SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
The chance juxtaposition of two speeches this week seemed to me to express precisely the
elements of restlessness and frustration which mark the present gloomy passage in our national affairs. There was Mr Wilson at the Guildhall, enunciating in great detail what one might call the blown-off-course' interpretation of our present discontents. All our ills, it seemed, were due to powerful forces beyond our control: everything would be well if only one misfortune after another had not been heaped upon us by hostile chance. The pre- vious evening Dr Leach, the Provost of King's, was heard opening this year's Reith lectures with a heady, not to say intoxicating, account of man's newly acquired and apparently 'god- like' power to control his own future. 'Change need not always be something that happens to us; it could be something which we choose to bring about.' Yes, indeed. Admirable sentiment. But, alas, the gulf between what is theoretically possible and what actually happens has never seemed so immense as it does today. Scientists like Dr Leach entice us with dazzling notions of cosmic power: meanwhile, down here on earth, we continue to be dismally unable to get things organised in our own backyard. Dr Leach kindly advises us to behave like gods. The best we have managed to do-lately is to evolve a special type of political leadership out of our predicament, the type of the well- intentioned failure, the man of good will over- come by malign events—in Europe, Rhodesia, the Middle East, or even here at home.
" Ill fares the Crosland
Poor Tony Crosland is the latest minister to be paraded before the public in the fashionable role of the good man worsted by superior forces. I find the spectacle of his defeat in the Stansted affair (which is surely the Ground- nuts Scheme of the present administration) a sad one. Being a civilised and imaginative man, Mr Crosland was naturally horrified, on taking office at the Board of Trade, to find himself lumbered with this monstrous piece of planning by pressure group. Hence the reappraisal of the proposal which he set in motion. However, he wasn't big enough or tough enough to over- rule the bunch of bureaucrats who have quietly and persistently pushed ahead with this plan regardless of public inquiry, public outcry, or anything else. Instead, a well-intentioned piece of tinkering has emerged, making the airport less efficient, more expensive, possibly less bar- barous as regards noise, but just as much a catastrophe for the South East Economic Plan- ing Council's concept of planning for the whole region: and, of course, a total destruction of what is laughably called 'democratic' planning procedure.
However, Mr Crosland is presented as having battled bravely against superior forces. The Sunday Times, in a splendidly scorching leader, even spoke—somewhat backhandedly, it's true —of Mr Crosland's 'remarkable triumph.' I'm afraid this is carrying the cult of the gallant failure altogether too far. It looks much more as if the civil servants who have stage- managed this business simply threw in a pru- dently maintained reserve (I know, minister, why not realign the runways a bit, then there won't be so much fuss from all those damn people?'); and Mr Crosland yielded. Fasten
your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching London's famous Ground- nuts Airport.
Before we get there, however, it must be remembered that even if the Commons obey the whips, the House of Lords will have every constitutional and democratic reason for killing the Stansted order, and by a quirk of pro- cedure they will also actually be in a position to do so before their powers are lopped. They may well rise to the occasion. As Dr Johnson noted, 'When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.'
Don't go down the mine
Having grown up near a coalfield I was long ago persuaded that the liberation of future genera- tions from servitude in the horrible imprisoned world of mining would be a happy deliverance. What we have seen this week instead, of course, is a bitter battle to preserve this harsh industry, conducted by the leaders of the very men condemned to work in it. Here, surely, is one more example of the gap be- - tween what is possible and what we have confidence in our own ability to achieve.
Miners are, in my experience, remarkable men, with a rare sense of communal solidarity; still, to talk of the contraction of coalmining as a 'national disgrace' and a 'disaster,' as their leaders have been doing, is to get the per- spective dead wrong. A bungled contraction would be a disgrace, yes. But their spokesmen even talk of the need to keep the industry attractive to young men. How extraordinary, to wish to send miners' sons down the pits unnecessarily! In any case, the decline in man- power foreseen by the fuel White Paper is not much greater than the average of the last decade, and it's claimed that natural wastage will account for most of it. A reasonable case could be made for a still swifter run-down, pro- vided the social problems were faced. Lord Robens is a great fighter, but he's engaged on the wrong battle this time.
Choosing the prof
Students of closely knit, politically motivated circles are keeping an eye on the selection of the man who will occupy Cambridge's newly created chair of Land Economy. Such academic matters ought to be far removed from political disputes, of course. I hear from Cambridge, though, that a political flavour has been de- tected by some because two people named as candidates happen to sit on opposite sides of the party fence. One is Dr D. R. Denman, the present head of the land economy depart- ment, who is unmistakably unsocialist in out- look : the other is Mr Christopher Foster, cur- rently one of Mrs Barbara Castle's whizzing young economists at the Ministry of Transport. Cambridge economics have long displayed a marked left-wing trend; the committee which will recommend the new professor has met once but has not yet reached a decision. It must be hoped that this distinguished committee will refuse to let political opinions influence them at all; but the fact that some people are prepared to speculate along poli- tical lines in such a case is a sad sign of the times.
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