DIARY
There have always been two sides to the Labour Party, the grim Puritans who would like to see pleasure severely rationed and the left-wing Cavaliers who would have it spread liberally throughout the community. In the days of the Attlee government, Nye Bevan drank champagne as he launched the health service, and Praise-God Stafford Cripps told us all to tighten our belts. The argument against Labour's threatened hunting ban isn't only that foxes kill half a million lambs a year, have no respect for animal rights and have to be put down, or that sudden death in the hunting field is, in fact, the most humane way of killing them. It is that any occupation, such as following a hunt, which 250,000 sensible and law- abiding people find enjoyable and exciting should not be turned into a criminal offence by any government. Macaulay said that the Puritans were against bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. The Puritan wing of the Labour Party can't stand the idea of people getting pleasure from sports it has never experienced or wished to understand. In fact a large num- ber of country men and women, sick of a tarnished and incompetent government, would be prepared to vote Labour but can't put up with being told what's good for them.
Isuppose it was the apparentl9 irre- sistible temptation of governments to inter- fere in private lives that led to the tremen- dous mess about 'basics'. I've thought of how the use of that dangerous word could be explained away. In Estuary English, a language which has been adopted by many politicians, the term is used to introduce most sentences, as in, 'Basically, at the end of the day, that type of word processor is not doing you any favours'; or, 'Basically, what we need here is a level playing field.' The words 'basics' and 'basically', it should be pointed out, have no meaning whatsoev- er, they are merely comforting sounds, like Yes, indeed' and 'To be quite honest'. I have another helpful suggestion for politi- cal speech-makers, having thought carefully about Mr Major's half-shouted monotone, Mr Howard's constant reference to the `peepelf and Mr Gummer's high-pitched outrage. Why don't they take a leaf out of Gerry Adams's book and have their words spoken by actors?
City centres, open spaces in front of Victorian town halls, around the pigeon- spattered statues of local worthies, were once places for meetings, demonstrations, carol singing, market trading and other signs of life. Now, it seems, many of them
JOHN MORTIMER
have been given over to private firms who have turned them into shopping malls with unbelievable rules which seem to fulfil the worst fears of Brave New World or Nineteen Eighty-Four. Courting couples are identi- fied on television screens and moved on by guards, seats are made uncomfortable as `the public doesn't like to see old people sitting down'. Market surveys can take place but no questions concerning religion or politics may be asked. Nothing, in fact, must destroy the reverent tranquillity of those who make their weekly pilgrimage to Marks & Spencer and Next. If this really is the bland world of the Nineties, in which no one must give offence or be offended and the old and infirm had better stay at home and not be noticed, pinching cars seems an irresistible release from the utter boredom of it all. Not all this week's discov- eries have been similarly depressing. I went to Bristol and saw the Woodside Centre, to which parents can take their handicapped and sometimes blind children for the day. Built in the grounds of a Victorian refor- matory, now empty, the rooms are like magical caves full of the most ingenious and beautiful devices which encourage almost helpless children to higher degrees of attention and movement. It's about the best use for modern technology I can imag- ine. There is an extraordinary ray of light which plays music, like that heard by Cal- iban, if you raise an arm or a leg in it: so children used to lying inert make a new effort to achieve these bewitching results. There's every kind of drum to bang, every sort of carillon of bells to ring, tubes of air that blow up coloured feathers, water-beds, pools and strings of changing lights. The place is financed by the charity Sense and the parents help with energetic fund-rais- ing. If the centre of Bristol is privatised these children must, of course, not be taken through it; they might cause distress in the gift shops, and sensitive customers might faint dead away among the greetings cards.
It seems a long time since we got back from Morocco and said goodbye to the sun- shine. Michael Codron, the impresario who's done so much to introduce new writ- ers, turned up in the hotel where we stayed. We were remembering old times and the days when Michael put on A Voyage Round My Father. After Alec Guinness left, the part of my father was taken by Michael Redgrave, then coming to the end of a dis- tinguished career. I knew he had had diffi- culty in remembering his lines and wore a sort of hearing aid into which they were repeated, together with stage directions, from the prompt corner. I didn't know what Michael told me in Morocco, that one night the hearing aid picked up messages from radio taxis. The great actor sat down on a sofa beside the actress who was playing my mother and said, loudly, impressively and to her complete astonishment, 'I must now proceed immediately to number four Flask Walk.'
certain air of apology and bravado
A
hangs over the Garrick Club, where some of those who run the place have made eccentric, perhaps ridiculous, use of the black balls. The process of election, or non- election, to clubs once produced consider- able pain and has never been a particularly tactful proceeding. Long ago, the theatrical producer Basil Dean, not an entirely popu- lar man in his profession, had a life-long ambition to belong to the Garrick. Gerald du Maurier, said to be a man of tact, was chosen to break the news of his failure to get elected. After a stunned silence Dean asked tremulously, 'Were there many black balls?', to which the tactful du Maurier replied, 'I don't know if you've ever seen sheep shit, Basil.' The best way of dealing with this disappointment is no doubt to behave as F.E. Smith did when blackballed by the Athenaeum; he made it a habit, when walking down Pall Mall, of going in there to pee. The members became exer- cised about this and deputed the club sec- retary to protest. On his next visit, emerg- ing from the gents, he was approached by a nervous man who said to the future Lord Chancellor, 'Mr Smith, I hope you realise that this is a private members' club."Oh, really?' Smith raised his eyebrows in mild and languid surprise. 'Is it that as well?'
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