Notebook
T ast February the New Statesman pub lished a story claiming that the late Airey Neave had been involved in conspiratorial discussions with former secret service agents about `the possibility of violent action if necessary to prevent Tony Benn becoming Prime Minister'. On Sunday, Mr Adam Raphael, the Observer's political correspondent, wrote that doctors treating Mr Benn in the Charing Cross Hospital suspected that he might have been a victim of arsenic poisoning. Never in recent times has a politician been so flattered. Mr Benn, so it was reported on both occasions, was sceptical about these allegations. As well he might be; for, as Ferdinand Mount pointed out in the New Standard this week, there is nobody on the Right in politics who would have any interest in seeing him dead. Mr Benn is the stuff of which Tory victories and Social Democratic triumphs are made. There is, however, another possible explanation for Mr Bern's unfortunate illness, which is his extraordinary addiction to tea. He normally drinks about 17 pints of tea a day and has somvirnes admitted to drinking as much as 25 pints. According to our medical advisers, this is a dangerous amount. Eight large cups of tea are enough to give a person an overdose of caffeine, with the following possible consequences: increased excitement, trembling, difficulty in sleeping, faster heart beat, ringing in the ears, and flashes in front of the eyes. A London professor of pharmacology says that excessive consumption of caffeine can even lead to 'maniacal behaviour', for there is evidence that it restricts the blood vessels in the brain. Tea is often given to racehorses as a stimulant, but never in the quantities consumed by Mr Benn. 'if he were a racehorse,' says a vet, 'he would foam at the mouth'. But there is another facet of Mr Bern's tea addiction which could be even more important. Our professor says that if a person constantly fills his stomach with enormous amounts of liquid of any kind, there is a risk that he will not get the vitamins and minerals he needs. This, he adds, can cause polyneuritis, the very complaint from which Mr Benn is suffering. Why, therefore, were the nurses allowing Mr Benn to make cups of tea in his hospital bedroom?
The election to the Dail of two convicted IRA terrorists last week was greeted in England with understandable alarm. It appeared to be yet another symptom of the IRA's growing popularity among Irish Catholics. But what most commentators failed to note at the time was that the IRA's successes in the election were due not so much to popular affection for its own candidates as to the deadlock between Ireland's two major political parties. Nine H-block candidates stood in the Irish election. Between them they polled a total of 43,000 votes. Compare this with the 31,000 votes in just one Ulster constituency which were given to Bobby Sands last April, and the IRA's achievement in the Republic appears rather less glamorous.
If ever an honour were uncontroversial, it was the knighthood conferred last week on William Rees-Mogg, lately editor of The Times. Indeed, it comes as something of a shock to find that he has not always been a knight, so chivalrous has he always appeared. But journalists of Mogg-like integrity do not accept honours while they are still in positions of authority, so we have had to wait until now for him to assume his rightful place in the orders of chivalry. Which reminds me. I keep being told a story about his successor as editor of The Times, Mr Harold Evans. It runs as follows. On his first day as editor, Mr Evans did something which had never been done during all the 14 years of the Rees-Mogg editorship. He took off his jacket and hung it over the editor's chair. It was a symbol, perhaps, of a new and more energetic approach to the job. But there was a devil at work in Gray's Inn Road. While Mr Evans was rushing about. organising things, the jacket was stolen. It was subsequently found in the basement with its pockets emptied. I hope the story is true. I am sure someone will let me know if it is not.
T was telephoned last week by Sergeant I Watson of Kennington Road Police Station. He was in something of a state. The Spectator had announced the recovery of two elaborate marble fireplaces which were reported missing last February from the splendid Edwardian entrance hall of the Greater London Council. The Kennington Road police, said this unhappy officer, were in charge of the investigation into their disappearance, and anybody finding them should have got in touch immediately with the station. If the fireplaces had been found without him knowing about it, he was in a very embarrassing situation. Alternatively, 'if they had not in fact been found, the Spectator was in a very embarrassing situation. Well, the embarrassment is more ours than his, but we are not unduly ashamed. While we are still not able to identify the whereabouts of these fireplaces, our innocent little paragraph last week has exposed some extremely devious goings-on at County Hall The story begins in 1968 when the GLC, deciding it needed a more modern image, allowed its Architects' Department to vandalise the entrance hall by putting in a false ceiling, covering up the mosaic floor, and boarding up (or so it was assumed) the fireplaces which had been presented to the people of London by the Italian government after the first world war. In front of where the fireplaces had stood were placed illuminated fish tanks, which were in their turn removed last February when restoration began. No more fish tanks, therefore, but — surprise, surprise — no fireplaces either, just yawning gaps in the chimney breasts. Everyone at the GLC expressed astonishment. What had become of them? A search of the building revealed nothing. It was all most perplexing. But, so it now turns out, there was really no mystery at all. A secret GLC report has revealed that the Architects' Department knew all along that the fireplaces had been taken away. The building contractors of 1968 had actually received written instructions to dismantle and remove them. And rumour has it that one of the directors of the building firm, behaving perfectly properly, took these rejected artefacts home with him and installed them in his house. Throughout its various tamperings with the entrance hall, the Architects' Department has behaved very oddly indeed. It has never sought planning permission for changes to a 'listed' building; it has not even consulted the GLC's own Historic Buildings Division. Worst of all, it has ordered the removal of the Italian fireplaces and then pretended to be amazed by their disappearance, involving the whole GLC in a humiliating coverup. Under the circumstances, I feel entitled to inquire whether it has been giving Sergeant Watson the assistance he deserves — or whether it has made a mug of him as well.
Granada Television is providing us with insights into the morality of businessmen with a new series of Sunday morning programmes. The programmes are about Business Decisions, and a number of leading industrialists are asked to react to a number of hypothetical questions. Next Sunday's programme will reveal that a majority of them share the following views: it is all right to fiddle expenses; it is all right to provide customers with prostitutes; it would be reasonable to dismiss a personnel director who organised 'gay liberation' conferences in his spare time. None of these conclusions come as a great surprise, but I think the participants should be congratulated on their honesty.
T turn on the wireless on Saturday, and 1 what do I hear? It is a woman declaring that! have won 'first prize for race and class prejudice' because of something I wrote in last week's Spectator. `With statements like that,' she adds, 'it's no wonder the Spectator has a low circulation.' The speaker turns out to be Tessa Blackstone, Professor of Education at the University of London. She appears to have interpreted my realistic assessment of Buckingham Palace's attitude to class — an attitude, I suggested, which excludes working class whites from positions of authority in the Palace as much as it excludes the blacks or the browns — as some sort of indication of my own attitudes. I must not blame her for this, as it is a journalist's duty to be clear. But I disagree with her on one thing. If the Spectator were as racialist as she likes to think it is, i have no doubt that it would sell many more copies.
Alexander Chancellor
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