such

as you find today in Communist countries. But as constitutional monarch I can afford to encourage large-scale party activity free from the straitjacket of one-party rule or the one-party state.'

The fate of articulate Jews in the USSR has been well documented in recent years, but despite repeated international protests the repression continues and shows no signs of abating. This week marks the first anniversary of the imprisonment of a young Russian Jew, Yakov Vinarov. His case is not unusual or particularly extraordinary in the context of Soviet behaviour, but is symptomatic of that authoritarian regime.

After school, Vinarov applied to enter the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology but, despite a brilliant scholastic record, he was refused. In 1971 he joined the local Polytechnic in the city of Voronezh, but became bored by the low standard of teaching there and began to study by himself. He started to read the work of such 'disgraced' Russian poets as Akhmatov, Pasternak and Mandelstam.

On 7 August, Yakov was tried. He demanded an exit visa, pleading that he was not guilty and that he considered himself a citizen of Israel. He was sentenced to three years' loss of freedom and forced labour.

Thousands of newly discovered letters written by Benjamin Disraeli are among those now being edited and annotated for publication by three scholars at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. The University's 'Disraeli Project' to publish a complete edition of his letters is receiving generous support from the Canadian Government. The edition will appear in thirty volumes at the rate of two a year, beginning in 1978. So far about 16,000 letters have been collected, and of these about 10,000 are new. But the search is still going on. The editors—Professor J. A. W. Gunn, J. P. Matthews and D. M. Schurman—are busy looking for more, and would be most interested to hear from anyone who may have a cache of Disraeli letters. In addition to the yolumes of correspondence, it is also hoped to produce, as a separate project, a variorum edition of all his writings and a collection of his parliamentary and public speeches. In a way it is quite appropriate that this great scholarly effort should be undertaken by Canadians, because modern Canada came into existence— through the British North America Act (1867)—during Disraeli's first premiership. On the other hand didn't he also, in an unguarded moment, say something about colonies being 'millstones round our neck' ?

Mr Heath has been likening Mr Callaghan to Dixon of Dock Green, as if that were to disparage the Prime Minister. But Dixon of Dock Green, otherwise Jack Warner, is a well-loved national figure—benevolent, tolerant, patient, conscientious and deeply reassurin,g. Dixon of Dock Green is the very embodiment of all the best qualities in national life. Mr Heath has misjudged him.