Notebook
When I met Ian Smith a fortnight ago he said that Lonrho had switched its financial support from the Patriotic Front leader Joshua Nkomo to Bishop Muzorewa.
This may explain why 'Tiny' Rowland, the managing director of Lonrho, has chosen this time to send an angry open letter to President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, complaining about his expropriation of Lonrho assets. In the view of Lonrho, the British government, Kenya and possibly Zambia, the recalcitrant Nyerere remains the only person who could shipwreck the present Lancaster House talks on Zimbabwe and still prevent a peaceful settlement. Kenya, now preparing for a general election, is one of the few African countries unfavourable to the Marxist policies of the Patriotic Front. Moreover, many prominent Kenyans are share-holders in Lonrho's companies in Tanzania. Lonrho also backed ex-president Lule of Uganda who was first appointed and then deposed by Nyercre. It is symbolic of the decline of England as an influence in foreign affairs that decisions in Africa are now, taken by a private business enterprise. Incidentally, Joshua Nkomo is said to have been much amused by my paragraph two weeks ago quoting Ian Smith as saying that in a general election the Patriotic Front 'would walk it'. Apparently Nkomo said: 'Smith knows as well as I do that in a general election, the Bishop (Muzorewa) would walk it'.
Sir Alec Guinness is to be heard on commercial radio advertising the return of The Times. The great actor never normally makes advertisements, and on this occasion he has refused to accept any fee for himself, requesting that it should be given instead to charity. It is an illustration of the unique sentimentality which surrounds The Times, and to which I am not immune. How will the paper fare when it comes back next week? It has been doing some research which indicates that some 84 per cent of its former readers, who at the time of closure numbered about 300,000, will return to it Immediately. But in addition, it is claimed that 24 per cent of the country's upper Middle and middle-class newspaper readers —those in the AB category —want to give it a try for the first time. This means that The Ines could initially have another halfmillion potential readers, though it would not be able to print enough copies to satisfy such demand. During the paper's absence. 140,000 of its former readers have gone to the Daily Telegraph, 120,000 to.the Guardian and 20,000 to the Financial Times. The most satisfied appear to be those who have gone to the Financial Times. Neither the Telegraph nor the Guardian have managed to content the majority of their new recruits. So the outlook for The Times — provided it can make its new production agreements stick — is more promising than for a long time.
Meanwhile, Sir James Goldsmith has also been doing some research. His new magazine Now! is, he says, currently selling between 260,000 and 270,000 copies a week, including 15,000 copies abroad. This, if correct, is very impressive. Sir James Was holding forth at a dinner given by the Institute of Journalists, at which he was acclaimed rather like a conquering hero. His obvious popularity with the IOJ members a rather mystifying collection of people —suffered not at all when he blamed the domination of Fleet Street by 'a handful of large groups' for the 'absurdly low salaries' paid to journalists. Many of these groups, he said, had 'the sickly sweet stench of the failing years of the Ottoman empire' — a statement which displeased Mr Larry Lamb of the Sun, who clearly does not see Mr Rupert Murdoch's group in these terms. Sir James now presents himself as a champion of press freedom, but he will need to refine his arguments a little if he is to be taken seriously in this role.
Lord Gnome had better look to his laurels. The 'curse' of the Canard Enchaine appears an altogether more potent weapon than that of the mythical proprietor of Private Eye. No prospective prime minister of Great Britain has yet been reduced to suicide by allegations against him in Private Eye. You may say — and you would be right — that there is nothing here for the Canard to be proud of, for the death of M Robert Boutin was a deeply regrettable event, But it was strange to read in the newspapers that, because of his death, the Canard's 'Credibility' has been under attack in Paris. Suicide, SO it was claimed, is regarded in France as evidence of a person's innocence. If this is so, then the French are even more different from the English than I had already imagined. Despite this sad outcome, however, it is in order to congratulate the Canard on its two recent scoops: M. Boulin's property deal and — much more impressive — the affair of Giscard and Bokassa'.s diamonds. The latter, in particular, was a first-class story which deserved to unsettle the administration. And it would seem that in France — where the mess in general is more servile to government than it is here — the Canard's role is even more important than is that of Private Eye in England, We pointed out in our leading article last week that one of the advantages of membership of the Common Market was that it provides an opportunity for Ministers of Agriculture to make themselves into popular heroes. There is another advantage. It gives us a chance to indulge in Francophobia without actually having to fight the French. Baiting the French is historically important to British national selfesteem. If we Were not in the Common Market, opportunities for indulging in this sport would be limited. The 'Iamb war' has come to the rescue. That said, the whole thing is, of course, a farce. Mr Finn Gundelach, the Common Market's Farm Commissioner, has this week given France another ten days in which to lift its ban on imports of British lamb, as required by the European Court. He hopes that — if the showdown can be sufficiently delayed — the British lambing season mayhave come to an end., enabling the French to submit humbly to European law and re-open its borders to lamb imports in the knowledge that very little lamb will be on offer. France can then re-impose the ban at the appropriate time next year. Nobody believes for a moment that France will otherwise submit.
have bought no fireworks this year, but am assured by a colleague who has done so that purchasing fireworks in England today is an experience similar to buying contraceptives in Ireland. An atmosphere of acute shiftiness hangs over the whole transaction. Shopkeepers, if they • carry fireworks at all, view their would-be customers with strong disapproval, assuming that they cannot possibly be up to any good, Mrs Oppenheim must bear some of the responsibility for this state of affairs. She has made it clear that unless many fewer people turn out to have injured themselves this Guy Fawkes Day than the 933 who did so last year, she will consider legislation aimed at reducing the casualties. Already, the government has spent many thousands of pounds on an extremely displeasing advertising campaign, including one poster which shows a person swathed in bandages over the caption:1 had the cutest little baby face.' I cannot help wondering why this government, which is committed not only to cost-cutting but also to the principle that we should be allowed to kill or maim ourselves if we so choose, should have wanted to spend money on this distasteful campaign.
I hope that the last-minute discussions in the Cabinet on the BBC's threatened foreign language services may end in a reprieve for some, if not all of them. The services to Western Europe are not as silly as they might appear, Take the Italian service, for example. This has a regular audience of half a million people, rising to 1,500,000 in times of crisis. Italy has the biggest Communist party in the West. It is accordingly bombarded with Italian-language broadcasts from the Communist world —24 hours a week from Russia, 83 hours from the other Warsaw Pact countries, 24i hours from Albania, 14 hours from China. This amounts to some 145 hours a week from the Communist countries as opposed to seven hours a week from Great Britain, the only non-Communist country apart from Italy itself to broadcast in Italian.
Alexander Chancellor
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