It is more remarkable that Mr Jones is adhering to the so-called social contract with the Labour Government than it is that Mr Scanlon is, apparently, abandoning the whole idea...

From Dr Garret FitzGeraid, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ireland. Sir: My friend Patrick Cosgrave, says that foreigners, and I in particular, utterly fail to...

Sir: "Small ... seems to be the prospect of converting a pro-referendum man to the opposite side, or vice versa," says Mr Cosgrave in his Political Commentary of August 24....

is of 'transcendent importance' but his difficulty is that the mass of the electorate, on whose behalf he purports to speak, quite obviously does not. If it did, then the issue...

Sir: During the past week it has been reported in the press that Intervention Beef, because of the need of ever-more storage space, is being held in refrigerated ships anchored...

Sir: A great deal has been said and written about the frightening state of inflation under which we exist and the dangerous consequences which loom in the immediate future. I...

Sir: As a life long but now very disillusioned Conservative, I am faced with an appalling dilemma as the next general election approaches. Until Mr Heath decided to call a...

and activity of our political l eadership, which varies from the succinct comment by a remarkably successful and articulate 'blimp' to the reminder by William Baird in the...

Sir: Your excellent editorials in the matter of Nixon have led only to a curious turn now that Nixon has resigned. Your editorial of August 17, was a bad hash. For one thing:...

Sir: I was first interested, then surprised to read the ex-Editor of Time's account of Edmund Wilson's "discovery" of the uses "to which the Government put the tax money," and...

Sir: The attitudes of the Family Planning Association to sex education have been the occasion of much concern among reasonable and responsible parents for several years. Some of...

Cosgrave (August 31), "had Labour taken a stand for and the Tories a stand against the (Abortion) Bill." Neater, tidier, simpler, they might have been. But many Labour MPs...

Unions and governments Patrick Cosgrave There will, no doubt, be a Tory government again in Britain, at some time in the future; and it behoves those who would wish that event...

The most remarkable thing that strikes one at a Ttic conference is the complete difference between the judgement of delegates about the Whole affair and the judgement of the...

Threat or bulwark? George Gale When Frank Cousins succeeded Arthur Deakin as General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union in 1956, a shift in power within the...

Regenerated and optimistic Clive Jenkins The overwhelming feeling within the British trade union movement is one of confidence. It would not be an overestimation to say that...

Keeping up Michael Hatfield Joyce Bellamy and John Saville, in their Dictionary of Labour Biography, have set themselves more than a lifetime's work. AS they acknowledged in...

Bring back the girl Al Capp Theatre oWners in the US are mystified, and the Women's Lib groups are surly because, again, there are no girls in the Top Ten list of our cinema...

An act of international lawlessness? Ernst Albert Mr Albert's article is published in line with this journal's policy of offering its readers a variety of _arguments on...

My friend Captain Freepen, who disguises his present Decay by visiting the Wenches of the Town only by way of humour, tells me that the other night he with Sir Simon d'Audley...

The great population hoax John Linklater Bucharest the most important single benefit that many delegates have derived from two sweltering weeks in a Balkan heatwave, is their...

Fewer could mean better Rhodes Boyson, MP It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good and the recently published figures of the sharp fall in the birth rate could promise a...

Improvements—and frustrations galore Leslie Loader Everyone must now accept that modernisation of otherwise sound houses and flats must have similar priority to the building...

Classified information . Philip Kleinman "Good opportunities for intelligent .school-leavers at Lloyd's Bank," "Drilling engineers and supervisors required for Conoco's...

According to St John Martin Sullivan There has fallen into my hands the manuscript, in clear and legible form, of a paper delivered in Belfast in 1910 by my predecessor Dean...

Andrei Sakharov, now in his early fifties, is the r n„nst prominent political dissident active in the L'SSR of 1974. An outstanding atomic physicist, O nce known as 'Father of...

Francis King The Letters of Charles Dickens. Volume Three Edited by Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson. (Oxford University Press. £13.00). THE bulk of these...

ny Mercer m.. fs My Mistress Duke Ellin g ton ( W. H. Allen e , 5 , 50) this autobio g raphy by Edward Kennedy b gton were a concert piece, it would be g in saYin g andante or...

colhi Wilson My Li f e Oscar Kokoschka ( Thames and Hudson £5.25 ) Let me say at once that I suspect this is one of the g reat artistic autobiographies, comparable to those of...

Kenneth Robinson Dracula A Biography of Vlad the Impaler 1431-1476 Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally (Robert Hale £3.50). This biography of the real-life Dracula, known as...

J. Enoch Powell The City Of The Gods, a study in myth a rld mortality John S. Dunne (Sheldon Press £4.50) Professor Dunne's book — he is professor of Religious Studies at Yale...

Burning up Peter Ackroyd Blood. Red, Sister Rose Thomas Keneally (Collins £3.00) A Crown of Feathers Isaac Bashevis Singer (Cape £2.95) It takes a certain talent to turn a...

Anybody there? Benny Green One evening in the autumn of 1949 Blitski and Myself arranged a seance. You are not to assume from this startling piece of information that either...

Bookend It is no secret that British publishers are facing one of the most testing periods in their entire history. Their problems at home are no more or less critical than...

The international side of the Edinburgh Festival has a distinctly Swedish tinge this year. The Stockholm Royal Opera is bringing four productions; the Gothenburg City Theatre...

All too long a date Kenneth HwTen - surn mer f olk by Maxim Gorky: Royal Shakespeare Company Let My People Come by Earl (Aldwych) Wilson, Jr (Regent) David Jones, the RSC...

Duncan FaHowell Jonathan Livingston Seagull Director : Hall Bartlett. Star: Jack Couffer (cinematography). "1.l' ABC Blonnibury (97 minutes). Percy's Progress Director: Ralph...

Amusing the young Evan Anthony Having recently returned from the world of Disney (in Florida), thoroughly corrupted by the sunshine and the slickness and the smartness of it...

The production of his hobby-horse show, An Evening with Mr Ziegfeld — The Follies, has already cost petrol-station tycoon Ian Trotter something over a quarter of a million, and...

Nicholas Davenport My first call for anti-depression action — namely that the managers of the life funds should re-enter the market and resume their normal buying of cheap...

Anyone who has read Charles Stahl, whose column on the metal market and the financial affairs in Wall Street appears in The Spectator this week, will find that his own...

Charles R. Stahl The transfer of power in the United States went as smoothly as counting one, two, three ... Ford! Already the change has produced some visible improvements, by...