DIARY
MATTHEW PARRIS Iam off to Turkey, to escape from news- papers and television shows anxious for my views about 'outing'. As I prepared to leave, the telephone rang with the 34th such request. All have been rejected — all, that is, except the first, from the Sunday Times, to whom I said what seemed helpful. There seemed no need to repeat this in subsequent interviews, but that didn't stop an ingenious woman from one tabloid ask- ing, rather plaintively, if I would 'say it all over again' to her. She felt it would be unprofesSional to quote another newspa- per. And, now that the `outers' have with- drawn their threat, my telephone rings with requests for a comment on why they did so. Thus is news born of nothing, sustained upon nothing and finally metamorphosed into a seminar upon its own lack of sub- stance.
By the time you read this the issue will be burned out. Had you been on holiday abroad for the 'outing' week, and on return nobody told you what you had missed, then I doubt whether you would be conscious of the loss. What I wonder, would Mrs Gor- man have suffered if kindly constituents had kept Mr Mudd's leaflets from her notice? Certainly no greater than the indig- nities through which she has had to go in court to clear her name. I know Mrs Gor- man. She has no appetite for this sort of thing. What forced her to issue the writ that started it all was the certainty that if she did not, people would look askance:We have libel laws to stop this sort of thing,' they would have said. 'What is she afraid of that holds her back from invoking their protection?' The solution, then, is to abol- ish the libel laws. So long as they stay, the murmur 'Why doesn't he sue?' remains the most patent libel of all: because most peo- ple can't.
Unlike Mrs Gorman, nobody tells me what is being circulated about me. Only today I learned that, two weeks ago, there was a flurry of interest from the Daily Express (I think) in my chances (amongst others?) of succeeding John Cole as politi- cal editor at the BBC. My chances are zero. I couldn't do the job; nobody in their right mind would ask me, and if they did I should refuse. Bernard Ingham, who was appar- ently consulted by the Express on my sup- posed candidature, replied (I now learn) that with me at the helm 'the Nine o'Clock News would become the Nine o'Clock Day- dreams' — a funny and acute comment, seen through the mellowing glass of a fort- night's gap; less so if I were to read it in this morning's paper. I should have felt obliged to react, and stir it all up. All this I have been spared, by the ignorance born of lucky oversight.
If we were to review our lives with special attention to the slights we have received, how many do we, with hindsight, welcome having been told about? How many mat- tered? Yet which of us — if we had a Bernard Ingham to filter our news-intake, as Mrs Thatcher did — would have had the assurance to say 'Bernard, responsible criti- cism I must see; but name-calling and per- sonal slights are to be kept from me'? I gave Mrs Thatcher's office a note, the other day, to tell her about a great support- er of hers who was ill and would appreciate a word of sympathy. Within hours Mrs Thatcher had written a wonderful letter to my friend. Has she read all those insulting parliamentary sketches I wrote about her, and did that make no difference? Or did Bernard Ingham keep my frivolous imperti- nences from her? I hope so, I never really meant it, anyway.
But then we are seriously confused, I think, about how far we may presume upon friendship. The interplay between private ties or antagonisms, and public favours, lacks an agreed etiquette. In my political work I have found that people's ideas about what would be considered presumptuous differ sharply, and nobody knows the rules. This morning a friend of Croatian origin rang to say he was worried sick about what might happen there. He knows what he is
`It's the Wellington bootleg.'
talking about but, now, personal anxiety, too, overlaid his expertise. Did I know Douglas Hogg, or the foreign editor of the Times? This evening he rang to apologise. He should not have presumed upon our friendship, he said, to bend my ear, espe- cially on the eve of my holiday; nor asked me to presume upon my own friendships. His morning call had been reprehensible, he thought. I thought it was the evening call which was reprehensible.
Iblame Christianity. Islam, it seems, and Judaism, give their blessing to a scale of human obligations: our obligations to friends are greater than those to strangers — but less than to family, for instance. Christianity, however, (so far as I read the Gospels) takes a rather more lofty view of all this, and seems to propose that we give equal consideration to all, friend or foe, family or stranger. This is not actually pos- sible in daily human relationships; there has to be an order of things. Yet our — my — religion is silent on what it should be. Though modern Christians like to speak of Christianity as though it upheld 'family val- ues', there is little authority for this. The New Testament strikes a note of strange coldness towards family and friendly obli- gations, suggesting that Christ came to sideline them. This is a weird religion indeed, quite outside the `Judaeo-Chris- tian' tradition: though we, and the Church, keep comfortably within it.
Iwas telephoned from Australia this week by a friend who for years has been struggling with the question of whether to conceal his homosexuality. I have always urged him not to, assuring him that the best people respect honesty, modern society in Britain is tolerant of every human type, one should be true to oneself etc. He recently came to the same conclusion and acted upon it, so far without ill-effect. But he had not telephoned about that. 'Matt,' he said, joyously, 'I've become a Christian. I'm born again. I went to this evangelist's meeting and the Lord Jesus came to me. I wanted to tell you immediately., I want to tell every- body. I want to shout "hallelujah!" ' All I could do was mumble, 'I'm pleased for you, Charlie.' Inwardly I thought, 'I hope he doesn't feel he has to tell everybody about it; it would be pretty embarrassing. At din- ner parties, I mean, aren't some things best kept to oneself?' And, out loud to him, I caught myself saying, 'It's a big step to announce this sort of thing, Charlie. You'll lose friends. You ought to think twice and maybe keep it to yourself. . . .'
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