SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Listening to a tape-recording of the yahoos of Oxford shouting down Michael Stewart was a chilling experience, which made me wonder how many public meetings during the coming election will be broken up in similar fashion. Like most other amenities of a free society, the tradition of holding public meetings depends for its continuance upon general acceptance. There now exists, however, a group of people who openly re- ject the tradition.
In recent days they have successfully silenced a Labour Foreign Secretary and a Conservative tup—a double victory for these new fascists of the self-styled 'revolutionary left'. If this unappetising bunch is sufficiently numerous, as it very probably is, then its members will be able to express their poli- tical philosophy by breaking up Labour and Tory meetings at will throughout the election campaign. Public meetings are not the most important means of communication; nevertheless, something will have to be done to protect the interests of the great majority who still believe in free speech.
Time to talk
A great responsibility will be placed upon press and television. Both, I trust, will be too sensible to play the new fascists' game by publicising the disruption to the exclu- sion of the political arguments they are seek- ing to suppress. Whenever a leading poli- tician is shouted down the incident will have to be reported, of course; but it would be a good hygienic rule always to accompany the report with some idea of what the man would have said if allowed to. This would deprive the gangs of their shoddy victory.
So far as television is concerned, I gather there is already some grumbling among the TV professionals at the amount of party political broadcasting that is going to encroach upon their preserves. But I would like to see the politicians given freer access to the screen than ever before during an election campaign—it's only two or three weeks every four years or so, after all. And I do not mean that they should be put through the sort of bear-baiting interroga- tion which is supposed to make 'good tele- vision' and which Mr Crossman soundly characterised as 'trivialising'. They should simply be given plenty of time in front of the cameras to bore, charm, amuse, inspire or educate the public, according to their quali- ties and their abilities. They should, in other words, be permitted to catch up with the fact that television has gone far towards replacing the public meeting, and not only because the latter is vulnerable to yahoo tactics. The past mistake has been to transmit party political broadcasting on all channels simultaneously. There is no good reason why politicians shouldn't still have to compete with other entertainments, just as they always have had to when talking to audiences in schoolrooms or town halls.
Untrodden ways
This, I am informed by the Countryside Commission, is National Footpath Week. A curious new festival to add to the calen- dar, and not one which will be welcomed by farmers, landowners, or other rural pro- prietors. The country footpath, indeed, is a source of much ill-feeling—sadly, in view of its essentially virtuous nature. Land- owners frequently resent the existence of public 'rights' to walk across their property; farmers begrudge the sacrifice of a tiny per- centage of their crop to provide a narrow strip of land for foot travellers. Hence the silent (or usually silent) contests which occur. First a farmer ploughs up a path; then walkers determinedly tread a new way across his crop; the process is repeated for a few seasons, while the farmer hopes that, since walking across ploughed land is un- comfortable, the footpath users will lose heart. They often do, especially when he throws in reserves in the form of barbed wire or even electrified fencing. Then an- other of the people's dwindling rights has vanished.
I sympathise with the landowners and farmers but the preservation of paths is far more important than the preservation of farmers' good temper. Almost all country roads are now impossible for walking along, and if field paths disappear as well we shall turn into a helpless race of machine-minders. The golden rule for footpath exploration is to carry the new one-inch Ordnance Survey maps. which show rights of way in red ink. They are powerful support for the pedestrian in any unseemly encounters with inhospit- able landowners. The other thing to re- member is that such encounters are in fact rather improbable. Farms are now cultivated by such very small (if highly mechanised) labour forces that they are less populous places than they have ever been.
Attic salt
'He was the greatest Oxford scholar, in any classical field, of his generation.' The de- scription of Sir John Beazley, in the Times's excellent obituary the other day, had a fine ring to it. No one who knows even a little of this remarkable man's prodigies of scholarship will be tempted to doubt its accuracy. His writings on Greek vase paint- ing are of a vast, minutely detailed character to make the dabbler marvel. I find his a most satisfying life to contemplate; he seems to have lived to his great contentment the sort of secluded, wholly dedicated scholar's existence which may prove more rare in the troubled future.
There is a charming account of him in Harold's Acton's memoirs of pre-war Ox- ford. 'He was a man of single purpose, steady and unwavering, dominated by his intellectual faculties, only speaking when he had something to say . . . He left the conviction that however great he was as a scholar, he was equally great as an orator of silence. His silence was the most eloquent I have heard, whether in praise or con- demnation.' How pleasant to possess this singular talent, in addition to those which made him a world authority in his field, while also leading a happy domestic life!
When he was not silent (and he could be a gay talker) Beazley's use of words had its own salty brevity. This flavours his scholarly work : describing the style of a vase painter, for example, he would write, 'Prim is not quite the adjective for it, con- vent-bred is the nearest I can get'—this of some Attic artist of nearly three thousand years ago.
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