Notebook
When it was once suggested by some eager young Conservative smear- monger that the Tories might discredit Lord
Palmerston by producing evidence of a fur- tive love affair, Disraeli made the famous reply: 'Palmerston is now seventy. If he could provide evidence of his potency in his electoral address, he'd sweep the country.'
Michael Foot is also seventy, or very nearly so; and Disraeli's message has not been lost on his supporters. In a last, desperate attempt to save the election for Labour, some people were putting it about last week that Mr Foot had been Shirley MacLaine's mystery lover. It was a brave but doomed endeavour, for Mr Foot conspicuously lacks any of the characteristics which Miss MacLaine attributes to her 'Gerry'. He is, for example, not at all bear-like. In fact he is one off the few Labour politicians who isn't, which has made the identification of 'Gerry' all the more difficult. For me, the one sad aspect of this otherwise entertain- ing election sideshow has been the discovery that Miss MacLaine is barmy. Until I read reports of her press conference in Dallas last Monday, I had always thought of her as a jolly good, jolly attractive, and often jolly funny acress. I had further assumed that she was a straightforward, extrovert, good-time girl. This illusion is now shat- tered. 'It is amazing that people are more concerned with my inbody experiences than my outerbody experiences,' she indignantly told journalists who were questioning her about 'Gerry'. (Was 'Gerry' an `inbody' or an `outerbody' experience, one wonders). `Gerry', she then revealed, was 'an extreme- ly intelligent man' and 'a human being capable of great leadership' but culpably lacking in 'spiritual dimensions'. Indeed, he mocked Miss MacLaine's attempts to find out who she had been in a previous life. Nevertheless, concluded Miss MacLaine, 'whoever is victorious on Thursday — elec- tion day — it will be Gerry who won.' Perhaps she is just trying to make fools of us all.
This Saturday, almost immediately after the election, the Queen's Birthday Honours List is to be published. I, of course, don't have the slightest idea who will be honoured. But those who in the past few weeks have signified in confidence their acceptance of medals or titles must have felt rather disturbed by Mrs Thatcher's treat- ment of Sir Robin Day on the famous Panorama interview. She claimed when she encountered Sir Robin again on Election Call last Tuesday that she had not intended to 'demote' him, although she had address- ed him as 'Mr Day' eight times. 'I was con- centrating so much on the questions that I
quite forgot,' she said. Is it possible to believe this explanation? It is certainly not very easy to do so. Sir Robin was knighted three and a half years ago, which is long enough for most people to have got used to his new status. It was furthermore under Mrs Thatcher's Government that the knighthood was conferred, so she at least ought to be able to remember it. Nor does Mrs Thatcher have a reputation of indif- ference to the honours system; there were even hints at one point that she might restore the hereditary peerage. My feeling is that she must, for whatever obscure reasons, have demoted Sir Robin deliberately. I hope so, for otherwise the recipients of honours this weekend could have grounds for anxiety. Labour, if it has won the election, is pledged in its manifesto to 'overhaul the outdated honours system'. If Mrs Thatcher doesn't care about honours either, then they are hardly worth receiving.
Idoubt if Mr Enoch Powell has ever so seriously misjudged the national mood as in his speech last week about the Common Market. It is his belief, so he said, that a majority of his fellow-countrymen share his own 'shame and indignation' at 'the enor- mity of the surrender of national liberty' which had occurred since Britain joined the EEC. 'All other questions of policy, inter- nal and external, are inferior and subor- dinate to this paramount question. All achievement — economic, cultural, military political — wells up out of the proud self- consicousness of independence. There is no success ahead, no memorable place in the world's annals, for a people who have pro- nounced themselves content to live in subordination.' So he urged voters to elect only those candidates — normally Labour candidates — who were pledged to take Bri- tain out of the EEC. While membership of the Common Market has certainly involved some limits on Britain's sovereignty, as it has on the sovereignty of the other member states, the argument that this issue was paramount in the election rang true to prac- tically nobody. People know that these limits are not in practice very great and that no European government — least of all one led by Mrs Thatcher — lies down with its paws in the air if real national interests are threatened by Brussels. They also know, because the Labour Party manifesto states it clearly, that one of the reasons why Labour wants us out of the EEC is because membership could hamper the implementa tion of its policies. To a majority of the electorate, which may indeed have little fondness for the Common Market, our membership is a far lesser evil than would be the imposition of state socialism on Bri- tain. Would Labour not achieve national liberty at the expense of the individual's? And what achievements — 'economic, cultural, military, political' — would be likely under Labour rule?
If Miss Shirley MacLaine is barmy, I have an ugly suspicion that Miss Melina Mer- couri may be barmy as well. This is not because she wants the Elgin Marbles back; any government with a supportable claim to somebody else's property is failing in its na- tional duty if it does not pursue it. It is Miss Mercouri's own attitude to the sculptures which gives cause for concern. When she visited the British Museum the other day, she stroked them and drooled over them in the most embarrassing fashion. They seem to work on her as some sort of drug. Her eyes shine wildly whenever she mentions them. The British Museum, after hiding its feelings for as long as it could, has finally cracked under the strain. On Tuesday the museum's Keeper of Greek and Roman At tiquities, Mr Brian Cook, laid into the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles which has been suPPor" ting Miss Mercouri's cause. He complained that the British Museum had been the 'target of an enormous propaganda c.a. paign' and that the Committee had pith121" ed a 'farrago of false accusations'. The _ issue will only come to a head after Britain 5 next government has settled into office to at which time Miss Mercouri is expectedes, make an official request for the sculptor much return. I do not personally mind verylnl if they go back to Greece, but we should be concede the principle that the Greeks hav right to them. Miss Mercouri must ee,, brought down to earth. Either the„Gr at Government should pay for whatever experts may decide to be their pre - I sent market value, or the Greeks sho °, think up some other satisfactory form °I e no dealcompensation. And there shouldb iosfbaeninyg osocrtnwfihscilaeteBdr.itish property in Greece
Alexander Chancellor
Previous page
