Westminster Corridors
Every station of life has duties which are proper to it. Those who are determined by choice to any particular kind of business are indeed more happy than those who are determined by necessity. But both are under an equal obligation of fixing on employments which are useful to themselves and beneficial to others.
Within the ranks at Whitehall is a body of Civil Servants which lives by this precept. They are the Information Officers of the various Departments who, rightly enough, see as their first duty the imparting of information. Into the ranks of this worthy group, however, has infiltrated a Mr Joe Haines about whom I have had occasion to speak in my Spectator before. He is the chief informatiori officer of the Prime Minister.
This Mr Haines, who far from being a Civil Servant is a former member of that branch of Scribes whom so much he now despises, appears to have a very disordered intellect. He has, it is said. "a special relationship with Mr Harold Wilson" and has, furthermore, been heard to swear that he has never in his life "met so kind and generous a person as Mr Wilson."
Now we have at Westminster (roaming these corridors almost with the total freedom of the Palace and with many privileges besides) a band of Scribblers known as the Lobby Journalists. Mr Haines takes the view that there is no species of Scribes more offensive and more incurable than these Lobby men. Accordingly, he seeks to impart to them as little information as possible and, if pressed, storms out of their meetings with an impressive crack of his jackboots.
Only the other day, one of these reporters (one, mark you, with an especially low brow) inquired after the health of a Mrs Marcia Williams, a virtuous lady who is responsible for the flower arrangements at Number Ten. Mr Haines foamed at the mouth, spat out the Mitcham Mints (a confection to which he is addicted) and said that the Lobby had no right to ask such questions.
He had, he fulminated, taken legal advice from Lord Goodman and was under instructions to say nothing about anything. The latest score in the Test match in the far West Indies, he vouchsafed, was "Mrs Williams caught for two and Mr Wilson round the first nine holes in a hundred and eight before retiring with a broken leg."
When the Lobby men demanded to know if Mr Wilson had broken his leg on a slag heap, Mr Haines replied that he was not allowed to "reclaim" upon this matter and he burst into floods of tears. How could he be expected, he whimpered, to sit there and listen to his beloved Prime Minister being slandered when he had no form of redress.
When he heard of these emotional and disturbing scenes, Mr Wilson (who though not the man he was, has certainly not lost all his political acumen) summoned the faithful Mr Gerald Kaufman, the Ruffian MP from Ardwick, and demanded of his bald aide why he had recommended the unstable Mr Haines for a position of such importance.
The wily Mr Kaufman suggested that the White Commonwealth should be restarted. Mr Wilson puffed on his pipe and cunningly surveyed the flower arrangements all about him. Of course, he thought to himself, my old contemptibles — the group of sycophants who had served him so well in his former Premiership. Naturally, for reasons best not discussed, Mr Walter Terry and Mr Terry Lancaster would have to be excluded for the moment; but that was a small price to pay for lasting peace in our times with the Press.
So that very night, in secret and heavily disguised, a meeting of the new White Commonwealth was held at Downing Street. Mr Wilson was in convivial form and Mrs Williams looked radiant as she and Mrs Wilson passed round the Marmite soldiers. I cannot tell my readers what was said, as Mr Haines swore all of us to absolute secrecy.
Tom Puzzle
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