Notebook
The Prime Minister of Ireland, Mr Jack Lynch, once stated in my presence with undisguised relief that the partition of Ireland would be unlikely to end in his lifetime. This seems a good illustration of the 'fatal ambivalence' of the Irish government on the Ulster problem which was so eloquently criticised in the Daily Telegraph this week bY Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien. There is little evidence that this Irish government — or, to be fair, the former Irish government of which Dr O'Brien was a member — has taken the Northern Ireland tragedy much rnpie seriously than has the British government. And how seriously that is was described by George Gale in last week's S, Pectator. Ulster has not been an election 'Issue in either Ireland or Britain. In both countries, it has been regarded as a squalid ntlisance. The Irish government formally seeks the unification of Ireland, but would rather it didn't happen yet and so does in°thing to promote it. Yet it continues to uold Britain. and partition, responsible fO r the violence. If the shame felt in Ireland and the horror in England `It this week's atrocities help to unite the two countries in a serious war against the IRA, surnething will have been achieved.
e must forgive the publishing fraternity tor their possibly premature interest in the (131.nestion of Lord Mountbatten's official ,I,°„graPhy. For whoever gets to publish it ri undoubtedly make a lot of money. here is, of course, a huge mass of material s)ll which a biographer could draw. One i nilrce, however, may be in danger of being .gnored. This was referred to by my col!eague Richard West in the Spectator following the death of Tom Driberg three Ytears ago. Driberg had been almost the only ritish journalist with the British troops in Y" ,V_Ietnam after the Japanese surrender in „I.5. There he came to know Lord Louis so.untbatten, who was unhappy with his ttroik. of l returning Indochina to French conth, When Dick West asked Driberg about sks episode, he replied: 'It's funny you. ,:,12Y °Id ask that because only yesterday I ',".as looking through some letters from °Mountbatten written about that time, each titv which started "Dear Tom, please burn 12.eas soon as you have read it . . " ' The rs could be interesting. Ineldiary reco entry of May 1945 Evelyn Waugh Plain 'Llea don• It is pleasant to end the war in Ion ltes, writing'. He reflected on how g it had not a taken him to realise that he was• take ii da., of I we 4ction. 'I regard the greatest liger nt liger nt °fCh nicht] throu l's gli that of becoming one and silo young ing t m ,getting a medal or Parliament; if things had en of gone, as then seemed right, in the first two years [of the war], that is what I should be now.' Instead, he had recently finished Brideshead Revisited and was subsequently to write his war trilogy. If one takes seriously the idea that Waugh might in fact have given up writing to become a war hero and an MP (and it is not very easy to do so), then gratitude is due to Earl Mountbatten. Waugh's disillusionment with his military career stemmed from his removal from active service with Lord Lovat's Special Service Brigade. His campaign against this humiliation included a meeting with Mountbatten 'on terms so cordial as to be almost affectionate'. But Mountbatten, who was on the point of going away for six weeks, offered no help. And Waugh surprisingly, seems not to have held this against him.
There is a tendency to regard kidnapping for ransom as a new and characteristically vicious twentieth century crime. This is not true of Sardinia. The first recorded kidnap for ransom took place on the island in 1477, but it is believed to have been a common crime much earlier than that. For at least 1,000 years, the desperately poor nomadic shepherds of central Sardinia have retied upon crimes of one sort or another for their basic livelihood: cattle-stealing, robbery, extortion, and kidnapping. Over the centuries, the police have managed to limit most of these crimes, but not kidnapping, which has proved particularly lucrative and much less risky. It was only after kidnappings had increased dramatically in number during the 1960's — thirty-three were carried out in three years — that a parliamentary commission was set up to investigate its causes and propose solutions. The result was a poignant document which more or less admitted that nothing could be done short of a total transformation of Sardinian society. The commission was particularly emphatic that a major police drive would have no useful effect. Any excessive display of force, the commission said, would only further alienate the Sardinian population which, after centuries of foreign oppression and exploitation, had learnt to despise the authority of the state, 'The uudeniable efficiency of the police of the Roman Empire, of the Aragonese government and of the recent authoritarian government between the world wars did not root out crime in the Barbagia [the wild area of central Sardinia in which the kidnappers lurkr the commission said, taking what one can only call a broad historical view. The commission dwelt at length upon, the character and way oflife of the Sardinian shepherd, which had hardly changed during recorded history. 'The severity of his environment and the roughness of his relations with his own relatives makes him introverted and not always sensitive to the sufferings of others,' 'His conception of life is not that of someone who has grown up in the warmth of family affection. The Barbagia shepherd recognises above all his immediate needs, which are identified with those of his flock. The lack of fodder, due to recurrent drought, increases the urge to commit crimes, especially for those shepherds forced to move from one end of Sardinia to the other, according to an ancient nomadic ritual.' Hitherto, Sardinian kidnappings have attracted relatively little attention, because the victims have tended to be obscure local industrialists or landowners, who, when released (and a distressing number have been killed), have preferred to remain silent about their experiences. The kidnapping of the Schild family, if ills confirmed as such, is a new and disturbing departure, revealing a degree of sophistication which one-would not normally associate with Sardinian bandits. One can only fear deeply for their safety. The 1969 report proposed the expenditure of some 1 million over a period of twenty years and state expropriation of about 1,000,000 acres of grazing land with a view to getting the shepherds to settle Own in one place and behave responsibly. Whether or not the Italian government has been implementing this programme, it appears so far to have had little effect.
The Spectator's literary editor, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, has been planning, with his customary meticulous care, a holiday in Italy this autumn. Wishing to take advantage of state medical insurance while travelling on the Continent, he telephoned the Department of Health to ask for the appropriate form to fill in. He got through to the right office, from which he learnt that DHSS civil servants were involved in some form of industrial action. '1 am afraid that the official who deals with the letter "W" is not here', he was told. There is so much in a name.
Alexander Chancellor
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