'A Spectator's Notebook

, The Home of Lost Causes is, by description, a i Sanitorium and ultimate cure resort of itself. 1 Oxford undergraduates of strange reputation and report usually contrive to do their c,ountry good service in the end. Consequently, I have never been able to whisper behind my hand that one man or another carried a Communist card in his youthful days and that throughout later life, because of this, he must he feared and watched.

r., Nor is there warranty for regarding a Leolmunist in politics or industry, whatever his upbringing, as necessarily a baleful and sinister strike-maker, like the schemer in the film, The Angry Silence. Just as Mr Jimmy Reid is not hell-bent to drive capitalism out of Glasgow shipyards altogether, so also Mr benis Healey's budget is not meant to write another chapter in Orwellism but to bring about a return to Mr Harold Wilson's bourgeois politics of 1964-70; in fact make us all rich again.

But if fate does step in and the budget Proves in the end to be all three stages of an fqlollo rocket driving towards stratospheric 'nflation then, if we love Mr Healey dearly, we rnust rush to rescue him. For there are undoubted ideological entanglements. Both

1 Ilitlerite and Leninist folk-lore, for example, !aY that the elimination of the middle class is ;Pdispensable if gauleiters and commissars are gain direct control of the proletariat, and ihat a collapsing monetary system will effectively reduce this class, and this class only, to dust and ashes. More measured is our own / l'aloYnard Keynes: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis Pf society than to debauch the currency. The Process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and !Idoes it in a way which no man in a million Is able to diagnose." i This last phrase is significant because it Ineans that about fifty people in this country ' PlaY fully comprehend at this very moment l What may be going to happen, what is likely to happen in spite of Mr Healey. Enough for a commando raid of some sort, I should have Ulought.

he mandarins it

lience or twice broke the rules of order in the °use of Commons by pointing to a box rc9ntaining top-brass civil servants and refer'0g to the contents as a row of grinning rpti,andarins. I am of the same opinion still. e°wer must corrupt any incorporated and exPanding body of men who are irremovable 03(cePt at pensionable age. They must come 1t finally in the argument in favour of "etnselves, their customary pursuits, their sIvelling influence, an accretion of their resvPensibilities. If nationalisation and its surhillanCe by some new sub-department of a 1:1111istry are proposed the civil servants must nd do assent to it without much fuss. If 1 r"enationalisation or some great transfer of I iesPonsibility to private industry, groups or andividuals is in contemplation they must and 15 have arriere-pensees, take their time, ta!_lake their heads and stall. How else do we 1,(Plain the desperately slow progress of Mr 't‘eath's first hundred days, the notorious Utirn and the final capitulation to collectivism? L,There is a financial wickedness in ' 'i'igh places for sure, some malignancy lurktilkg in the body politic, which decrees

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at when Conservatives are in office they 'erely administer the status quo, resting on

the treads of the staircase to socialist Utopia; but that when the Labour Party take their place the climb upwards to Valhalla is enthusiastically resumed. It would seem as if the political parties were puppets of a secret dynasty which has ruled since 1896 with old Sir William Harcourt as Court Favourite and his ilk following on' in steady succession.

Officer class

Has Mr David Dimbleby's Talk-in series on BBC1 been considered a success and are we to have it offered up again in the autumn? Many find that it suffers from a built-in defect. Except in the last of the series, of which more anon, Dimbleby and his flanking team are all plainly officers while the hundred or so members of the audience are equally plainly base, common and popular. I have never seen interrogations conducted in this way in civil or military courts, university lectures, sales promotion parades, news conferences or anywhere else. It must be thought that Mr Dimbleby is the best conductor of such an orchestra that can be found. His looks, intelligence and his bland and facile style are bound to get applause, and it does come, rather reluctantly, at the end. The trouble is that members of the orchestra, while deeply in tune and playing their own proper instruments. are playing them not in concert but in competition. The frenzied conducting of Mr Dimbleby is ample proof. A solo is cut off after a bar and a half. Big drum and violin are allowed to play antiphonally. Silence before the restatement of the main theme, any silence, is disallowed.

Mr Dimbleby selects highly-charged political and social issues. So does the House of Commons, but with a Manual of Procedure behind it 800 pages thick, and experience the

ryeearnst. Friday it was the aristocracy's samone i a n recent

turn. A duke, two marquesses and several earls were present. Also men of property in town and country. Facing them were the Maestro, Lord Shinwell — no less — and a Mr Roger Opie. The theme was the impact of the prospective wealth tax on stately homes, priceless furnishings, broad acres and much

money in the funds. Mr Opie said that if it was all carved up each of us would have £1,700. Some people, curiously not the coroneted, looked daggers at him through the back of his neck. Lord Shinwell had the best of it. He thought that the whole issue was an unholy fuss. For myself the aristos did protest too much. "How is it possible to sell two acres to pay the tax? I ask you that." Mr Opie smiled sadly. He had won the point.

Much the best line for these great ones is, "We're 'ere because we're 'ere because we're 'ere," and then to go away and tell the under-keepers to prepare for Mr Opie.

Windforce

"March goes out like a lion."

In Dorset this was not the case. Along with about thirty other independents I have run a home meteo. station for a number of years. The "highest windforce on the Beaufort scale for the last day of the month was 6 in 1971, and the average for the period was 3-4. It is easy to get the old tag the wrong way round and to look for strong winds at the beginning of the month. But Dorset won't have this either. The highest windforce was, again, 6 on March 1, 1960, and the average was 2-3. More lambs than lions in Dorset. And this goes for politics too.

Growing family .

Tributes are being paid to our commercial counsellors in foreign embassies for their close attention to the needs of itinerant British exporters. I have seen no references to the staffs of high commissioners in Commonwealth countries. Britain's overall trade deficit with the Commonwealth in 1973 was £654 millions, a figure 111 per cent worse than in 1972. All the major trading zones contributed to this except, gloriously, Australia and New Zealand where British exports rose by £100 million against imports by £80 million. Hardly surprisingly with the country the present victim of Mr Peter Hain's venom, our balance of trade with South Africa moved from positive to adverse. His disservice to exporters should be noticed.

It is right and natural for a mother country to wet-nurse her new Commonwealth children for a time, taking nearly all they want to sell us and sending them only what they desperately need. But the family grows up. The youngest Commonwealth child with any definable economy is getting on for thirty years of age. Something must be done.

The Dominions Office, before it was renamed, was chockful of rickety figures. One would like to think that our high commissioners now are not only eloquent on the subject of Britain's plight, when confronting their Prime Ministers, but are also capable of driving hard trade bargains.

Joy from Jim

Mr Callaghan's rugged, Bevinite views on TV from Luxembourg brought joy to my troubled heart. For the first time in these many dreary political years since the war it seemed that the tail of the Lion Couchant had twitched just a little. It seemed that our crawl into 'Europe with humility and self-depreciation had ceased. It seemed that Charles de Gaulle had been right after all. "England is insular. She is maritime. She is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions."

' Mr Callaghan is a chief petty officer's son. He himself served in the Royal Navy in the war. He represents in Parliament the docks area of Cardiff. There was a salty tang to his presence in Luxembourg. I wish him very well.