Tapering honesty
Sir: Readers of the SPECTATOR with a reasonably long memory who also read the Observer will have rubbed their eyes in astonish- ment at Bernard Levin's review of Lord George-Brown's memoirs. For the gravamen of the piece is that, with all his faults, our George is at least an honest politician. Apart from the fact that in any event this is a contradiction in terms, for the concept of an honest politician is akin to a square circle, many readers will recall that when Taper was your parliamentary correspondent he came to a rather different conclusion.
The high point of Taper's ex- cellent stint on the paper was his crusade to free three Arabs who had been wrongly. imprisoned by the ruling clique in Bahrein, for which this country held final res- ponsibility. Not only did the then Tory government support the feudal tyrants, but in order to placate the opposition which had been roused, they took the most unusual step of sending a leading member of the Opposition out to Bahrein to report which, surprise, surprise, turned out to be a com- plete whitewash. But it didn't wash, because the SPECTATOR had done its work and shortly afterwards the viOims were released,
The Opposition member was called George Brown and Taper left us in no doubt about his political honesty. I wonder what Taper would now say about Ber- nard Levin's.
L. E. Weidberg
14 Templewood Avenue, London Nw3
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