A Spectator's Notebook
Jack Jones's success in getting the conference of dockers to call off the docks strike was a notable victory, particularly since he was subjected to some very excitable shouting, jostling and picketing by some of the more extreme dockers. The Jones-Aldington proposals represented a considerable advance for the dockers, and Jack Jones clearly thought that the strike should not have been called in the first instance. Most people I have talked to have thought that those proposals gave the dockers too much. If the militants persuade the London, Liverpool and Hull dockers to Stay out on strike indefinitely, then the only sensible conclusion to draw will be that the militants are interested not in serving the dockers but in wrecking the docks.
I don't blame the container firms for wanting to have their warehouses outside dockland, or for preferring not to employ dock labour. It is also natural enough that dockers should see in the development of containers a huge threat to their jobs and their way of life. The fact of the matter is that container ships need few if any dockers; and the dockers know this perfectly well. Containers have a further disadvantage: they cannot be ' accidentally ' dropped in such a way as to break open and provide the dockers with a tax-free and unearned bonus of whisky, cigarettes or anything else that might take their fancy. It is difficult, however, to see precisely how union leaders could negotiate with port employers over compensation for loss of this particular perk.
Black racialism
The Government is to be congratulated for facing up to the reality of the Ugandan Asian problem, and for accepting without more ado its plain duty. It is to be hoped that no serious politician attempts to make capital out of the business. The Asians are coming, as they are fully entitled to do; and they will be coming for good, and making their homes here. Geoffrey Rippon's trip to East Africa was pretty much a waste of time; but presumably it served one purpose, which was to convince everybody that President Amin meant what he has been saying, that the Asians have ninety days to clear out. This means that we have less than ninety days to prepare their welcome. It is probably just as well that Parliament is not sitting; otherwise, things might be said which would be better left unsaid or better said outside the Commons. President Amin's decree is a straightforward piece of racialism; but it will attract very little in the way of moral protest. Black racialists cause far less offence to white liberals than do white racialists; and I do not suppose that the black African states w'ho are preparing to boycott the Olympic Games in protest against the Participation of a mixed, black and white Rhodesian team, will extend the area of
their moral outrage to include Uganda. Ghana, Liberia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Sudan and Sierra Leone have all decided to withdraw because of Rhodesia. But will the leaders of these states condemn Amin? I doubt it.
"Lies, all lies"
One of the encouraging things about modern drama is that it is often so bad that the audience is provoked into retaliation, thereby providing theatre in the round. This happened most recently at the King's Head, Islington, which is presenting a play by Robert Nye and Bill Watson about Sawney Bean, a seventeenth-century cannibal who fed his family off trapped shepherds and wayfarers. Written in William Golding Neanderthal with excruciating lyrical invocations to rock-pools and the whispering wind, the play was causing some merriment, especially from a well-dressed trio sitting close to the stage.
The high point comes when Sawney Bean shouting " Lies! All lies!" takes raw liver out of the cauldron and flings it across the sand. On Saturday night, in great irritation, he threw it at one of the trio, who promptly flung it back. After a sharp interchange of liver, still shouting "Lies! All lies!" Sawney Bean clambered off the stage and shook the unfortunate gentleman by the lapels of his coat until his spectacles fell off. The trio remonstrated, protesting their right to see the play through. After much pushing and shoving and histrionic apologies from the actors, the young manager came and asked them to leave. They refused. At once the audience took sides, some demanding their instant eviction, others telling the actors to get on with it and not be so bloody silly. Two cannibals, one of them mysteriously wearing clerical vestments, joined in the scuffle. Another stood grandly on the stage and acknowledged compassionate assurances from two ladies that the play was a masterpiece.
At last the manager lost his temper and threw one of the trio out bodily. His wife followed, and the other man, who had retrieved his glasses, went off with muttered threats to call lawyers and the police. Further merriment was subdued as the play ground to its depressing conclusion; but at least the audience could leave knowing that it had been privileged to witness a few genuinely-felt emotions.
Mad system
A couple of doctors the other day told me what they and I agreed was a horrifying story. One evening one of the doctors was telephoned at his home by the duty sister at a nearby hospital. One of the nurses at the hospital, who chanced to be this doctor's patient, had collapsed on ward duty. "Well what do you want me to do?" the doctor not unnaturally asked. "I want you to arrange for an ambulance," the sister replied. "But the girl is already at hospital," the doctor expostulated. "Yes, but we have nobody to look after her," said the sister, "and if you came and saw her, you could then admit her to such-and-such hospital (naming another nearby hospital) where they have somebody on casualties tonight."
Doctors are full of such stories. The National Health Service, they tell me, is near to collapse. and is only held together by overseas doctors whose command of English is often slight in the extreme and whose knowledge of medicine is not much better. Had they studied in England, they would not have become qualified. This country imports doctors from Asian countries whose need of doctors is acute; and we export doctors, chiefly to the United States. The reason for this very unhealthy traffic is almost entirely pecuniary. Doctors — and nurses — are far better paid in the States than they are here, so many of our best people, trained here at taxpayers' expense, emigrate and are replaced by people who are, medically speaking, inferior. The Asian countries lose doctors they can ill spare who come here, we lose doctors we can ill spare to the States. It is a mad system, and the answer to it all is very simple: doctors and nurses in this country should be paid more.
Spelling mistake
Concorde is a modern folly, as useless and Extravagant as the follies with which spendthrift eighteenth-century millionaires decorated their parks. Those follies, which now we wonder at while admiring their elegance, were dirt-cheap compared with Concorde. We, nowadays, criticise the dukes and princes who built palaces such as Blenheim or the Louvre; and we snigger at the crude architectural shows erected by the German Nazis, the Italian Fascists and the Russian, German and Chinese Communists. But, somehow, we endeavour to take pride in Concorde because of the beauty of its engineering.
Saying something like this to someone who is pro-Concorde, I received the reply that Concorde is the Anglo-French equivalent of the American and Russian space programmes. I suppose this is true. At this point, all I can say is that we, the British, have been completely fooled by the French, who, thanks to the French spelling adopted for the aircraft, will gain whatever propaganda credit is going. It will cost us at least 000 million. Concorde is the most expensive spelling mistake of all time.
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