Another voice

Bitter pill

Auberon Waugh

An advertisement in last week's Spectator jolted my conscience by reminding me of the existence of a Catholic weekly, the Tablet, which I had scarcely seen for fifteen years, after cancelling my subscription in a fit of pique with the then editor, Mr Tom Burns. Before that I had read it religiously. Under the wise editorship of Douglas Woodruff, whose prodigious knowledge of history and world affairs illuminated every page, it shaped my entire outlook on politics, religion, foreign affairs and jour- nalism.

When Burns took over as editor in 1967 many feared the worst and, in my own case, these fears were soon realised. Where its attitude had been one of temperate, inform- ed conservatism, profoundly sceptical of innovation and fashionable movements of every sort, it eagerly embraced every fatuous novelty and seemed to be obsessed with its own involvement in the movement towards chaos and collapse.

Unlike other magazines travelling the same road at that time — Oz, Furry Freaks etc — it lacked any of the reckless euphoria which usually accompanies such illusions of liberation. Instead, as its opinions grew ever more bizarre, its tone became more pom- pous and didactic, like some prepschool master teaching the joys of free love by the same cruel methods formerly used to in- culcate Greek irregular verbs. Sensitive to criticisms of unorthodoxy, it grew more and more repressive in its acceptance of the new orthodoxy.

Woodruff's proudest claim was that the Tablet was required reading in every British embassy and legation abroad. My own break with the magazine came when I began to suspect — perhaps quite wrongly — that instead of instructing and informing the Foreign Office, it was itself accepting in- structions. An appalling article by Burns, written after being taken on a trip to Lagos during the Nigerian civil war, supported the English Labour government's supply of arms to the Federal side at a time when its blockade of Biafra was costing several thousand civilian lives a day, mostly of children. I had just returned from the area and sent a letter of reproof, which was rejected by Burns (who had previously com- plained about Catholics who sided with the Catholic lbos in Biafra) on the grounds of its intemperate tone. That was the end of my dealings with the Tablet. No doubt it would be easy to exaggerate the effect of anything written in an intellectual religious weekly, but the intention to influence events was undoubtedly there. It was the first intimation I had received, after sitting with heroic Holy Ghost missionaries inside

the beleaguered enclave, of what later became recognised under the general heading of 'decisions within the church'.

I do not know who reads the Tablet nowadays. Presumably a few Catholic schools and institutions still take it in, and even a few Catholic households, although I cannot believe many read it. It is not a great feature of the 'renewed' or charismatic Christians, in my experience, that they read very much. I see, having with some diffi- culty acquired a copy, that it is in the throes of an appeal, like the Morning Star, and hopes to survive in that way. I suppose I wish it well, but I do not think I can honest- ly suggest that many people who enjoy reading the Spectator will also enjoy reading the Tablet.

Burns has now left the editorship of the Tablet, although he remains as chairman. The new editor is called John Wilkins. Perhaps he is responsible for its infor- mative, provocative and entertaining leader on the Argentine elections which, after a certain amount of humming and hawing, concludes:

'It remains to be seen whether the new civilian authorities will have it in them to tackle the crucial issues which face Argen- tina and which cannot easily be ignored by the rest of the world ... If the Argenti- nians prove able to resolve these questions, this would have an important impact on neighbouring Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, and thus be important for the future stabili- ty of the region.'

The most 'controversial' item appears on the first page, being a 'Viewpoint' article by Monsignor Bruce Kent, giving his (presumably Christian) case against the deployment of Cruise missiles. I have no doubt at all that there is a good case to be made against the nuclear deterrent, whether from the Christian or secular point of view, but Mgr Kent seems mysteriously more con- cerned at present to make the case against Cruise missiles in particular, and to make it on grounds of safety rather than grounds of Christian belief. Shorn of its press-bashing rhetoric, Mgr Bruce Pilger's argument seems to be that nuclear balance is unneces- sary to the deterrent effect because of the existence of `over-kill', and Cruise missiles are dangerous because by preserving the op- tion of flexible response they make the nuclear deterrent more credible. The very accuracy of Cruise missiles appears objec- tionable to this thinker — 'for good old- fashioned deterrence such accuracy is quite unnecessary'. He also seems alarmed by America's 'new techniques of submarine detection' which, he says, 'move us all into a very dangerous new era'.

So much for Catholic thought on the great questions of the day. But the item which caused me the most surprise was a peculiarly vicious attack on my grand- father, Aubrey Herbert, by that unsus- pected Catholic thinker, David Pryce- Jones. Jones could never have met Aubrey, who died many years before he was born, nor can he have read anything about him previously, since nothing had been written before Margaret FitzHerbert's biography The Man Who Was Greenmantle (now reprinting with John Murray at f15.00), and the papers were not available. Nor, before this sudden apotheosis as a great Christian thinker, had Jones ever revealed that he was an expert on Balkan politics in the first quarter of this century.

Yet under the heading 'Well-heeled hero' he denounces Aubrey Herbert as a man whose 'experiences and knowledge were on- ly skin-deep. Under the challenge of facts, his patrician authority faded into prejudice and lack of perception. It was predictable that someone of his background would be crudely anti-French, anti-Jewish and speak of going into the street to "beat the Greeks".'

Predictable by whom? Only by Jones, I fear, who in addition to being half French- Jewish is obviously a philhellene. But I wonder if we have both read the same book. Of the the forty-odd people I know who have read it, all have received the impression of an amiable and easy-going cosmopolitan who, apart from the odd tasteless reference to a Jones or two on the London scene, went out of his way to befriend and protect Jews in remote corners of the world where he found them oppress- ed.

'Enthusiasm for Turks, as for Albanians, boiled down not to politics or a sense of history or even justice, but to aesthetics — he liked the look of them,' declares Jones. `Indulgence of the sort cost him nothing but time and money, and he had plenty of both.'

Not nearly as much of either, however, as little Mr Jones. Rather than walk from Baghdad to Damascus or fight brigands in the mountains of Albania, Jones has chosen to spend his time denouncing Edwardian gentlemen in a Catholic weekly. Perhaps there is a case to be made for preserving a magazine which will print such curiosities. If so, Jones may choose to con- tribute towards the £115,000 it apparentlY needs to survive. I do not think I will do so. There would seem to be a simple contradic- tion, nowadays, in its declared aim of providing 'authoritative opinion ... in the light of Christian principles and beliefs'. Perhaps there is an even sadder contradic- tion, too, in the idea of a Catholic intelli- gentsia who might read it.