ANOTHER VOICE
The Sunday Times can't understand a Scoop when it sees one
AUBERON WAUGH
Whatever the reasons for this alarm, it is certainly not because I am a closet moder- ate who believes that the party must put on more of a caring face and promise to spend more money on 'inner cities' (as blacks are now mysteriously called) before it can hope to win the next election. The 'caring' face of Conservatism, as represented by Mr Peter Walker, for instance, or by Mr Francis Pym, is often even less pleasing than the allegedly uncaring face of Mr Norman Tebbit, whom I suspect of a deeper wetness than any of them. And poor Mrs Thatcher, of course, fails to charm in either role. My point is that after their no doubt triumphant Conference, the Conservatives should pipe down. The thought of exuberant young MPs and party activists trumpeting their new-found confi- dence through the land fills me with terror: the more we see of them, the less we like them. They should leave it to Labour and the Alliance to win the election for them.
The trouble with the present generation of Conservatives is not just that they are unattractive — I suspect they were always that — or ignorant and illiterate — so is nearly everybody else nowadays, thanks to Shirley and to the apparently spontaneous decision of most independent schools against the teaching of English grammar. The real trouble is that they get everything wrong. If my meaning is obscure, I would refer people to that flagship of the New Britain — and, since Frank Giles retired, a flagship of the New Conservatism — the Sunday Times.
Plainly word has gone out to all the Rons, Dons and Jons on the Sunday Times news desk that they must help the Con- servative Party. There are four qualities required of your Sunday Times reporter: compassion, caringness, know-how and expertise. All four must now be harnessed to the Conservative cause. So what do we get?
On Sunday, the front page announced an important story: Labour's link to apar- theid. The full details revealed inside by Mr Jon Craig were that Watford borough council, which apparently has a Labour majority, had made agreements with a development company over the last two years to build an indoor shopping complex. Last year the development company was taken over by an investment group, some of whose shares are held by a South African insurance company: 'The move by Watford borough council has angered anti- apartheid campaigners and provoked charges of hypocrisy from political oppo- nents,' writes Jon Craig. No doubt his report caused much happiness among the political planning group on the Sunday Times. That puts Labour in its place, does it not? Now anti-apartheid campaigners and inner cities to a man (and woman) will vote Conservative . . . .
On Sunday, I looked at that newspaper's Review Section, holding my nose, to see whether it had yet deigned to review my ten-year collection of Spectator articles, Another Voice (Sidgwick and Jackson, £9.95 — copies are available from the Alternative Bookshop, Langley Court, Co- vent Garden, WC2) published three weeks ago. It hadn't, of course. There were long reviews of M. V. Llosa's biography of a failed Peruvian political activist called Ale- jandro Mayta and of a biography of David Bowie by two Sunday Times hacks (the reviewer, called Mick Brown, is engaged on a life of Richard Branson). The three pages of book reviews culminated in a 1,500-word treatment by Michael Holroyd of Shaw's obviously unreadable diaries, cleaning tickets and grocery bills (Pennsyl- vania State University Press, 2 vols, 1,241 pp, £65) which started: 'Bernard Shaw's Diaries are not for you at all. They are for me.'
Leafing through the other pages of the Review Section I came to a large headline over an article in bold type with four- column photograph: 'Waugh zone'. In it, Susana Raby described some of the diffi- culties in making LWT's film of Scoop. She says that William Boyd, the scriptwriter, `had to excise Waugh's racist and anti- semitic sentiments, which may have been common currency in the 1930s but would offend modern sensibilities'. She quotes Boyd as saying: 'Some of the humour in the book is considered in very bad taste nowadays,' and adds her own comment that Waugh's racism is given ample scope in the novel'.
All this was news to me. True, the book makes jokes about Africa, but so does everybody who knows about the place. One of the most endearing things I ever heard about Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, is that he sleeps with a copy of Black Mischief by his bedside. As for Jews, I was not aware that they were even mentioned. Perhaps Wenlock Jakes, the highest paid journalist in America, is Jew- ish. Perhaps Mr Baldwin, the mysterious financier is, although this is left doubtful: he could equally well be Turkish, or Armenian, or Russian.
Mobil Oil's Herb Schmerz . . . needed a little persuading that the book could be acceptable to American audiences. For as well as taking swipes at blacks and Jew, the novel 'treads a fine line between satire and silliness'.
When I approved William Boyd as scriptwriter, I had no idea that he was going to produce a sanitised, ILEA- approved version, or that Mobil Oil's Herb Schmerz had any say in the matter. I have yet to see the script, but if it cuts out all jokes about Africa, I must plainly do my best to sabotage the enterprise. So far as I am aware there are no Jewish jokes in it, but if there are any, I must see that they are reinstated.
What shocks me somewhat is that the Sunday Times's Susana Raby, having un- earthed what seems to me a major scandal — that some half-witted and humourless Americans are threatening to destroy the only worthwhile novel which has ever been written about Fleet Street — makes no- thing of it. I do not suppose she has read the novel, or understands a word of it if she has. But she is the Sunday Times's choice to report on the matter, and the editorial staff of the Sunday Times accept her judgment that it is an anti-black and anti-Jewish tract. Perhaps they were influ- enced by their newspaper's claim, in the same issue, that Israel is now a major nuclear power. All I beg is that the modern Conservative Party pays no attention to this or any other drivel arising from the midst of its membership.
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