Notebook
Weekends can be a bit depressing at this time of year, so I am glad there will be something juicy to watch on television this Saturday. Independent Television is due to show the American drama The Day After about what would happen if a nuclear bomb was dropped on Kansas. It is by all accounts not much of a film, but I expect it will be' at least as enjoyable as the usual American disaster movies about fires and earthquakes. I will probably quite enjoy it.
think, however, I will switch off at the end rather than wait to watch Mr Heseltine 'redressing the balance'. According to the British Defence Secretary, the 'content and political direction [of the film] provide an unbalanced portrait of nuclear weapons in defence'. He finds this so worrying that he is not satisfied with an invitation to take part in a televised discussion afterwards but wants to hog the screen on his own. I can think of no reason why he should be allow- ed to do this. He might just as well demand the right of reply to programmes like Crossroads or Dallas. The Day After is just a bit of fiction. If it gives 'an unbalanced portrait of nuclear weapons in defence', so what? It is doubtless intended to terrify people, but it wouldn't be much of a disaster movie if it didn't. And anyway, everybody knows already that the effects of a nuclear explosion would be unspeakable.
Ikeep thinking that the Spectator ought to be a little more up-to-date. We do, it is true, own a couple of expensive electric typewriters, but we are still completely un- touched by the world of 'information technology'. Given that there is now hardly a man, woman or child in the country who does not possess a home computer or a word processor or at least a little video game, it seems rather pathetic that the Spec- tator should have none of these clever little gadgets to play around with. It seems that you can now get attachments which will programme a computer to correct your spelling and guide you in all kinds of other ways. For instance, a colleague on the New Statesman has an attachment on his word processor which prevents him from using 'sexist' words. 'Sexist' words are words which are thought by feminists to imply the dominance of the male sex — words like 'manpower' or 'manning' or 'masterful', or expressions like 'the brotherhood of man', even 'God the Father'. If an attempt is made to type one of these words, the machine lets out a bleep and refuses to ac- cept it. My colleague is apparently well con- tent with this device, though it has one little
Charles Moore will resume the political commentary next week. drawback; it refuses to accept the words New Statesman, oth the father and a grandfather of Dr John Robinson, who died this week, had been canons at Canterbury Cathedral. He was so steeped in the life of the Church of England that it probably never occurred to him that his holidays from the conven- tional teachings of the Christian religion might alarm simpler people and even make some of them lose their faith. As a result of his controversial outbursts, and in par- ticular of his best-selling book Honest to God, which treated the basic tenets of Christianity as symbolic images, Dr Robin- son became a public by-word for scep- ticism. When the authenticity of the Turin Shroud was being debated, he appeared on television not as a bishop (which he then was) to counter atheism, but as a man so reluctant to believe anything that his belief in the Shroud meant it had to be genuine. All this was unfair on Dr Robinson, though he brought it on himself. In his last years, and especially after he learnt that he was dy- ing of cancer, he found more comfort in traditional Christian truths. In a brave ser- mon about his own impending death which the Guardian reprinted on Wednesday, he even seemed to hold out some hope of the resurrection of the body. The whole life and death of a radical theologian are often more instructive than are the writings which made him famous.
The Poles have quite a lot to be grateful for. However vile the regime under which they live, they are at least allowed to practise their religion in comparative freedom. In Tibet, a Buddhist country for the past 1100 years, any expression of faith
can lead to summary execution. Tibet's Chinese masters regard faith as a na- tionalistic sentiment, consequently 'anti- social', and therefore ultimately 'criminal'. Ever since the uprising of 1959, which was bloodily put down, the Chinese have treated the Tibetans abominably. During the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties and early Seventies, Tibet's 3,000 monasteries were razed to the ground by Red Guards, and their monks and lamas subjected to forced labour, torture and death. Altogether some one million Tibetans are thought to have died during this period. Recently a new wave of executions has begun. Evidence of this has come from various sources, including Amnesty Inter- national and the London office of the Dalai Lama. The number of people arrested is ex- pected soon to reach 3,000, of whom about a third are expected to die. In its October letter to the friends of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama's office explained how the executions are carried out. 'Maybe they will be executed publicly, which is effected these days by a shot through the back of the head. Their families will be obliged to be present to witness and applaud the event, and the current Chinese practice, to avoid any last minute speeches that might inflame the already disaffected audience, is to sever the vocal cords before execution'.
Tt is worth noting,' said the Sunday .1.. Times, 'that those Tory lords whose newspapers — the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail — are most fond of lecturing government and the rest of industry about being firm with unreasonable unions, were the first to cut and run back into print.' Well, that may be so, but Times Newspapers have not been very spunky either. They also rushed back into print almost immediately, and the leading article abusing Lords Hartwell and Rothermere turned out to have been edited according to the instructions of the NGA. Mr Andrew Neill, the editor of the Sunday Times, could argue with justice that, despite the excisions made at the NGA's request, the article was still the toughest attack on the union to be published by a Fleet Street newspaper. The main effect of the cuts was to tone down a bit the paper's euphoria about Mr Eddie Shah. The adjective 'Luddite', as a descrip- tion of the NGA, was also removed. But the message was still clear — Mr Shah is the model entrepreneur and job creator; the NGA is a monster that needs crushing. Mr Neill probably felt it was worth accepting a few amendments in order that the article might be printed. But if he thought that, he was wrong. No editor should allow a trade union to dictate what he publishes, even if the changes demanded, as in this case, are relatively trivial. The principle involved is a vital one. A blank space on the leader page would have been far more telling than all Mr Neill's heroic words.
Alexander Chancellor
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