SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Soon after Mr Crossman had been tormented by his own backbenchers for the better part of an hour in the Commons last week (on the mysteriously inflammatory subject of decimal currency), a senior Member remarked that in two decades he had never seen a Front Bench politician so hardly used by his own nominal supporters. Since that episode followed swiftly on the Government's near-defeat on defence, I can't see why Mr Wilson's onslaught upon his mutinous troops has aroused so much surprise.
What is surprising is that, having decided to call his men to order, Mr Wilson should have done so in so clumsy and embittering a manner. This may be a nation of besotted dog-lovers, but he could never hope to compare MPS to vicious dogs, and threaten to take away their licences, without causing uproar. It's a sad truth. however, that the language of political controversy is deteriorating, and this was per- haps only one more example, as was Mr Wilson's compression of his message to his party into the words, 'Watch it!'
I do not quite know why political utterances should tend so often to be either uncouth or turgid: most legislators of all parties are expen- sively educated, after all. Both sides are guilty; and the opposition, who ought to set great im- portance on the style with which they do their work, might profit by aspiring to a new level of clarity and orderliness in expression.
Example
The Tories' tactics have shown something of a gain in subtlety during these troublesome days for the Government. It was wise of them to keep their big guns masked and let the Labour battle continue uninterrupted. Mr Heath must have found it hard to believe he was awake when, at one heated moment, he found himself being cheered on from the Labour benches. However, be resisted the temptation to plunge into the melee, and so help to steady the Labour ranks. Perhaps the most unreal moment for the opposition came when Mr Crossman, beset by his own men, appealed to them to conduct the quarrel in private, not in the House, and begged them to 'watch the Tories; they do not do it here.' After so many fractious and disunited years, the Tories can never have expected to hear again such a compliment to their discretion in settling internal disagreements.
Some may have remembered the relative courtesy with which the Tory defence rebels of the 1930s were treated by their party leaders. They were equally obstreperous, and roughly as numerous, and they were led by Winston Churchill. I am not sure whether the change indicates a decline in manners, or is a sign that the parties are different after all
Green light
Ever since Lord Beeching first swung his axe there have been occasional stories of local resistance to the threatened closure of some railway branch line. I have observed the closing of one such line at first hand, and was much struck by the extent of the indignation aroused. At times one might have thought that a branch line was an indispensable bulwark of freedom and decency. But at the heart of the opposition there was as usual an angry sus- picion that, with a less antiquated approach to the matter by the railway authorities, the line might be made to pay.
It seems to me that this week, in a quiet but effective way, the railways have conceded the truth of a great deal of what their local critics have maintained. They have embarked upon an entirely new technique of local line management, starting in East Anglia but with the intention of developing it across the coun- try later. It amounts to doing what people have for years been saying ought to be done—that is, depriving the little stations of their Vic- torian establishment of ticket collectors, book- ing clerks, porters, and venerable men engaged in trimming oil lamps. They become like bus stops, unmanned. You buy your ticket from the guard as you board the train. In some cases the savings on operating costs amount to the staggering figure of 90 per cent.
No doubt some at least of the now defunct branch lines could have been kept alive by this treatment, but it's too late now, of course. Why wasn't it done earlier? Pointless to ask, I suppose. Why was it that liner trains got the green light only the other day after years of frustrated haggling'?
Election
It is rather disappointing that the Liberals are electing a new leader for their peers by a simple majority system, unrefined by favourite Liberal devices like proportional representation or transferred votes. As I write, Lord Byers is thought to be the front runner, but the Liberal peers are an inscrutable body: out of something like fifty, fewer than half are well known at the House, so their views are obscure. The strange thing is that Lord Gladwyn seems to be out in the cold. Although one of the newest Liberal peers, he is surely one of the most dis- tinguished.
Hero
The newly acquired Nelson portrait was clearly the star of the show when I looked in at the National Portrait Gallery this week. It well conveys the characteristics which made Nelson the perfect type of national hero: it shows him plainly as brave, handsome, successful, and with enough human weakness to make him a natural object of lesser persons' affection. He looks from the canvas with far-ranging gaze; there are lines of care on his fine features (also the scar over his blind right eye which he got at the Nile). The group standing in- terestedly before this romantic image, repre- sent, I suppose, the last phase of a cult of Nelson which flourished with unabated vigour for a century or more after his death, and which still provides much occupation for dealers in antique objects of many kinds. The cult flourished partly because the fruits of Nelson's victories flourished : the supremacy at sea which he won held until the First World War. I trust the visitors to the National Por- trait Gallery reflect properly upon the transience of such things and the improbability of leaving so long-lasting a mark upon history today. But in any case it is a very fine portrait.
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