A Spectator's Notebook

Was totally mystified by the shock and horror With which many of my most respected friends reacted to Mr Wilson's amiable little bow to the Crown Prince of SaudiArabia.Thatopen-minded liberal, Nicholas Davenport, has expressed his indignation in his Spectator column this week, and Patrick Cosgrave, whom I always believed to share my own admiration for royalty of all descriptions, declared his outrage to an even Wider audience in a recent edition of the BBC's World at One programme. For my part, I thought it was generally accepted that Crown Princes were there to be bowed to, and I doubt if either of my esteemed colleagues would hesitate to bow to Prince Charles or, for that matter, to Prince Juan Carlos.

I would make an exception, of course, if the Royal person concerned was a particularly

odious individual or obviously hostile to myself or in. ,

y country. I would not have expected

Patrick Cosgrave, had he been alive at the time, to have inclined his head to the Kaiser. But one cannot raise such objections to Prince Fahd. In fact, he seems to be one of the best friends Britain has in the world today, and to have more confidence in this country's future than most of us do ourselves. He wants to help our balance of payments by buying from us anything useful that we are able to sell him, and insists on keeping much of his money in _London, even though it declines daily in value. Lcinle to think of it, I would be tempted to bow to such a man even if he were a commoner. Mr

ilson is to be congratulated for his simple old-world courtesy.

Farewell to Jim

It is a good thing that Jim Slater left the City When he did, because he belongs to an era Which is now decisively over. He is a brilliant Man, but he is a wheeler-dealer of a sort that was acceptable in the 'sixties but unacceptable l,r1 the austere economic climate of the seventies. To quote Hugh Stephenson in last Monday's Times, Slater's ethos was "dealing and making money, not using , money to make things." If today he were to declare, as he did not long ago, that the best investment was cash, it would be seen — and rightly so — as a gross insult to Britian's growing army of unemPloyed. If Britain is to overcome its economic difficulties, the City must command respect. Mr Slater was not good for its image. Still, it is impossible not to feel some regret at his departure to private life. Swashbucklers are always attractive, not least if they are successful in the face of concentrated criticism by the establishment. Mr Slater was also a good friend of The SPectator. Patrick Cosgrave recalls: "He is in rlo sense a well-read man, but he has a Marvellous natural articulacy and fluency, Often buttressed by examples and symbols from One of his favourite hobbies — watching old fi---, on television. I remember him once illustrating his method of maneouvre on the Stock Exchange by referring to a Western he had recently seen. 'You see," he said, 'you make money on the Exchange by going against the herd. But if you go against the herd too soon,

you'll be trampled. The trick is to go against them at just the right moment, and then you can turn them back'."

Petty politicking

It was deeply depressing to read Mr Michael Heseltine's attack last weekend of the lifestyles of certain leading members of the Labour Government. It is going to be hard enough to get Mr Wilson out of power without this sort of petty personal criticism, which is just what the electorate has grown to detest about politicians of all parties over the past thirty years. Fortunately for Mr Heseltine (or he would have little chance of ever returning to office), few people in this country sympathise with the politics of envy which are normally associated with the left wing of the Labour Party. Few people can see any reason why a Prime Minister should not be entitled to a bit of land in Buckinghamshire and a holiday cottage in the Scilly Isles. Nor can they see why the Foreign Secretary should be chastised for doing a bit of farming (surely, one of the most respectable of British pursuits). And as for Mr Crosland, what could be more charming or innocent than wanting to own a bit of land in the Cotswolds? And everybody knows that Mr Heseltine is not exactly telling the truth when he refers to these gentlemen as the leading advocates of the left. They are, of course, among the leading advocates of the mixed economy, who have never regarded the ownership of private property as a sin. We wish that Mr Heseltine would reserve his political invective for things in which he himself believes and by which the public is likely to be convinced.

More about Margaret

The third biography of Margaret Thatcher has just appeared, from the pen of Ernie Money, former Shadow Minister for the Arts, who lost his House of Commons seat last October. Money has been particularly unfortunate, for his book was originally planned to appear at the same time as those by Russell Lewis and George Gardiner. From Leslie Frewin at £4.95, this latest biography suffered no end of production difficulties, and Money is naturally depressed at its prospects in a market which may already be considered glutted. However, it is worth noting that Money covers a good deal more of the later ground than did either of the other two, both of whom stopped at the point of Mrs Thatcher's victory over Edward Heath. Then, too, he focuses very closely on Heath-Thatcher relations subsequent to her election to the leadership; and in particular on the contentious issue of whether or not Heath was offered a job in the Shadow Cabinet. Not that there is much doubt about it, but for the record Money establishes conclusively that he was. No Heath-hater Money, however, for he nonetheless concludes that it would be a pity if a place was not found for Ted Heath in Margaret Thatcher's first Cabinet.

To quote or not to quote

It is a very old problem for journalists — trying to obtain information from people who don't want to give it to them, or, at least, don't want to be quoted. That is why over the years ground rules have been established to make everybody's task easier. The Americans, predictably, were the people who invented these ground rules and still observe them most punctilliously. (An American journalist, for example, would be unlikely to have quoted Mr Heath's reported indiscretions in the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool, when he is said to have referred to the Tory Party's current leaders as 'traitors'). The rules are basically simple. At the two extremes, there are 'on the record' (which means you can quote freely from the person who is talking to you, attributing everything to him by name) and 'off the record' (which means you must throw away your pencil and notebook before you start talking to the person and pretend the conversation never took place at all). In between, there is something called 'background' (which means that the journalist cannot quote his interlocutor directly, but must use the euphemism such as 'British officials', when what he really means is Jim Callaghan) and 'deep background' (which means the journalist must write as if the information he has been given comes out of his own head or has been bestowed on him from heaven, using phrases such as 'it is believed').

This all normally works quite well, even if it may sometimes puzzle the uninitiated reader. But since Watergate, which bred distrust between the government and the press in the United States, the system has been under strain. A good example was in the Guardian, which last week published a report by H. D. S. Greenaway of the Washington Post about Dr Kissinger's visit to Peking. Mr Greenaway quoted a 'senior American official' as saying that Chinese-American relations remained basically sound, but he went on in his next paragraph to say: "The senior official, as the Secretary of State often insists on being identified to avoid personal attribution, told reporters ..." The aid, no doubt, was to make Dr Kissinger look silly by laying bare his wish to avoid personal attribution for remarks which were extremely banal. But such fooling about with the ground rules makes the Washington Post look silly as well. While it is true that our rulers may from time to time abuse the system in the hope of manipulating the press, it is important that normally they should be able to rely on journalists to observe the rules of the game. They are cagey enough as it is. We should give them no excuses to be cagier.