DIARY ALAN WATKINS
Nof since the Irish Ambassador to the United Nations ambled into the bar of World Opinion in Third Avenue and offered to fight any man in the room has any British politician talked so vainglor- iously as Mrs Margaret Thatcher did at the Lord Mayor's banquet. She got it all back next day in Sir Geoffrey Howe's resigna- tion speech. He spoke of his task's having become futile; of being subverted by a casual comment or an impulsive answer by her. He ended by asking all good men to join him in resigning from the Cabinet. The past master of code was writing with an aerosol in block capitals. What he refrained from doing was either to announce his own candidature or to urge others to vote for Mr Michael Heseltine. But the message was clear enough. Sir Geoffrey was certainly not canvassing sup- port for Mrs Thatcher. His resignation speech, unlike Mr Nigel Lawson's, was delivered as such before the main debate. The rumour was that Sir Geoffrey followed this course because No 10 would otherwise have 'talked him out' so that he missed the six o'clock news.
In the late 1970s Mr Frank Johnson and I decided to visit Malcolm Muggeridge as often as we could. He was bound to die sometime, we said to ourselves — in fact he survived for over a decade — and we should enjoy him while we were able to. Thus our expeditions to Robertsbridge were selfish: we were travelling for our sake rather than for his or Kitty's. I do not think he minded in the least. He loved not only telling stories but performing them simultaneously. One of his (and our) favourites was of Sir William Haley's search for wisdom. Johnson: 'He read a lot of books.' Muggeridge: 'I know, my dear boy, that was precisely the trouble. They were the wrong books.' And he proceeded to enact Sir William climbing up and down his library steps 'like a little monkey. "What's this? Aristotle? No good, no wisdom there, try Plato instead." ' Con- trary to myth, nurtured partly by himself, he was no ascetic. He simply did not eat meat, smoke or drink. As he once put it, he lived the life of a retired schoolmaster. Kitty was always the most generous of hostesses, and a part of every conversa- tion. When I asked a friend whether our visits were a trial, he considered the question and replied: 'No, I think he enjoys them, because he gets a bit bored with all the Christians who come to see him.'
Last Friday the jury failed to agree in the libel case where Mr Brian Sedgemore was suing Mr Robert Kilroy-Silk and the Times for an attack on him alleging that he wished to extend the law of blasphemy to Mohammedanism and possibly other reli- gions as well. I write 'alleging' not solely for the normal prudential reasons but also because it was part of the plaintiff's case that, far from wishing to extend this branch of the criminal law, he wanted to debate its abolition — which was why he had signed the Commons notion calling for itg exten- sion. The jury found that the words com- plained of were defamatory but failed to agree on whether they were fair comment or not, even though the judge said he was prepared to accept a majority decision. This splitting of the verdict or non-verdict, illustrating as it did the jury's difficulties, struck me as legally interesting, contrary as it was to recent practice. It was surely an interesting case anyway, for a well-known left-wing Labour MP was suing a former left-wing MP, now an even better known television presenter. Yet the verdict went unreported on both the main television news programmes that night. The course of the case was unrecorded in the expensive papers, except the Times. The truth is that our great liberal newspapers are obsessed by official secrecy as the principal threat to free speech and consistently depreciate the menace of our libel laws.
In a notable interview with Mr Mark Lawson in the Independent Magazine, the judge in the case, Mr Justice Michael Davies — whose last case it was — said that 'you can no more get a reasonable discussion about libel in the press than you could get a reasonable discussion about prison-sentencing in the Burglar's Gazette'. He also refers to 'conceited reporters' in the box and is particularly sensitive to his critics of recent months, Mr Richard Ing- rams, Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft and myself. I had thought with others that Mr Justice `I've just had a cracking idea for a fable.' Davies had been able to snaffle the juicy cases owing to his seniority. Not so, it seems: he was given the task of cutting the libel list. The favourite for the succession is Mr Justice Drake (`sensible'), though Mr Justice French (`humourless') has also been mentioned. Neither, as far as I know, was a libel specialist. The leading former practitioner on the Bench, Mr Justice Hirst, never seems to hear a case in his old field. If the libel judge (a judicial appoint- ment about whose wisdom I have doubts) cannot he a specialist, he should at least be someone who does not actively dislike journalists.
Just under a year ago I wrote in this column about my athlete's foot and how I had cured it with Whitfield's ointment. At the time one of my dearest friends volun- teered that no one was interested in my feet, a disgusting topic. She was, as Mr Enoch Powell would say, in grievous error. I received many letters, including one from a consultant in dermatology at St Thomas's commending the remedy in question and hazarding that, were it to be invented today, it would be placed immediately on prescription. Indeed, I had not had so many letters since writing an article in the Evening Standard in 1974 on the lines of `Wake Up, Bertie Mee', about the failings of the Arsenal Football Club. It is in the same paper that I discover that Mr Denis Healey suffers from gout. He takes Indecid (or Indomethacin), which relieves the swelling and pain. I used to do the same until, having suffered a dreadful attack in France with no pills to hand, I was advised by the hotel doctor to take Allopurinol regularly. This I proceeded to do, and have not suffered an attack since. I pass the information on to Mr Healey.
In the pre-Allopurinol days, it was Mr Charles Moore who, in the middle of one of my attacks, tried to console me with the theory that sufferers tended to be men (rather than women) of above-average intelligence. 1 am not sure that this is scientifically valid, but the list is certainly impressive: Lord Clarendon, Neville Chamberlain, Evelyn Waugh and Mr Healey, to name but a few, together with virtually every major literary figure of the 18th century. Certainly the disease seems to afflict those who are in a position to complain about it. Perhaps it is a bit like being left-handed. We sinistrals (I think of Mr Denis Compton, Lord Jenkins, Mr Paul Johnson, Mr Ferdinand Mount, Mr Colin Welch) tend to be, well — how can one put it? — yes, different. Though I should prefer not to be prone to gout, I have no desire to be right-handed.
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