Notebook
The Commonwealth conference is over at last, after a 'sharp discussion' on human rights and the Ugandan question. 'Still, the Commonwealth leaders managed to agree on the great issue of the next Commonwealth Games, and we are all meant to heave a sigh of relief at learning that they will be going ahead after all. Every two years when this preposterous meeting takes place everyone — politicians and journalists — is expected to assume a fixed smile, choose from a collection of platitudinous bromides and pretend to take the whole thing seriously. Perhaps we should take the question really seriously — and finally wind up the 'Commonwealth'. The only rational purpose it serves as an institution is to ease old bad consciences about imperialism: the Empire cannot have been an entirely bad thing if it led to the Commonwealth. Whether, in fact, the British Empire was a good or a bad thing is a question of metaphysical significance. It happened; it has gone. Great Britain has genuine ties with some other countries — the tie of language and law with the United States, of a common heritage of civilisation with Europe. We have nothing in common with most of the countries which the Commonwealth comprises, except a transient accident of history. It is surely time, with the best possible will and warmest hopes for the future, to bid them farewell.
Although it began badly, with tropical rain, the deplorable new Race Relations Act and yet another rise in postal rates, this is the best week of the year: Ascot, the Lord's Test, and Falstaff at Glynde bourne. Many people affect to deplore Ascot and Glyndebourne on inverted-snobbish grounds. Getting into the various forms of fancy dress required can, it's true, be a bore.. I have sometimes gone to Ascot in plain clothes when it was too unbearably hot to sweat in hard hat and stiff collar. And certainly many people go to both places. for social reasons. But Royal Ascot provides the best four days' racing of the year, especially the less fashionable Tuesday and Friday; while Glyndebourne's achievement over the years is staggering, up to and including this year, with the magnificent new Don Giovanni. I saw it not long after the equally brilliant Volpone at the National Theatre. Whatever one thinks about the National as a building and as a publicspending ego-trip 'there is not doubt that Peter Hall is the director of the age.
The cover of this year's Glyndebourne programme caused a few smiles: it shows a lissom opera-going lady asleep, but on the garden lawn rather than in the opera house. The other evening a man in the stalls woke himself and those around him, deliberately or not, when his alarm wrist-watch went off, an inconsiderate thing to do. The other good news from Glyndebourne is that they have at last got rid of the bats which used to dive-bomb the singers from the flies (at least I have seen none so far). How was it done? Air pistol or poison?
Over the last fortnight there have been two engagements in the war for free trade. The victory for the Laker Skytrain is wellknown. Less so is the continuing skirmish by American publishers to break up the traditional British publishers' market. To explain this as briefly as possible, a post-war agreement between British and American book publishers divided the Englishspeaking world, giving the British an exclusive right to sell books throughout the territories of what was once the British Empire (Canada is in a special case). There is a lucrative market for books in, particularly, South Africa and Australia, which has significantly sustained London publishing. Enviously eyeing this, the Americans want to have a crack at it and are trying by test case to have the agreement forbidden as an infringement of American anti-trust laws (which it patently is). There is almost nothing the British book trade can do about this except to repine, which it is doing in a big way.
It causes offence in Bloomsbury or at the Garrick to say so, but the British publishers haven't a shadow of a case. Their fear of competition on even terms tells its own story. It is scandalous that Australian book-buyers should have to subsidise our fairly inefficient publishing industry and extremely inefficient printing industry. In due course, with the spread of offset print ing, books will be printed in separate editions in each of the countries where a substantial market exists – which apart from any other consideration will end the ludicrous system by which books can be printed in Hong Kong, shipped to England and then shipped back to Australia.
There has been a number of pompous letters to The Times complaining about Mr Toth Jackson's – admittedly idiotic – article on union law. One repeated fallacy is that the Gouriet case – now before the Law Lords – is sub judice in the sense of uncommentable upon. In fact, cases which may heard before a jury are, very properly, not discussed; but a civil action, especially when it has reached the legal stratosphere of the Appeal Court, is an entirely fair topic for public debate. It would be a singularly pompous, and foolish, judge who invoked the law of contempt. And there is a paradox aboutsub judice cases. After a case has been heard by the Appeal Court it is thought perfectly proper for a learned academic lawyer to analyse the case in the Law Quarterly Review, even to the point of urging the Lords to reverse the decision. By contrast popular papers will be very chary of printing anything which might 'prejudice' the final hearing. Yet which opinion, if either, is more likely to affect the Lords' judgement?
'Delegates listen intently as Ian Reinecke spells out the facts of the Kettering dispute' is a headline which might have been pinched from Neues Deutschland. It comes in fact from the absurd Journalist, official organ of the National Union of Journalists, covering the Union's annual meeting. By contrast we still receive samizdat accounts of the NUJ's activities through our branches, through which I am told instead that the meeting was 'wretched . the majority of delegates inattentive . . the level of debate uplifting.' The editorial quality of the Journalist, and the public utterances of various senior NUJ apparatchiks suggest that Shaw's saying should be further conjugated: those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't even teach become union officials.
We are naturally delighted by Nicholas Davenport's CBE in the Jubilee Honours list, especially as citation was for his column in the Spectator, when it might have been for any of his multifarious activities in and out of the City. Nicholas started writing a financial column for the old Nation, under Keynes in 1925 and thus became, uneasily, a contributor to the New Statesman when it absorbed the Nation. He joined us in 1953. Three million words and three books after the start of his career his column remains compulsory reading for anyone active, or merely interested, in economic and financial affairs. With two other CBE's on the staff our office now pullulates with Commanders: we must find our opportunities for them to parade in decorated splendour.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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