Politics
The ponting of Margaret
Ponting' deserves to become a word in our language. Like many of our best words, it will be somewhat ambiguous and used in different ways by different people. `I don't like the look of that chap,' a boss will say of a disaffected employee, 'I bet he'll soon be ponting me.' I knew the risks involved,' the employee will say after- wards, tut there are times when ponting is the clear duty of any self-respecting citizen.' There will never be agreement between he who ponts and he who is ponted; for the act of ponting involves the exercise of private conscience in a way which the victim cannot possibly respect.
The motives of the original Ponting Clive of Islington — are not easy to disentangle. They were not straightfor- wardly political. Mr Ponting was at pains to point out that he supported the sending of the Task Force and the sinking of the Belgrano: he did not agree with Mr Dalyell's claim that the true datings of the sighting of the Argentine ship showed that the sinking. had been ordered to prevent the Peruvian peace proposals from suc- ceeding. If this is so, the discrepancy between the true date and that mistakenly given by Sir John Nott to the House of Commons does not seem very important. Mr Ponting's argument is that the ministers involved were behaving wrongly in failing to correct Sir John's original mistake. This is true, but it is still puzzling why Mr Ponting should have thought it so impor- tant a wrong that it cancelled all his normal obligations as a civil servant. Surely he had been a civil servant long enough to have witnessed and connived at many other attempts to be less than frank with the House of Commons?
One is led to suspect that Mr Ponting's motives may have had more to do with his `environment' than with the pure workings of a nice conscience. Mr Ponting is a member of the SDP and of the Buddhist Society, although he said in court that this latter fact made no difference to his '100 per cent support' for the Task Force. These beliefs, allied with the effects of living in Islington, give the context in which he decided to act as he did. Add the reports that Mr Ponting is a solitary fellow, who resents having attended Reading Univer- sity and not Oxford or Cambridge, and you have an explanation of this man with staring eyes, pursed lips and prissy manner.
To such a person, the idea of conscience is always so fevered that it can be pressed into the service of personal pique quite unselfconsciously. A Ponting's notion of his own duty can appear extremely high because he has no qualms about making it up as he goes along. So, for instance, Mr Ponting first sent the documents under plain cover, and, when inquiries were made, scarcely owned up with the readi- ness which schoolboy, let alone adult honour demands. He had entered the exciting world of leaks, but he did not believe that this should disqualify him from personal advancement. He did not announce his intention to Mr Heseltine, then walk calmly up Whitehall and present the documents to the chairman of the Select Committee. He ran them off on the department photocopier (a classic piece of civil service meanness that, when if he had paid for an outside photocopier, he would not have been detected), and slipped them off to Mr Tam Dalyell. Only when he is caught does Mr Ponting start to have an inflexible conscience and an unswerving moral duty. No, I do not think that Mr Ponting is the 'Victorian gentleman' that Mr Peter Hennessey, the Whitehall- Watcher, has dubbed him.
So this is not one of those difficult cases where the normal rules of law come up against a man of transparent integrity and we all feel ashamed. Mr Ponting is not a bona fide conscientious objector, but an oddball with that simultaneously moralistic and devious turn of mind with which several scandals involving government em- ployees have made us familiar.
The jury which tried Mr Ponting was similarly moralistic and devious. It was not invited to decide whether the Official Secrets Act was a bad thing, or whether Mr Ponting had honourable motives, but. whether he broke the Act. It ignored that invitation, and by doing so earned paeans of praise for the sturdy independence of our jury system. But the jury was acting politically which, in the context of law, is the opposite of independently. If juries decide on the basis of what they happen to like or dislike, they do nothing to protect the citizen. The citizen is often the victim of the whim of the powerful. The point about law is that it gives him justice, a sure remedy against whim, whether favourable to him or not.
Part of the argument for the new sport of ponting is that duty to the state involves a duty to MPs. If this is so, it is hard to see why we have a government at all. A government depends upon the support of Parliament, and is staffed from it, but it is a distinct entity. Mr Ponting and all other civil servants are responsible to that dis- tinct entity. It is not they, but the Govern- ment itself which is responsible to Parlia- ment, to which it must answer truthfully. MPs cannot criticise and restrain the Gov- ernment if they are drawn into all its operations. If they have all the privileges of government, they cannot act as tribunes of the people; so Mr Ponting did not put himself on a higher moral level by posting his secrets to Mr Dalyell rather than the editor of the Guardian. Given all this, one would have thought that the Government had quite a case. But it doesn't. The flihisy Mr Ponting has managed to provoke the most humiliating crisis of Mrs Thatcher's second administra- tion. The apparent cause is the deceit of the House of Commons, but not so much the depth and importance of the deceit — which are not very great — as the manner in which the whole affair has been eon' ducted. The Government has contrived to look arrogant, towardly and petulant. It was so sure that it was right to sink the Belgrano that it dismissed questions about it. It was so frightened of revealing minor inconsistencies in its public statements on the subject that it preferred errors to stand, rather than admit to them. It was so infuriated by leaks that it allowed a cal, which would highlight all the things which it had been trying to conceal to go to court. As with all cover-ups, the thing covered quickly becomes less important than the behaviour of those who have been de- tected. And in this case, much of the fun derives from the fact that it is Mr Heseltine and Mrs Thatcher who appear to have been found out. It is hard to believe that Mr Peter Walker would be so persecuted lf one of his more extravagant interpretations of the facts were disclosed by a Ponting at the Department of Energy, since Mr Wel- ker is honoured as a rebel. The pleasure here is in watching the goody-goodies behaving like the scurvy politicians one has always suspected them to be. This pleasure seems to have turned h41. Neil Kinnock's head. At Tuesday's Ques- tions, he saved Mrs Thatcher. Instead of making her twist and turn about what had been said to the Commons, he accused her of lying then and there about the decision to prosecute. As any journalist knows, the onus of proof is on the libeller, and Mr Kinnock does not seem to.have any proof' In an instant, Mrs Thatcher had her whole party behind her and a perfect distraction from the main issue. With characteristic gusto, she dashed off letters to Mr Kinnock 4 all about honour, trust etc. Between 3.1-' and 3.20 p.m., she regained the advantage. One hopes that the debate on Monde will return to the question of what the House of Commons was told. If Messrs. Heseltine and Stanley did mislead, as 1,5 alleged, there is no reason why they should not resign. (It would be quite unfair if 141; Stanley went and Mr Heseltine stayed.) don't suppose they will. But whether they do or not, Mr Heseltine's career will be set back. He is the third pretender to Mrs Thatcher's throne in the past 18 months to find his path impeded by an extraordinary and unforeseen obstacle.
Charles Moore..
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