Notebook
The appalling news of Anthony Crosland's sudden and by all reports calamitous illness left his friends thunderstruck, not for the raisons d' etat which naturally sprang at once to the minds of his beleaguered colleagues in the Government but because of the affectionate regard in which he is held. Although he can be brusque and off-putting—particularly to women—what is often taken for rudeness is, in fact, the working of an inquiring and disputatious mind. Thus, he will greet a statement with a request for definition— 'What do you mean by the term "industrial democracy"?' or 'What is your evidence for saying that ?'—a technique which easily disconcerts the unprepared or the sensitive. In the great Labour Party popularity contest, the elections for the National Executive Committee, he has been a consistent failure, perhaps because of his donnish platform manner, sometimes mistaken for a fastidious intellectualism. He has been erroneously placed in the now discredited Gaitskell tradition, a victim of the 'elitist' sneer. Yet he is that rare person in politics—particularly Labour politics—who can laugh at himself, particularly relishing jokes about his devotion to 'Match of the Day,' which he watches on an old and crackly black and white set. In a restaurant, Mr Crosland chooses the carafe wine (often with a joke about Roy Jenkins being the man who can select the vintage) with a certain airof defiance, almost as if it were the tipple of his Grimsby constituents with whom he strongly identifies. And there is something else which distinguishes him from many other Labour politicians—he is never rude to waiters.
Whatever judgment may be made on the party loyalties of Captain Henry Kerby, the Conservative MP who is said to have supplied information to the Wilson government, he was a most perceptive judge of character In a report to Sir Harold Wilson on his visit to Rhodesia in 1967 Captain Kerby described Mr Pieter van der Byl as 'one of the nastiest pieces of work I met during my visit.'
It was impossible not to feel pity for Sir Harold Wilson watching the television interview on ITN on Tuesday night. He looked drained of confidence, pathetically aping his old television manner and failing totally to carry conviction. What are we to make of a man who, having agreed to speak about Joe Haines's book, declares at the outset: 'I haven't had the book, I haven't read the book'? He blamed everything on poor Joe— who was, he said, as much responsible for honours as Marcia and played as significant a part in forming policy—as if this made any difference. Deprived of the trappings of office, Sir Harold has shrunk to size—unsophisticated and fundamentally unsure of himself. He seems much closer now to Marcia and Joe, three rather bewildered people who clung together for warmth in the icy kitchen of Downing Street. All in all, the misguided Mr Haines has emerged with the most dignity because he appears to believe in the justice of his own position. This selfconfidence enabled him to deal effectively with the hectoring Mr Robin Day, whose manner as a television interviewer has become increasingly intolerable. As for a final judgment on the whole affair, Mr Haines makes it for us in the preface to his book : 'There was vital difference between those of us who were associated closely with Harold Wilson on a personal basis and the permanent civil servants: we were his choice as advisers. That choice is not a safeguard against abuse, but if abuse occurs it pins responsibility upon the elected politician, who must answer for it.'
A footnote to the honours 'scandal.' Some people wonder whether Lady Falkender's two sons are entitled to the prefix 'Hon,' since she is not married to their father. There can be no doubt that they are indeed little Hons: their mother is a peeress in her own right, and the courtesy title inevitably attaches to her children. This would not be true if their father, the journalist Walter Terry of the Sun newspaper, were the peer rather than Lady Falkender—unless, of course, they had married. Most newspapers, fascinated as they are by Sir Harold's 'kitchen cabinet,' have shown surprising gentility in their failure to refer to this celebrated affair between Sir Harold's secretary and a Fleet Street political journalist.
100th issue of Survey (price £3), dealing with the future of East-West relations, Inevitably contains a good deal of rather repetitive material, because all the contributors are writing on aspects of the same. subject. But there is one by Ali A. Mazrui (who is a D.Phil.Oxon and a political science professor at Ann Arbor) on 'The Bolsheviks and the Bantu' which is strikingly distinct both in subject-matter and in ideological tone. He praises the. Mau Mau for a fight without external aid which at least curtailed the period of settler domination, and he mentions as one of the 'hopeful' consequences of the MPLA's victory in Angola that SWAPO in Namibia will now become 'a more effective fighting force.' Such views are not quite what one expects to find in an essentially anti-communist symposium, hnt Prof. Mazrui is a member of Survey's international advisory board, which shows what a broadly-based libertarian publication it Is. The piece by President Carter's aide, Zbigniew Brzezinski, augurs badly for the stylistic standards of presidential speeches on world affairs, and possibly also for their substance. The first sentence reads: 'The policy of the West towards the Communist states should be shaped with the overall global context in mind.'
In recent months it seems to have become much harder to get information out of the telephone 'Directory Enquiries' service—in particular it is now almost impossible to get them to divulge people's postal addresses, even if the inquirer knows the telephone number, 'We have a firm rule never to give addresses,' say many of the faceless voices down the line. Yet in the past this service was often extremely convenient (and after all was good business for the Post office, Ill that one usually wishes to know someone's address solely for the purpose of sending them a letter). A Post Office spokesMan denies that thre has been any new instruction to Directory Enquiries on this point. 'It has always been our rule,' he says, 'only to give telephone numbers, and that only when Y°Ii know the address already.' Asked why this should be, he explains that 'it would waste a lot of time if our employees had to look lin addresses, and also the telephone book does not contain postal codes, which are neces; sary nowadays for correct addressing ni letters.' The explanation still seems a some: what thin excuse for prohibiting a useful public service—obviously it would take time to look up a Mr John Smith of Londnrl,; but in most cases it takes no longer to fin' the right name and address than it does look up the telephone number. FortunaterY there are still a number of friendlY, less bureaucratically-minded employees of °Ifectory Enquiries who are prepared to Pr!: vide this service—and our advice, if Yon al! baulked on the first occasion. is simplY
try again.
Spectator
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