DIARY ALAN WATKINS
Wen WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered, I was in favour of trying her killers. There was nothing in international law that allowed an embassy to be used as a machine-gun post or snipers' nest. Instead of which the criminals were escorted politely off the premises and sent home to Libya. When America takes more drastic and legally questionable action than a criminal prosecution, we provide her with every facility, allowing our territory to be used as a base for bombing raids. Quite apart from our joint culpability in interna- tional law, no vital British interest is involved. Mrs Margaret Thatcher is just sucking up to President Reagan and, with typical vulgarity, justifying his action partly by the murder of WPC Fletcher, with which she herself was unable to deal. The precise terms on which the US hold their bases here have never been made fully public. But they have been justified or excused to the voters on the ground that they are an essential part of the defence of the West. President Reagan is not defend- ing the West. He is responding in pique and for largely domestic political reasons t0 the murder of a few unfortunate Amer- icans. When Americans get hurt they are tremendous cry-babies, cancelling their holidays and generally behaving in a fashion which displays what in the RAF used to be called lack of moral fibre. My Predominant feeling, however, is not so much apprehension as shame that Britain can be pushed around in this way.
Fleet Street is now being persecuted virtually everywhere for restrictive prac- tices and overmanning. Television is not backwards in the hunt. Yet we rarely hear of restrictive practices and overmanning in television. Let me tell you what happens. I been because I have very occasionally been interviewed at home. This exercise could easily be conducted by two people, interviewer and cameraman. In practice it is Performed by a crew of six together with a producer and an interviewer. For some reason the BBC hires a 'lighting man' from an outside agency. There is always a girl attired in a kind of bib-and-brace outfit, Ca rrying a clipboard and called Charlie, y or Jackie. Her chief function seems tth o be to make coffee for the crew. When I was last interviewed the Cathy-figure Pirouetted through the sitting-room to- w_ ards the kitchen. 'Where are your going?' asked. 'To make coffee for the crew,' she rl eplied. I said that if anyone was going to make coffee in the establishment it would be me, which I proceeded reluctantly to cue?. Not informed this: the interviewer, an old expected nformed me that the crew also Qcpected a proper drink at the conclusion of the proceedings. 1 am still not sure whether he was making a joke.
I t is always gratifying when a govern- ment comes a cropper. Sunday trading is not a straight libertarian issue, though it has even less to do with the 'enterprise culture' about which Mrs Thatcher and her friends go on so tediously. On balance, however, I should have supported the measure. But government defeats are good for everyone, notably for governments. There is a theory that this one would not have been beaten if it had allowed a free vote. The trouble was that, owing to the diminished but still existing influence of the shop workers' union and the Co-ops, the Opposition would have imposed either a formal or a tacit whip of its own. What few observers have noticed is that govern- ment defeats have become more common. Nor are they specially concentrated in the periods of low majorities, 1964-66 and 1974-79. They can happen when there is a large majority. Yet journalists and academics (particularly academics) keep parroting that MPs are 'lobby fodder' who `count for nothing'. Defeats on various Bills apart, I have seen MPs remove two Conservative leaders, destroy the morale of another, bring down a government and effectively send the nation to war. And people still say they do not count.
Ifirst saw Michael Holding bowl at Lord's in 1976 in the match against MCC. I was sitting on the boundary at fine third man. Several balls hummed to the left and right of me which had been missed respec- tively by batsman and wicket-keeper and by slip (for in accordance with the impru- dent modern fashion there was no deep third man). I judged that if the ball came straight at me I should fare no better. So I moved to the stand, ascending several floors and persuading myself that I was merely trying to gain a better view. He was the most exciting bowler I had seen since Ray Lindwall. He did not have the Austra- lian's controlled, compact ferocity: Lind- wall was a Dempsey or Marciano. Holding was more fluid, a Sugar Ray Robinson. Now this most graceful of cricketers is retiring from a game which he has played a part in making ugly, dangerous, bad- tempered and, worst of all, tedious. It is not his fault. The responsibility lies with Clyde Walcott and Clive Lloyd. By exploit- ing their strengths they dominated the world. Do you blame them? Yes I do. In the mid-1950s England could have played four fast bowlers, Statham, Truman, Tyson and Loader, not to mention the slower Bedser, then at the end of his career. We did not do so. But I do not suppose we shall ever be in a position to make such a choice again.
More than ever we are being told what to do for our own good, particularly the good of our health. Numerous journal- ists such as Mr Geoffrey Cannon carve out lucrative careers for themselves by inform- ing us that potatoes, sugar, pasta, milk, beans, spinach or whatever are good or bad for us, as the case may be and as current fashion (usually originating in America) may dictate. Even more insistent are the institutional busybodies. The latest to give forth is the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which is new to me. I had heard of the Physicians and the Surgeons but not the Psychiatrists. Anyway, this organisation has arbitrarily halved the allegedly 'safe' daily alcohol ration of eight units, a unit being a glass of wine, a half pint of beer or a pub measure of spirits. As I obtain fewer than four glasses from a 70-cl. bottle of wine at home, this has always struck me as a generous allowance. But why 50 per cent rather than 40 or 60? And where do all these statistics come from that are always trotted out by the medical correspondents — hours lost, mar- riages broken, crimes committed and the rest? Their only source is the busybody group itself. Even if these figures had meaning and proper authentication, they would not be to the point. As J. S. Mill says, family and friends have a legitimate interest in another's state of health. It is no business of the psychiatrists.
All this health propaganda reminds me of Lord Hailsham. In an interview in last week's Sunday Telegraph with Mr Graham Turner, he asserts: 'I have heard no voices.' Yet in an interview in the Sunday Express with Mr Lewis de Fries some 25 years ago, he was asked about smoking. He related on that occasion that he was travelling on a train and was about to light his pipe when he heard a voice saying: `Quintin, give it up.' So he did, from that moment. But why doesn't the voice say the same about his office?
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