Notebook
My first feeling after watching The Day After on television last weekend was that if a nuclear bomb has to be dropped anywhere, it might as well be dropped on Kansas. The film gave us so much time to get to know various typical decent Americans who were in due course to be blasted or radiated out of existence that I began to feel that the holocaust could not come too soon. My principal fear was that one or two of them might somehow survive, but the film did reach the satisfactory con- clusion that this was unlikely. If the film had any significant effect on me, it was to confirm me in my view that there would be no point in trying to survive a nuclear war. Life after the bomb would be so in- describably unpleasant that I would be hap- py to leave it to the Swiss to creep out of their shelters in due course and dominate what was left of the world. In the ensuing television debate I did learn one interesting thing which I had not known — that after a nuclear war a huge cloud would cover the world for several months, creating condi- tions of pitch darkness and freezing cold in which all vegetation would die. But Michael Heseltine was a let-down. After his neurotic insistence on air time to 'redress the balance', I assumed he would have something important to say. But he didn't at all. He only wished to remind us that the world had been at peace for 'an un- precedented period in contemporary history'. We didn't need to be told this. If we had all been blown up already, we would probably have noticed. But I felt a little sorry for Mr Heseltine. The only satisfying 'reply' to The Day After would be a categoric assurance that the events depicted in it could never happen. As no sane person would believe such an assurance, there was really nothing for him to say.
The person who impressed me most in the nuclear debate was Mr Robert McNamara, perhaps because, being no longer engaged in politics, he is able to speak freely and openly on this horrifying subject. He said that Cruise missiles were of no military value at all and that their only point was to reassure Europeans of America's commitment to Europe's defence. Once European confidence in the United States had been secured, he added, the missiles should be sent home again. If this is truly the only purpose of the deploy- ment of Cruise missiles in Europe, they can already be condemned as a complete failure. Far from reassuring the Europeans, they have had the opposite effect. However unjustly, many people think the Americans hope, by placing missiles here, to confine a nuclear war to Europe and thereby save their country from destruction. Confidence in the United States has diminished rather than grown. A recent opinion poll showed that people hold the Americans as much to blame as the Russians for the breakdown of disarmament talks. It also revealed widespread dislike of Cruise missiles, and I suspect that the demonstrations against them would be much larger if the cause had not been monopolised by the women of Greenham Common. Even old-fashioned London clubs nowadays allow women to enter them on occasion, but it appears that men, unless they are known supporters of feminist causes, are never welcomed by the witches of Greenham Common. I say wit- ches, because witches are precisely what a number of them seem to be. In its account of last Sunday's demonstration at the base, the Daily Telegraph wrote: 'Hundreds of women held up mirrors outside the fence "to reflect the evil within".' The Guardian stated, on the other hand, that they were holding up the mirrors `so they could see the surrounding countryside rather than the wires, security forces and bunkers inside the camp'. But it was fairly spooky behaviour in any event. Also, according to the Guar- dian, they tied 'symbolic woollen webs' to the fence. It all sounds very much like witchcraft to me.
If I haven't been a mine of information lately about Reuters, it is in part because employees of the company are hardly en- couraged to be communicative. 'Ad- ministration Manual Volume 7', entitled `Security', tells staff what they should do to ensure that no 'sensitive company informa- tion' ever reaches the outside world:
'1. Do not discuss significant aspects of business in public places, including restaurants and aircraft. 2. Do not read confidential material whilst travelling if you can be overlooked.
3. Do not leave confidential documents in public places, including hotel rooms.
4. Do not dispose of papers in public places, in particular hotels.
5. Do not discuss significant aspects of business within hearing of other staff, in- cluding restaurant staff and drivers.
6. Avoid discussion of sensitive issues by telephone and use direct exchange lines
rather than internal switchboard extensions for subjects where security is a concern,' and so on and so on. Reuters seems to have arrived in 1984 earlier than the rest of us.
As I write, the Board of Reuters is meeting to continue the interminable debate about
floating the news agency as a public com- pany. It is therefore too early to know the outcome, if any, of these deliberations. But the most favoured solution already appears to be 'Option 4' in the S.G.Warburg memorandum which was sent to Reuters Board members last October. This, very roughly, would attempt to keep control of the company in the hands of the existing shareholders — the newspaper associations of Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand — by ensuring that even if between them they owned as, little as 20 per cent of the equity (at present they own practically all of it), they would still command 50 per cent of the votes. As a safety net there would also be a 'Master Share' of little economic value but commanding, in defin- ed circumstances, a majority of the votes. This share would be held by a new Board of Trustees, but it is not altogether clear whether the Trustees would have any power to act except if the company were threaten- ed with a takeover. In other words, while they could stop President Andropov from buying the news agency, they might not have power to carry out the positive obliga- tions of the existing trust, like those con- cerned with the quality and integrity of the news service. It sounds on the face of it a shaky solution, as well as a complicated one, but we will have to wait and see.
C itting there brooding in Antibes, 1....3Graham Greene (see Letters page 30), seems to suspect us of trying to mislead our readers about the quality of our competi- tion prizes. Last year he wrote questioning the value of £3,000 which Sothebys put on the painting by Sir John Lavery. In fact the painting was almost certainly worth more than that. This week he has written sug- gesting that the 1934 Daimler we are offer- ing to the winner of our latest competition is actually a wreck. It is is true that after spending many years in a garage without being driven, it had to have some work done on it; but it is not true that it 'had to have its venerable carcase towed to the spot where it was photographed' and it does in fact work. It is furthermore rather a nice car, if you like cars.
Alexander Chancellor
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