tHE SPECtAtOR’S NOtES
CHARLES MOORE
All journalists, by our nature, tend to favour freedom of information; but it does not necessarily follow that Freedom of Information is a good thing. The behaviour of the political parties since FoI has confirmed the worst fears of civil servants. The motive for discovery of information has been purely malicious: one feels very sorry for the public employees burrowing away unwillingly for Alastair Campbell’s friends. More serious, though, is the effect on government business. If politicians and bureaucrats know that whatever they put on paper will be open to scrutiny and political manipulation while their careers are still in progress, they will not write down anything worth saying. The consequence will therefore be that FoI will prevent future generations discovering why governments did what they did. The hated ‘sofa government’ is an early symptom of this.
British coverage of the current behaviour of Sinn Fein/IRA seems to leave out the key factor — the attitude of people in the Irish Republic. Because the British government will not allow devolved administration in Northern Ireland without Sinn Fein participation, Sinn Fein has a stranglehold on the politics of the province. Even after the robbing of the Northern Bank, Gerry Adams is allowed to have meetings with our Prime Minister. Adams wants to use his Blair-given power to become the most important politician in the whole of Ireland. More and more Irish people now realise that this political rise of a criminal organisation threatens the Republic. There is even talk of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael amalgamating to counter the threat. And it is noted that Peter Robinson of the DUP seems unpleasantly ready to do a deal with Sinn Fein, since a division of the spoils upon sectarian lines would suit him very well. The next test will be the St Patrick’s Day celebrations at the White House in Washington that day. Will President Bush invite Adams and Martin McGuinness, as has happened in the past, or contrive at least to meet them at the Speaker’s breakfast? If so, why does the War against Terror not extend to the island of Ireland?
As the hunting ban approaches, I took a few days off to get round remoter bits of England and Wales and spend a few legal hours in the saddle. Somewhere in the west, we paused for a moment in a large wood. The huntsman took his horn from his lips and said, with a sly look, ‘You can only be banned once, can’t you?’ Then he introduced me to an interesting constitutional concept: ‘Everyone talks nowadays about being citizens. Citizens can be bound by their stupid laws if they want. I’m a British subject’, and with that the royalist Robin Hood led me off in a wild career, with hounds screaming, out of the wood, over a five-bar metal gate, and away. We ran for an hour and a half without a check. I liked his spirit so much that I didn’t have the heart to point out that the ban had been approved with the words ‘La Reine le veult’, even though we all know she didn’t.
It must be a sad time for the future King. Prince Charles loves hunting. For some reason, the press operates under the false belief that he hunts with the Beaufort, and so he has been able for years to go out unmolested with other packs. He went out again last week. After the ban, hunts will be reconstituted in order to remain as legal entities, but it will surely be too controversial for Prince Charles to be seen in the field. I was told once that when King George VI found that it was too wet to shoot at Sandringham, he would occasionally arrange to sneak off for a spot of illicit local cock-fighting. I doubt if the monarchy today is sufficiently secure to risk comparable civil disobedience.
As I leapt stone wall after stone wall in Derbyshire, falling on top of two of them to the cheers of delighted antis, I noticed several dew ponds, well restored and in use. Did I know, said my host, that dew ponds have nothing at all to do with dew, but are simply named after a Mr Dew, who invented them? I didn’t. Can Spectator readers confirm? Many have already pointed out how churlishly the run-up to the Iraqi elections was reported. If you compare the way the Western media covered the first full and fair elections in South Africa or in the former Iron Curtain countries, you will see exactly how myopic they were in Iraq. Another oddity of the coverage has been the absolute hostility to Ahmed Chalabi, the leading secular Shiite politician. Chalabi had been dismissed as an American stooge, and so when the Americans repudiated him for allegedly passing secrets to Iran, the antiwar media no longer knew how to treat him. As a result, they stopped talking about him. Now it seems likely that he will emerge from the elections at or near the top. Watch out for a new attempt to discredit him as Iraqi democracy starts to operate.
In Paris this week I entered into a conversation about French anti-Semitism. This fuss about Holocaust Day, said the woman next to me, it is ridiculous: ‘They keep saying we are so anti-Semitic, but it is not true. It is just that the Jews control the papers, and they are very clever and put anti-Semitism on the front page.’ I felt she had told me more than she intended about French attitudes on the subject.
There is always a need for a few simple guidelines which, if followed, make people’s lives happier. Here are a few. Never go into a European restaurant which displays photographs of its dishes. Never marry a war correspondent. Never read the Financial Times. Avoid anywhere described as ‘vibrant’. Don’t bother to read an article about someone who is ‘battling his demons’.
Beware also of organisations with logos using the present participle. There has been a row because the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has changed his force’s logo from an italicised to a simpler typeface to avoid discrimination against visually impaired people. The new, clearer script says ‘Metropolitan Police: Working together for a safer London’. This is a good ‘political-correctness-gone-mad’ story. But the real question is, why should organisations have these phrases at all? The participle implies a constant progress — ‘working’, ‘building’, ‘saving’, ‘keeping’ and it seems to be used chiefly by those organisations where such progress is invisible. It has none of the romance of a real motto, like ‘Per ardua ad astra’ or ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’ on the golden syrup tin.
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