Notebook
Within minutes rather than hours of Mr Wilson's resignation on Tuesday the air of Labour politics at Westminster was fetid with intrigue. How many candidates for the succession there will be cannot, of course, be settled until the beginning of next week, but horse-trading on behalf of the principal contenders was the order of the day by noon on Tuesday. Mr Callaghan's supporters fear that he may well be dished by a combination of left-wing suspicion that he is a coalition-monger and right-wing dislike of his slavishness towards trade union leaders. Of the two wings of the party Mr Callaghan rightly fears right-wing disillusion more than left-wing discontent. It is being suggested, therefore, that he will privately offer the Chancellorship to Mr Roy Jenkins—who has himself no serious chance of the succession. This would serve the purpose of pleasing the right by rescuing Mr Jenkins from the Home Office, and at least placating the left by removing Mr Healey, for whom they have conceived a particular repugnance since his assault on them last week.
The left—and the Tribune group in particular—are not, however, to be disregarded. If they stick together they will constitute a formidable element in the calculations of every candidate. What was, on the face of it, immediately surprising was their initial preference for Mr Foot rather than Mr Henn, who carried their banner for so long. The reasoning appears to be this: in their campaign against the Government's economic policy, which opened with large scale abstention in the public expenditure debate, Tribune members have been exceptionally worried by the fact that the trade union movement has been, by and large, on the Government's side. Now, Mr Foot has standing with the unions, and especially with Mr Jones, while Mr Benn has none. The belief prevalent by lunchtime on Tuesday that Mr Jones would prefer Mr Foot to any of his opponents explains the sudden conversion of the left to the cause of a man reviled by them as a traitor only days previously.
It is hard to imagine the shock which Houdini's colleagues must have felt at Tuesday's cabinet meeting when he calmly handed out copies of the press statement announcing his resignation and then departed to see the Queen. But apparently, they kept sufficient control of themselves to continue with routine cabinet business. What seems clear, is that the hopes of some leading Tories—and, of course, city businessmen—that the change of Labour
leadership could lead to a national coalition government have no prospect of early fulfilment. The Labour cabinet is adamantly against it.
Among several records which Mr Wilson can claim for himself there is that of 'most litigious Prime Minister.' In the number of libel actions brought against the press— and once against a pop group—he is without peer: the list of writ-receivers has included the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Private Eye and the International HeraldTribune.
In view of the magnanimous remark in Mr Wilson's resignation statement on Tuesday that he forgave all 'our press friends', can the Daily Mail now expect that his current action against them will not be pursued ?
The three-cornered battle between the British and Russian Post Offices and the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation has now been joined by the Architects, Engineers and Building Industries Committee for the Release of Soviet Jewry. It will be recalled that the British Post Office were refusing to compensate the Russell Foundation for letters sequestrated by the Russian authorities, although as signatory to the Universal Postal Convention they would seem to be obliged to do so.
The British Post Office, however, claim that they are relieved of this responsibility by Article 41.2, of the Convention when the letters are 'seized under the legislation of the country of destination'.
Now comes reinforcement from the Building Industry Committee for the Release etc. They have dug up a decision of the West German Court in Frankfurt, where a Mr Izchal Katz successfully sued the German Post Office for not compensating him for letters confiscated by the Russians. The same excuse of Article 41.2 of the Universal Postal Convention was trotted out by the German Post Office. The material confiscated in this case was: various declarations of the United Nations on Human Rights, Race Discrimination and a Hebrew textbook. All pretty subversive stuff the Russians thought. The Frankfurt court thought differently and, in finding against the German Post Office, they made clear that domestic law cannot override international treaties and that the Russians are obliged to go to arbitration in any cases of dispute.
What is particularly significant in this case is that since we joined the EEC, the court decisions of any member country may be cited as precedent in British courts. The GPO have, wisely, reconsidered their position and are now seeking legal advice.
Anyone daring seriously to claim that there is a monster in Loch Ness—an unidentified species of living creatures—is, like a man libelled, at once exposed, if not to hatred, then most certainly to ridicule and contempt. Such a fate has befallen Dr Denys Tucker, a former scientific officer at the British Museum. And, the burden of proof being so onerous, the only way he can clear his self-mutilated reputation is to produce the wretched creature to the jury of zoological authority.
Dr Tucker has held the view for many years that there may be monsters in Loch Ness and possibly in other deep lakes, of the plesiosaur family, marine reptiles believed extinct. He lost his job at the British Museum in 1960 and is still fighting a lone struggle to establish his theory and re-establish his reputation.
In wishing him well it is apposite to recall the rather similar experience of Professor Smith, a South African ichthyologist, who spent years trying to prove the existence of the coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct for millions of years. Professor Smith's claim to have identified a coelacanth caught off East London in 1938 was ridiculed and rejected by the scientific establishment. But after fourteen frustrating years, without any support, his search (finally) met with success when he tracked the species—`old four-legs'—to its natural habitat off the Comores Islands.
Royalty, it seems, never loses its magic, even when it is personified in an orangetanned Princess Margaret, just back from Barbados. Whether or not she and Lord Snowdon are to get a divorce was still quite unclear on Tuesday night, but this did not prevent the popular newspaPers from leading on the story to the virtual exclusion of Harold Wilson from their front pages. Clearly hereditary position is still regarded as more important than power in this country, as Len MurraY found out on Tuesday night when he, together with everyone else, was made to wait in his seat at the end of a performance of Hamlet at the National Theatre to allow the Princess and her party to leave first.
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