SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Politicians don't much favour historical allu- sions these days, presumably because they judge their audience to be unresponsive to them; and the fact that Mr lain Macleod appeared to escape unscathed after making a singularly rash one the other day seems to sup- port the assumption. No one in his audience, evidently, rose to challenge him when he accused Mr Enoch Powell of seeking to restore a society `which has not existed since the Middle Ages'; no one subsequently, I think, has commented on this extraordinary suggestion, that the Powellite dream-world where market forces settle everything is merely an eccentric revival of the lost society of mediaeval times. Yet what, in reality, were the characteristics of the mediaeval economy? They were a severe control of the workers; a permanent credit squeeze caused by the prohibitions upon usury; the carving-up of markets and profits by means of monopolies and restrictive prac- tices; the constant badgering of businessmen by doctrinaires maintaining that profit was sin- ful; and endless attempts by governments to impose, through the concepts of the 'just price' and the lust wage,' an incomes- and price- control policy. Powellite free-for-all? Mr Powell, I feel sure, would go to the stake rather than subscribe to the central mediaeval economic doctrine of the 'just price,' which innumerable forerunners of Mr Aubrey Jones argued about for centuries. The fixing of 'just' rates of pay was seen in 1468 as in 1968 as a problem in applied ethics, not a statistical or market procedure; and (to quote the late Sir John Clapham) it was 'somewhat helplessly solved as a rule by saying that any recognised customary price, or any price decreed by a com- petent political authority, was just.' (My italics.) I can hear Mr Powell protesting already that his wish is not to return us to the Middle Ages, but rather to complete our emergence from them.
Every man's price
What does link us with the Middle Ages in economic matters is the fact that confusion over the morality involved remains widespread. It was interesting to see this week that Mr Bernard Hollowood, the retiring editor of Punch (and an economist!), was described as `egalitarian' in one newspaper because he apparently said that `no man's worth twenty times another man—it's impossible.' A lot of waffle about inequalities of income is founded on similarly muddled thinking. If the statement is rephrased as, `no man performs a service worth twenty times the service performed by any other man—it's impossible,' then the proposition is revealed for the nonsense it is. To speak when putting a value on a service as if one were putting a value on a man is unthinkingly to use the language of serfdom, yet it's done every day.
Make life wetter
My heart sank when the Conservatives' new policy document, peremptorily entitled - Make Life Better, reached me. The colour photo- graph of an Average Family on the cover, reminiscent of many a life-insurance or washing-machine brochure, warned unmistak- ably of the ad-man's approach to be encoun- tered within. Why do I find so much that is lowering to the spirit about this sort of docu- ment? I detest the filleted, over-simplified language, the infantile flight from grammar; I dislike the evident panic at the thought of permitting a sentence to stretch its muscles beyond a line or two, and the consequent readi- ness to chop_up any idea into separated frag- ments; I object to the implicit supposition that readers will be semi-literate nitwits who would find a leading article in the Daily Mirror stiff going (and I believe, moreover, that it's a sup- position without justification, for such people simply won't read the document however it is written). I wonder that the Tory party does not ask itself why, among all the -things it is supposed to be dedicated to conserving, the quality of political discourse finds no place.
A case of blackmail
Mrs Helen Vlachos has a characteristically out- spoken article on the Greek plebiscite and its aftermath on page 502 of this issue. In Athens on Monday her husband, Captain Constantine Loundras, a retired naval officer, who stayed behind when she came to London, was sen- tenced to eighteen months' imprisonment by a. court martial for illegally possessing a revolver and ammunition (his service revolver which had been in his possession since he retired from the Navy). There are two points of special note about the trial and sentencing of Captain Loundras. One is that two other men, accused of the same offence at the same time, were each given brief suspended sentences. The other is that the eighteen-months sentence awarded to Captain Loundras was three times as severe as that asked for by the public prosecutor. The object clearly is to blackmail Mrs Vlachos, a devastating critic of the Greek regime, into silence. This affair is, in fact, one more illus- tration, and a Particularly ugly one, of why no amount of public relations whitewash can dis- guise the brutal nature of the colonels' methods.
All aboard
I enjoy the boggling solemnity surrounding Mr Wilson's chats (sorry, confrontations) with Mr Ian Smith. The master-word `summit' is much bandied; the 'leader of the rebel regime' is in- termittently promoted to `Premier Ian Smith'; sober accounts of favourable portents (`both should find the weather ideal for a spot of swimming') are urgently transmitted to Lon- don. Every detail is weighed. The choice of the "Fearless" represents a compromise between remaining at sea and having the talks ashore,' so I read : well, it would do, I suppose, since the vessel is moored alongside the quay: Poor old Tories, having to see their conference com- pete with events of such quaking moment! The fact is, though, that they have been luckier than they might suppose. Mr Wilson would have sailed the `Fearless' all the way from Gibraltar to our other naval base at Londonderry, there to arrange a triple summit including Captain O'Neill, if only he had thought of the idea. Full and frank talks could have taken place on sub- jects of mutual interest, such as keeping unco- operative elements off the voting register, and how to end unsatisfactory political situations in weeks rather than months. Next year, perhaps?
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