Notebook
I count myself privileged to be one of the very few people living today who have heard of the IFSWLCSWEC. Even I would not have heard of it if its existence had not beep drawn to my attention by the admirable Mrs June Lait, who teaches sociology at the University College in Swansea. The initials IFSWLCSWEC are used by people like Mrs Lait, myself and others in the know to refer, when we are in a hurry, to the International Federation of Social Workers' Liaison Committee of Social Workers in the European Community. This organisation, which is paid for out of Common Market funds, has existed in one form or another for over ten years and has something to do with the 'harmonisation' of social work training. What has it so far achieved? Who better to tell us than the secretary of the IFSWLCSWEC, Mr Terry Bamford, who was writing about it recently in the British social workers' house magazine, Social Work Today, 'Like many international gatherings', writes Mr Bamford, 'hard evidence of achievement is thin [sic). The committee is essentially a talking shop geared to exchanging views and Sharing problems, and has rarely galvanised itself into action.' The trouble, according to iMJ Bamford, is that while the u'SWLCSWEC has been trying to 'shift enrnmunity policies in the direction of human valueg, the EEC obstinatelyremains 'a device to operate late 20th century capitalism more effectively.' To which one can only reply that the EEC might operate late 20th century capitalism more effectivelY still if it were to expunge that portion of its budget devoted to the IFSWLCSWEC.
'This "coming out" business, you know, hardly ever does them any good'. This was Richard Ingrams talking in an interview With Ann Leslie of the Daily Mail. He was on the subject of homosexuals, and the phrase struck me because I was in the middle of reading a pamphlet published by the National Council for Civil Liberties, Gay Workers; Trade Unions and tt(e Law (foreword by Tony Berm). This pamphlet draws the same conclusion as Mr Ingrams. If a `gay' person wants to feel secure in his Job, it suggests, he has to pretend to be heterosexual: 'Being open and honest courts instant dismissal,' The evidence in the Pamphlet does not quite support such a statement. Broadly, there seem to be three Fategories of homosexual worker who may toe risking the sack. There is the selfc, ?nfessed homosexual whose job brings Finn into contact with children or young 1:1e°Ple. There is the person who has been convicted of a homosexual offence (e.g. importuning or gross indecency). And there is the employee whose flaunting of his or her sexual preference is seen as a potential threat to business (for example, the female clerk in the offices of an insurance broker whose lapel badge saying 'Lesbians Ignite' was thought likely to distress the firm's Arab customers). I do not have great sympathy with the last category, for it seems to me that nobody should expect the right to parade his sexual interests while at work. Those in the second category may sometimes have been victims of a discriminatory law unfairly applied, but one cannot blame an employer for feeling alarm if he finds that an employee has been convicted t of a sexual offence. It is the first category which presents the main problem and which highlights what I imagine to be the differneces between Mr Ingrams and the 'gay liberationists'. The 'gay rights' campaigners assume that the practice of homosexuality raises no moral questions at all and that the notion of 'corruption' of the young by example (accepting their claim that homosexuals are no more likely to be 'sexual predators' than anybody else) is therefore the fruit of irrational prejudice. The pamphlet goes so far as to suggest that 'positive role models for gay teenagers' may be 'one of the advantageous aspects of having openly gay teachers'. Daring stuff. But while even the law still regards homosexuality as something to be understood and tolerated rather than cheerfully accepted, let alone approved, industrial tribunals will continue to take the view that the mere fact of a person's openly proclaimed homosexuality, if he is for example a teacher, may be sufficient grounds for dismissal. And I wonder if that is so terribly wrong.
Whenever one meets a superior sort of person and asks him which daily newspaper he enjoys most, he inevitably replies 'the Financial Times' or, failing that, 'the International Herald Tribune'. I used to wonder why this was so. Both these newspapers would appear on the face of it to be rather more boring than any of their rivals. The Financial Times, as a matter of policy, ignores all those stories that could possibly provide entertainment for the general read er; the Herald Tribune, on the other hand, is lacking in personality, being little more than a digest of wire service reports and features which draws its opinions from the leader pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Yet many people cannot speak too highly of them. The explanation is, in fact, not hard to find. The reason why these two papers excite such admiration is that they are practically the only newspapers published in England which report the news without any apparent political bias or other form of embroidery. The principle that news should be strictly separate from comment is one which is nowadays very erratically observed. This principle, which applies as much to the selection as to the reporting of news, is a very good one because anybody who reads a daily newspaper of whatever political persuasion likes to feel that the information he is getting is both accurate and in the right perspective. My reason for saying all that is that it is relevant to Paul Johnson's recent remarks in these columns about The Times. He was criticising 'the penetration of the news columns by the Left and the manner in which politically activist reporters have paraded their opinions in the guise of facts'. If Mr Johnson is right about this, the moral is not that any reporter should be prevented from working on The Times or any other newspaper because of his political views. There is no reason why a person of strongly held political opinions should not be a reporter of irreproachable integrity. The moral is that old-fashioned standards of news reporting should be far more rigorously imposed.
The headquarters of the Greater London Council on the south bank of the Thames rather reminds me of the Vatican, not only because of the opulence of its interior and the tendency of its patriarch, Sir Horace Cutler, to make ex cathedra pronouncements on questions of morals, but also because it seems to be a law unto itself and has all the attitudes of an independent state. Work has just started on altering the entrance ofCounty Hall for the dubious purpose of erecting an elaborate security screen between the bureaucrats and the public they are paid to serve. Despite the fact that County Hall is a 'listed' building, the GLC has not applied to the Secretary of State for planning permission and has not even consulted its own staff of historic buildings experts. This is typical of the GLC. Already in the 1960's the entrance hall was spoiled; a false ceiling was put in and the great marble fireplaces, a gift of the Italian government before the First World War, were replaced by illuminated fish tanks. Now, to everyone's apparent perplexity, the fireplaces have disappeared completely and cannot be found. The mosaic floor is to remain concealed for the ludicrous reason that it displays the arms of the old London County Council which are different to those of the GLC,
Alexander Chancellor
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