DIARY
ANTHONY HOWARD In the run-up to the Mid-Staffordshire by-election next week, the Labour party owes a special vote of thanks to those who enabled it to keep its nerve in darker days, If the Charter 88 crowd had had their way, where would it be now? At best, limping to a shared, compromised victory that prom- ises next Friday to be its alone. In Labour's roll of honour, I single out one name for special commendation. Roy Hattersley may not be everyone's cup of tea — or glass of wine — but when the story of Labour's long night of doubt and sorrow comes to be told, he will deserve at least a modest mention in dispatches. While the pressure was on for Labour to face reality, embrace pacts and endorse PR, he volun- tarily took most of the flak. He, therefore, now wins the largest cluster of laurel leaves.
No medals, on the other hand, for the newspapers over their coverage of the Harrods affair. Their treatment of the Fayeds may have been robust enough over the past week but what about all the years that went before when the Observer was a lonely if (by definition) not a disinterested voice? While I was still in its service, there were Occasional moments when we thought we detected a relief column riding over the hill. Probably the most encouraging of them occurred when the Financial Times devoted a whole leader page article to questioning — all too accurately as things have turned out — the Fayeds' family background and commercial credentials. In the Observer of the time it was seen as a significant breakthrough — but within days the FT had crumpled and published an abject apology. Hardly the proudest epi- sode in the FT's history, and one which should prompt some searching questions being asked as to why the City's own newspaper so often fails when it comes to exposing scandals in its own area. The author of that article, Duncan Campbell- Smith, subsequently redeployed to work on the Economist, was on the radio the other morning reflecting on the lessons of the whole affair. He displayed, I thought, a superb self-restraint in not referring once to his own belated vindication.
How much trouble is Nicholas Ridley in over his curiously cavalier attitude to the findings of the DTI Report? I confess to having a soft spot for him. His patrician hauteur carries a certain attraction that is singularly lacking in the more oleaginous demeanour of too many of his colleagues. But there still strikes me as being a fatal flaw in his whole approach to the House of Fraser business. It has nothing to do with his being over-indulgent to the Fayeds: no one who knows Ridley can imagine him willingly giving the time of day to the owner of Harrods or his siblings (though, admittedly, I would not see him as being much more at ease with Tiny Rowland or the directors of Lonrho either). No, the trouble goes to the view he takes of his job. As the outstanding free marketeer in the government he simply does not believe in the DTI holding the ring or even acting as an umpire. We have heard an awful lot from the government about the virtues of `a light rein'. There would, I suppose, be an element of poetic justice if one of its members eventually saw his career entang- led by it.
political correspondents, Harold Wil- son used to like to claim, fail to keep their finger on the national pulse 'because they never go north of Potters Bar'. I was reminded of his dictum by spending part of last week in Ludlow. The bad news for the Government was that the poll tax revolt is alive and well even in Housman country. The crowd that assembled outside the district council offices the night the local rate of £305 was set did not look to me at all like `toytown revolutionaries'. They were genuine local citizens reacting with indignation to an impost that was plainly seen as entirely the fault of central govern- ment. But the other burning issue in the town is hardly ever likely to impinge on the worlds of either Westminster or Whitehall. It concerns the chimes of the church clock, recently brought back into action and now once again ringing out just as they did in Housman's day. Alas, their sound is no longer universally welcome. Even an elaborate consultation process, conducted by the parochial church council, has failed to still the protests. Those who live under
the shadow of the church tower have so far pleaded in vain for their peace. Old Lud- low stands firm for the clock chiming out every quarter-of-an-hour throughout the night: newcomers who can't sleep — in- cluding luckless visitors who book rooms for the night at the Church Inn — are advised to wear ear mufflers. Who said the island race had gone soft?
Michael Stewart, who died at the age of 83 last weekend, was the epitome of Fabian worthiness in politics. To Dick Grossman he always represented 'the dum- py, dull substitute' for the kind of Foreign Secretary he himself longed to be; and, if the truth were told, Stewart was never the most exciting of political personalities (even his autobiography was characteristi- cally called Life & Labour). He possessed, though, a striking aptitude for speaking to a prepared brief with clarity and conviction — a talent he deployed to memorable effect at the Oxford Union teach-in on Vietnam in 1965. The star turn was meant to be Henry Cabot Lodge, recently re- turned from being US Ambassador in Saigon; but he made a fearful hash of it and it was left for Stewart to save the day. He did it effortlessly with a speech of such remarkable cogent power that in the end it wore down even the protesters and demon- strators. It was probably Stewart's finest hour — certainly by the time he came back as Foreign Secretary in 1968, his pro- American line had become a severe embar- rassment to his colleagues. He was ruth- lessly purged from the Opposition front- bench in 1970 and eventually became one of those political ghosts that flit around the corridors of the House of Lords. The last glimpse I had of him was some 18 months ago — a frail, sad figure at, appropriately, an Anglo-American colloquy at Ditchley.
The older you get, the more you miss what were once familiar objects in the shops. Not so long ago I sauntered out on a routine mission to buy a soda-siphon. In each successive off-licence I visited, I was treated as some updated version of Rip van Winkle — 'Where have your been, squire? We haven't stocked those things for years.' Nor did I get much more sympathy back at home — 'Honestly, they're so bulky, you can't expect people nowadays to bother with them.' But they were on the whole were on the whole efficient and the soda- water in them did not go flat (which is more than you can say for the modern, no-deposit bottles). That's why, I assume, siphons still survive in the better pubs even if, so far as the domestic consumer is concerned, they all seem to have vanished into some great bottle-bank in the sky.
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