Television
From above
Richard Ingrams
William Whitelaw was the man put forward by the Tories to expound their new policy on immigration, and one could see the wisdom of the move. Uncle Willie, surely, would be the very last man to indulge in any cynical vote-catching exercise in the months before the election. He chose to speak to Brian Walden of Weekend World from his home, seated in a comfy arm chair and with a sturdy-looking lamp at his side — a reassuring figure if ever there was.
I doubt if most people can follow, or are very interested in, the details of the immigration •debate — quotas, registers, male fiancés etc — which is what makes one suspicious of the Tories' recent activity on this front. In a situation where the electorate won't debate the issue rationally all they have to do is to create a vague impression that they are more concerned about reducing the number of immigrants than the other lot.
Last month I noticed how some politicians use the phrase 'British people' to mean, roughly, whites, observing en passant that Bryan Magee, who will be 'seen this week, incidentally, with the Grand Master of American Bores, Professor Ronald Dworkin — would not like the logic of such a usage. The apparently avuncular Whitelaw used another give-away expression when he described coloured immigrants in Britain as 'these people'. Funnily enough it was exactly the same phrase that had been used the previous evening by the ex-Foreign Office panjandrum Lord Hankey, who was giving his comments on Robert Vas's Orders from Above, a film, first shown in 1975, about our forcible repatriation of Russian prisoners at the end of the war. To Hankey the Russians, who included women and children forced into railway carriages at gun point were just 'these people'. Looking alarmingly smug, and without showing any signs of distress, he added that if a similar situation arose today the British government would do the same. Anyone worried by such a thought should note how alike are Anthony Eden and Dr David Owen.
'Substantial' damages were paid by the Observer last week to the freelance television director Ms Angela Pope who made the Panorama film on Faraday Comprehensive school, Ealing, shown by the BBC in March last year. This payment followed what was described in court as 'an unjustified attack' on Ms Pope's integrity by the award-winning television critic Clive James. According to her counsel, the newlY be-silked Peter Bowsher, Mr James 'ques", tioned her motives and sincerity and suggested that she had been purposefullY selective in her material and had been unscrupulous about the means she employed and was no respecter of truth. The Observer's lawyer added a grovel to the effect that they 'recognised her sincerOV and paid tribute to her undoubted talents as a director'.
I do not know, nor am I particularly Interested in, what precisely Clive Janes wrote about Ms Pope. I do, however, remember what I myself said at the time. This 'sincere and undoubtedly talented director' had produced what purported to be a 'fly-on-the-wall' picture of life in ita average comprehensive school. La Pope, we were told, had no axe to grind and had merely recorded things as she found theta. Doubts were cast by a scene showing Ova schoolgirls smoking in front of a tiled wall. It was claimed by at least one teacher that there was no such wall in the school and that therefore the scene must have been staged' I referred to this discrepancy in the Spectator in March 1977. Ms Pope did not corn plain. Perhaps now that her libel acnoll against the Observer has been settled and
her integrity acclaimed by all and sundrY she will at last provide an answer to the Tiled Wall Mystery.
Previous page
