TABLE TALK
To travel hopefully . . .
DENIS BROGAN
The new head of the new British Tourist Authority has started off in a refreshingly rebellious fashion. Sir Alexander Glen's authority comes from the Development of Tourism Act, but he quite rightly suspects that the government which passed it is not really very committed to the idea of tourism. Partly this is due to that linger- ing puritanism of the Labour party which is one of its least pleasing features. Partly it is due, I suppose, to the highly insular attitude of some Labour leaders. Quite obviously the Prime Minister prefers the Scilly Islands, or, as we are now taught to call them, the Isles of Scilly, to any really foreign parts. (Was it not, by the way, of the Scilly Islanders that Sydney Smith said they lived by taking in each other's washing?) 'Stoker Jim' Callaghan gets his holidays by sailing round in his boaeSo does Mr Ted Heath, convinced European as he is.
Of course, our rulers go abroad a great deal, but they go abroad as yin at govern- ment expense and with facilities put their way by the countries which they are visiting or often just passing through. I have never been a vie, although I have several times been, at other people's expense, a first class passenger. But I have seen the treatment given to VIPS, some of them not of con- spicuously high rank, and certainly their notions of the troubles that beset the humble traveller must be very remote from reality. Perhaps Sir Alexander's first de- mand on the Government should be that all high officials, including Cabinet members, who go abroad should try to live on their £50 allowance and see how long they can spin it out. Mr Roy Jenkins, a very inter- national figure, has been spending some weeks in France, and he must have suffered a great deal from having to live within his £50!
I welcome Sir Alexander Glen's attack on the £50 allowance since it is not only a serious restriction on the liberty of the subject but a revelation of where the Treas- ury thinks it can, with no inconvenience to itself, make economies in the national iccounts. One result when one is abroad is, of course, that the British tourist is no longer the 'milord' of a not very distant past. It is significant that the Hotel Hilton is replacing the Hotel Bristol as an emblem of the in- ternational traveller, and in many coun- tries British tourists are regarded as more or less tolerated nuisances. A great many British travellers today resemble Oliver Goldsmith playing his flute round Europe rather than Lord Bristol, Bishop of Derry, throwing guineas around to grateful or obsequious French and Italian inn- keepers.
Perhaps the disappearance of the ostentatiously opulent British traveller is no great loss, but the reduction of the British traveller to serious inconvenience is some- thing surely to be deeply regretted, especi- ally as people can buy a great many ex- pensive things produced on the Continent of Europe, including, I believe, very expen- sive motor cars, but cannot have the sovereign pleasure of travelling freely.
It is a solemn thought that not since the end of the Second World War has travelling in Europe been free of some kind of fin- ancial or other restriction. I can remember going as a British delegate to a conference of UNESCO to discuss the free circulation of books and periodicals, and on the day I arrived at the conference Sir Stafford Cripps announced a complete ban on the importation of books and periodicals from foreign parts. I said to my Foreign Office colleague, a very old friend, that the only thing the British delegation could do was to pack up and go home again as we should be in the ludicrous position of preaching the free communication of ideas on behalf of a country which banned this.
Sir Alexander Glen is no doubt more interested in the kind of tourist service we give to our increasingly numerous visitors from abroad. in some ways, it has greatly improved. I don't often stay in hotels in my native land—I sponge on my friends. But when I have stayed in hotels, it has nearly always been in hotels run by the British Railways Hotel Executive, and I have found their service uniformly good and competent, and the hotels more and more approaching the standard of good second class Ameri- can hotels. More than that, opulent Spectator 6 September 1969 American friends tell me that their ex- perience at a higher level is the same as mine. In Cambridge, for example, my American friends go back to the United States with a high opinion not only of the beauties of that city, but of the tourist facilities provided by its hoteliers.
But this is not uniformly the case. I am tsola there are very many scruffy and un- satisfactory hotels in London in which unfortunate Americans, Germans, French etc. find themselves landed. There is also a fairly general complaint at the level of ser- vice. This may, of course, be due to the Oftmous sEr. I will not go into the general policy of this ingenious if romantic view of how our labour force can be shifted from service to productive activities (an idea which I find extremely confusing); but cer- tainly the service in many British restau- rants and hotels is bad, and bad in two diterent ways. Quite often the natives are obviously above service. They are sulks. they either have no information or don't wish to give it, and their hearts are in the Highlands or somewhere else, not at the desk where they should be working. There is also the difficulty of getting information particularly in the early part of the morn- ing: the lateness of our rising hours shocks everybody in the world except us.
The other side of the service problem is the large number of waiters and sometimes waitresses who are learning their trade on the vile bodies of the guests of British hotels. Sometimes these speak no tongue known to me, and one has to signal the manager or plead for someone else to come in order to get any relevant answer out of some young Maltese, Yugoslav, or whatever else he may be. On the other hand, I must say that the girls, who are very often Scan- dinavians or Dutch, seem to me not only to speak English well but to show an interest and competence in their job which not all natives display.
Sir Alexander Glen has also asserted that although he is a Scottish Presbyterian, he finds the regulations about drinks and about service on the Sabbath are a great economic nuisance. There has, indeed, been relaxation. It is no longer necessary in Glasgow on the Sabbath Day to pretend that one is a long distance, bona fide traveller: for example. that one is Frank Sinatra just arriving from (Samarkand, as I have known a Glasgon kinsman of mine do successfully. Hotels, at any rate, are open to the boozer on the Sabbath, though I think there are not enough hotels. But I understand that the most rigorous example of the imposition of the Jewish Sabbath on the Christian Sunda is to be found in Northern Ireland where not only are the children's swings locked r) u in the public parks on Sunday, but it is im- possible to get any of the wine of the country, e.g. Old Bushmills, on what, no doubt, Dr Paisley calls the Sabbath. Sir Alexander has a lot to do, and could do a lot by himself visiting incognito some of these hotels, restaurants, and other places, by looking at some of the imbecile values of British Railways, e.g. the nonsense about Euston, and perhaps by suggesting that in this highly competitive world, when we do not normally have summers like the summer of 1969, we may have to adjust to the alleged needs of the people whom %%e facetiously call our guests and who, howesei unwelcome in person, are at any wel- come as bearers of dollars and other hard currencies. It is a subject of economic and political importance almost too rich for full development. rate wel-
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