Notebook
My Sunday was completely ruined by the. Sunday Times. I read three things in it which cumulatively plunged me into despair and filled me with feelings of bit- terness towards the Prime Minister. I spend quite a lot of time trying to like Mrs That- cher. I approve of many things about her. I like her forthrightness; I respect her courage and indomitability; I even think that on the whole she is trying to do the right things. But just when I feel I may have managed to overlook some of her little drawbacks — in particular, her voice, with its quality of what somebody well described the other day as `pseudo-patience' — she fires an Exocet missile at me. Thus it was with the dreadful speech she made last Saturday about the train drivers' strike. It was not her attack on 'waverers and fain- thearts' during the Falklands war which upset me most, although I did take that per- sonally. It was her invocation of the `Falklands factor' against the strikers. I had been praying that she would not do this, so she had to go ahead and do it; just as she had to ask us to 'rejoice' after the recapture of South Georgia. Whether, or not Britain's victory over Argentina has in fact created a new mood' in Britain is not at all easy to say, though, having at first thought that it Might have, I am now increasingly doubt- ful. But, in any event, a `mood' is not something you can pick up and beat people with. And if such a `mood' did exist, Mrs Thatcher has almost certainly killed it by representing it as something it is clearly not. Surprised admiration for the courage of the army and navy may have made many peo- ple feel more satisfied with their country, but it has not turned them overnight into a battalion of zealous patriots, ready to crush train drivers, socialists, women's libera- tionists or any other group that Mrs That- cher may feel to be undermining the na- tional interest.
Aso on the front page of the Sunday Times, immediately below the report Of Mrs Thatcher's sppeech, was a story about the return from the South Atlantic of the British Submarine HMS Conqueror. This was the submarine which, on May 2, sank the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano with the loss of hundreds of lives. Itwas pictured flying a Jolly Roger flag to celebrate this success — a symbol in ex- ecrable taste which was, I am told, invented by the Germans. The story, which included the revelation that the order to torpedo the Belgrano had been given in London, re- aroused all the unease which so many peo- ple felt about this incident at the time. It w as the event which changed the Falklands crisis' into a war and provoked a terrible revenge on the British fleet by the Argenti- nian air force. It is still very hard to believe that the sinking of the Belgrano was necessary. The cruiser was 30 miles outside the British exclusion zone, and what is the point of an exclusion zone if a ship is not safe outside it? The Belgrano, we are told, was equipped with Exocet missiles and heading in the general direction of the British task force. The Conqueror had been shadowing it for more than 24 hours. Could it not have ,warned the Belgrano of the danger it was in if it did not turn back? Although it was probably the Conqueror's aim to cripple the cruiser rather than im- mediately sink it, the decision to press the button has an uncomfortably Israeli feel to it. Who took that decision.?
The front page of the Sunday Times also invited us to turn inside to an article on the Falklands by its poltical editor, Mr Hugo Young. This was an excellent article containing, however, one blood-curdling passage. This was Mr Young's conclusion, resulting from a conversation he had with an unnamed cabinet minister, that the British Government's peace efforts had been 'in part a charade'. This cabinet minister told Mr Young that `the purpose of the war cabinet's apparently intense search for peace had been, as he saw it, to make the -British understand why they had to go to war'. Britain's offer of a brief resumption of British administration on the Falklands, to be followed by a negotiated transfer of sovereignty, was made only late in the day, when the Argentinians were in no mood to talk. Argentina's intransgence, we were told, came then as 'a great relief'. I don't know if Mr Young's conclusion is fair or correct, but it is exceedingly damning. If true, it would show that Mrs Thatcher and her Government were more willing to risk
lives in the South Atlantic than the political consequences at home of a negotiated set- tlement.
T t has seemed this week as if half London
1 has gone on holiday. This will no doubt be widely deplored. In the new post- Falklands mood, people are supposed to want to travel to work at whatever personal inconvenience if they feel that they could be of any service to the nation. This is what they did during the last rail stoppage, but clearly they did not like it. This time they have decided to stay at home rather than spend hours in traffic jams. I do not blame them. They probably all need a holiday in any case after the strain of the Falklands war. Everybody needs holidays, preferably long and frequent ones, despite the efforts of the Institute of Directors and others to give a bad name to the idea of not working all the time. Many countries close down completely for the month of August, and it never seems to do them any harm.
Having read somewhere that Alison Lurie in a recent book about The Language of Clothes writes that untidiness 'in a formal urban setting instantly marks its wearer as a person of low status', I set out last week to buy a new suit. My status had begun to look very low indeed. I buy suits very seldom because it is an experience I dread. Nothing ever seems to fit exactly, and the business of trying things on is dispiriting, for orie is brought face to face with all one's physical deficiencies. This time I thought I might try to give myself a slightly brighter, more outgoing look by getting something that wasn't dark grey. But the attempt failed. If clothes say anything about their wearer, I shudder to think what they say about me.
There is a programme called Soapbox on one of the commercial radio stations which invites members of the public to bang on about their particular hobby-horses. The other day a friend of mine was listening to it and heard a man say that he wantd to talk about 'a delicate and often neglected topic'. The topic turned out to be `Gay Bereave- ment'. I cannot say that this is a subject I have studied, but I imagine that bereaved Gays feel just as unhappy as any other bereaved people. What is strange is the tendency to turn even the most universal forms of suffering into minority causes. It seems to be part of a conspiracy to divide people into little groups and make them all hate each other as much as possible.
rrhe editor of the Guardian's crossword I puzzle should be warned. If he doesn't pull his socks up, he will be losing sup- porters all over the place. A Spectator col- league recently became addicted to the Guardian crossword but abruptly gave it up. On two successive days, the word `Aldermaston' was the answer to one of the clues.
Alexander Chancellor
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