SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
For so shrewd a person, Lord Robens can utter the most surprising nonsense at times. Perhaps he is angling for an invitation to de- liver next year's Reith lectures. He was being extremely perverse the other day when he sounded off about the futility of Parliament and the desirability of running the country as 'Great Britain Limited,' with a 'damned good' chairman and board of directors. The anti- democratic bandwagon which is being trundled about at the moment is bound to attract some supporters, but it's strange to find Lord Robens among them. One would expect a man who might conceivably have become the leader of the Labour party to value represen- tative institutions more highly. Equally, one would not expect him to succumb to the old nonsense that 'businessmen' are somehow uniquely well equipped to run the economy, foreign affairs, defence and everything else.
The politicians have not exactly shone in recent times, it's true, but that ,can hardly be taken to mean that the state would have fared better if remodelled on the lines of a gigantic industrial enterprise. Even if Lord Robens be- lieves the recent political direction of the country amounts to 'a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by many men charged with tasks for which they are totally unfitted,' plus, for good measure, 'the taint of subterfuge and arrogance' and qotal lack of direction from above,' he can't quite use those words, since they have already been. appropriated. They were applied, I'm afraid, to one of his admired gigantic industrial enterprises. They come from the report of the Aberfan tribunal, in fact, and refer to the operations of the Coal Board under its 'damned good' chairman Lord Robens.
Seething and boiling
The real threat to democratic institutions (and it Is real) does not lie in the post-prandial fan- tasies of chairmen's oratory, however. It comes partly from obvious incompetence at the politi- cal level (Lord Robens has a point there, all right) and partly from the operations of the bureau- cratic bulldozer, of the kind which came under forceful all-party attack when the Lords de- bated Stansted on Monday. The message emerging plainly 'from this debate was that in a major piece of regional development, which will profoundly affect the lives of a large population and permanently transform a great stretch of the country, nothing remotely re- sembling decent democratic process has been honoured. It was a secret Whitehall job, and none of the wrigglings of the unlucky Govern- ment spokesmen could disguise that. No wonder Lord Butler, not a man given to extravagant language, talked of 'seething, boil- ing indignation' among the victims and their sympathisers; and no wonder cynicism about democratic institutions grows.
Incidentally, it was a crisp stroke of irony that had Mr Wedgwood Benn whizzing away enthusiastically over the Concorde (now spelt with an E for Expensive) at the very moment when the peers were growing increasingly furious over the airport. The official approach to the huge sums of money involved in these two enterprises is revealing. The Con- corde will no doubt ultimately absorb far more, even, than the £500 million of public money already allowed for (my share, I see, represents a contribution of roughly ten shillings a week for a whole year, although I don't remember being, asked for my approval) and at the end it will very probably prove a huge loss-maker. Win or lose, however, it is by its nature a short-term venture; yet the money flows effort- lessly and the technological brilliance it repre- sents is indulged and applauded. When it comes to planning a • new airport, however, which is an irrevocable transformation of our per- manent environment, the cheapest is ipso facto the best; and the' new techniques and ideas which would enable the thing to be built so that its din could be loosed harmlessly over the sea are casually dismissed from the argu- ment as impractical and even obscurantist.
-Promotion As I was writing unflatteringly about the Tories' present habits in choosing their parlia- mentary candidates the other week, I'm in- terested in ,the appointment of Mr Richard Sharpies as an extra vice-chairman of the party with responsibility for this important activity. He Certainly has the best of reasons for claim- ing some understanding of the mysterious ways of selection committees: he got himself adopted (without Central Office backing) for the safe 'seat of Sutton and Cheam within a few months of deciding to leave the army for politics in 1953:He had what currently appears to be the candidate's trump card up his sleeve, of course: he was at Eton.
He has other qualities, too, however, as Lord Montgomery (whose military assistant he was) can testify. In fact, Mr Sharpies figures (with- out being named) in a diverting little, exchange between Monty and Sir Winston Churchill in Lord Moran's memoirs. Monty told Churchill that someone on his staff (Sharpies, in ;fact) wanted to enter politics and he had been asked for a recommendation. 'In it I told them he had been used to soldiering and telling the truth, and would be out of his depth among politiCians, who ,do a lot of lying.' At this, Moran says, Ladi Churchill 'sprang at his throat,' rather to MOntgomeiy'S embarrassment. Sharplei, -I assume, can't have found himself too much out of his depth, since he held junior office and is nly to be one of the key men at Central Office.
In the red
The'' seems to be keeping up its pressure for an early increase in the licence fee. I wish it Would-stop it for a while. We are being ad- ViSed from all sides that a general cut in the standard of living is the only way tp salvation in these stern post-devaluation days, and the country is 'already pretty well saturated with radio and television. It's thus a singularly in- appropriate time to force us all to spend even more money on even more radio and television, ineall the enthusiasm for the wonders of the new colour service cannot alter that. Find- ing., an extra pound for the licence will be a serious matter for a great many people; the ththight that it is to finance &dour TV, pop radio' prograMmes, local radio and various other developments will not be-helpful. ,Ofie day, no doubt, colour television will become the normal thing, and I hope everyone enjoys it. But no one, would suffer from a slowing- down until the climate is more propitious.
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