SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
One of Rousseau's more absurd remarks was that the 'best' state was that in which the citi- zens spent as much time as possible thinking about public matters and as little as possible thinking about private matters. I suppose he would think that today we were advancing briskly towards utopia, even if we had some little distance still to go. The remark is at least useful as a reminder that great men can also be great asses. When Professor Bernard Williams quoted it in his Foundation Oration at Birkbeck College on Tuesday, he men- tioned another use: whether a person spon- taneously found the remark sympathetic or repulsive was, he thought, a good test of basic political attitudes. One of Rousseau's more absurd remarks was that the 'best' state was that in which the citi- zens spent as much time as possible thinking about public matters and as little as possible thinking about private matters. I suppose he would think that today we were advancing briskly towards utopia, even if we had some little distance still to go. The remark is at least useful as a reminder that great men can also be great asses. When Professor Bernard Williams quoted it in his Foundation Oration at Birkbeck College on Tuesday, he men- tioned another use: whether a person spon- taneously found the remark sympathetic or repulsive was, he thought, a good test of basic political attitudes.
He went on from this to argue the need for academic men to sacrifice, now, their prefer- ence for the 'private' over the 'public' in order to defend their institutions against the dangers threatening them. This was an astonishingly unusual thing for an academic to say in public, when one comes to think about it. Of course it is true that those who pursue their private interests of scholarship and learning within universities have an urgent duty to undertake the tedious work of dealing with the new yahoos. (That is a very loose paraphrase. of Professor Williams's delicate phraseology.) The remarkable thing is that it is so seldom said, or for that matter done.
The wonder to us outsiders, reading of the shouting down of guest speakers and all the other loutish (and worse) incidents, has been the apparent passivity of so many in a position to influence events. We can see that this fantasy of revolution will not bring peace to . Vietnam or Biafra or end oppression and hunger, but that it will bring new dangers to the universities. There are philistines outside as well as inside. The remarkable thing is how little the academics whose duty it is to keep both kinds at a distance have bestirred themselves to point out the dangers.
Go away
A sure sign of the approach of Christmas is a fresh outbreak of persecution of gipsies. For some reason I'm not clear about, the nearness of the festival of peace and good will seems to inspire local officials with a new zeal to drive away these inconvenient human intru- sions. Whether it's a violent battle for a patch of urban ground, or a docile evacuation of a rural site traditionally available to gipsies (and both have occurred in the past few days), the result is equally miserable: the comfortable, by employing their bureaucratic forces, boot out from their midst the poor and untidy. People who object tend to be called 'sentimen- tal,' one of the pseudo-realist's key words. I have lived near a gipsy encampment for too long to feel particularly sentimental on their account: they are rather scruffy, they toss litter about, and their habit of accumulating old or wrecked motor-cars for scrap creates eyesores which 'sentimental' lovers of the countryside find horrifying. Nevertheless, the fact remains that (contrary to what is believed in many a town hall) they are people and not, as our habit of gradually eliminating them from 'respectable' communities suggests, some species of unperson. Or perhaps the weakness
of their position is that they are only people. with few economic arguments to be advanced on their behalf. If they were motor-cars, some of the National Trust's 'inalienable' land could be commandeered to accommodate them, and if they were aeroplanes no amount of eyesore and din would be permitted to weigh against them. Being merely unprivileged human beings puts them at a grave disadvantage.
Comfort me with apples
Much superior merriment has been directed at that Member of Parliament who, wishing to draw attention to the problems of Kentish apple-growers, adopted the guileless tactic of munching an apple under Mr Speaker's dis. approving gaze. My own feelings, I must say, are wholly on the side of any friend of the apple. Of the economics of fruit-farming I know nothing, of the problems of fruit-farmers I am equally ignorant. But the apple is a king among fruits, and this country uniquely favoured in its ability to grow it. We may not enjoy many natural advantages today: our blend of soil and climate at least puts us ahead of the rest of the world in apple-growing. I've often wondered that the growers don't flatter their products, and our palates, more by sell- ing fine apples with the respect they deserve. Generally speaking, the best apples are grown by the person who intends to eat them; mass- production has tended to be the enemy of quality. But if growers sent to the market special consignments of D'Arcy Spice, or Egremont Russet, or Orleans Reinette, or the fabulous Calville Blanche, then we apple. addicts would seek them out and pay. for the privilege. Instead we are usually fobbed off with two or three dull, serviceable varieties, one of which is all too probably bright red in colour, and it is the farst rule of apple con- noisseurship that no decent apple wears a red skin. The delectable lesser-known varieties can scarcely ever be bought. I pass on the thought to that MP and his pomiferous constituents.
Rich man's table
It was evidently brave of Mrs Anne Kerr to test the rigours of British Rail's restaurant ser- vices in the way she did this week. Full of a high spirit of self-sacrifice, she ventured into a first-class dining-car without disclosing thin she was an MP. She wanted to see, she modestly explained afterwards, 'what the ordinary public had to put up with.' I set aside the unkind thought that it would be even braver. these days, for an me to disclose in a public place that she was in fact a member of our luckless legislature. The ordinary public in her constituency, long hardened no doubt by first-class railway travel, will not have been surprised that her experiences were painful enough to merit much space in the newspapers subsequently. But what she discovered, in fact. was only that the privileged aristocracy get rather special treatment. Our grandparents would have discovered the same thing (although the food would have been better). What has changed is the nature of the aristocracy Our grandparents would have found judges or land- owners feasting in protected seclusion. Mrs Kerr found professional footballers:
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