Spectator's Notebook

MR. ROY JENKINS is to be congratulated on taking the unprecedented step of recom- mending a posthumous free pardon for Timothy John Evans. I do not know, of course, what attitude his Civil Service advisers took to this departure. In the past there is no doubt that the idea of creating a precedent of this sort filled them with the direst forebodings, but perhaps they now feel that, with the death penalty abol- ished in all but name, the Evans affair will re- main an isolated oddity; for when a man is in prison the question of a free pardon scarcely arises: he is simply (like Alfie Hinds) set free. Maybe it was this, too, that prompted the Home Secretary to tell the House of Commons, when announcing his decision, that 'this case has no precedent and will, I hope, have no successor.'

I wonder, for although the death penalty is no longer with us, there is still the case of James Hanratty, hanged for the A6 murder of Michael Gregsten in 1963. The key witness in this trial was Valerie Storey, who identified Hanratty in the second identification parade, having totally failed to do so in the first. Miss Storey, still alive, as also is the man who, in the view of a number of private individuals who have been taking an increasing interest in this case, really did the killing. Obviously there can be no ques- tion of a man being charged with a single- handed murder, of which another man still stands convicted. But a posthumous free pardon for Hanratty—if this could be shown to be fully justified—would utterly transform the situation. Perhaps the Evans pardon might have a successor after all.

Cold Comfort As a non-churchman, I find the report by the British Council of Churches' Working Party on Sexual Morality somewhat disturbing. For one thing, the worthy men and women who wrote it seem to have been sadly misinformed. Quoting with approval two 'unbreakable rules' of Dr Alex Comfort—'thou shalt not exploit other persons' feelings and wantonly expose them to an experi- ence of rejection; thou shalt not under any cir- cumstances negligently produce an unwanted child'—the Churches' report concludes: 'we be- lieve they would rule out most of the extra- marital intercourse which actually occurs.' Well, well!

But what on earth are the Churches doing signing a concordat with Dr Comfort anyhow? The search for a universal code of morality which everyone will find acceptable and observe all the time is doomed from the start: there is no such code. Surely it's far more sensible to accept that the traditional Church view of sexual morality upholds one set of values, that the gospel of Fr Comfort and the Rev Way- land Young proclaims another, and that both are valid. In any case, it's a crude error to suppose that if rules are broken they serve no purpose: on the contrary, they remain a very necessary frame of reference. Stability is as important for the sinner as for the saint. Which- ever side of the tracks you are at the moment, you still need to know where the tracks are. But when the tracks start moving, heaven (or Dr Comfort?) help us.

Hampstead and Heath At Blackpool last week Mr Heath in effect looked back fifteen years, to the victorious 'set the people free' slogan of 1951, to find his theme for the future. He could have done a great deal worse. But whether this can possibly seem as relevant today as it did in that far-off age of ration books and austerity (warned Mr Wilson in his 1951 Huyton election address: 'Don't change your ration book for a dole card') I am rather more doubtful. Certainly at the present time I doubt whether many people in this country consider themselves not "free'—and in so far as they are not they are probably glad of it anyway. But in two or three years' time, who knows? Belatedly catching up with my House of Lords Hansard reading, I came across a few days ago the maiden speech of Lord Kahn of Hampstead—Professor of Economics at Cam- bridge, former disciple of Keynes, one of Mr Wilson's life peers and an influential voice in Labour's economic councils—in the debate on the Government's July measures. In it he urged the Government to make 'a reality, as opposed to a possible mockery, of the word "redeployment,"' by the statutory control of manpower :

of course, if employment exchanges were to operate at all rigorously on the basis of national priority, steps would have to be taken to pre- vent their being by-passed—in other words, to ensure that, subject to exception, all engage- ments took place through or with the assent of em,loyment exchanges.

You have been warned.

Fit to Print?

As my colleague Donald McLachlan implies on page 513, the British press is notoriously bad at reporting one subject : the British press. While Mr Cecil King was flying back to London to deal with the Daily Mirror's labour troubles on Monday, an address he was to have given on the troubles of other peoples' newspapers was read out in absentia in Liverpool. It was also re- ported at some length in The Times and the Guardian. That is, I assume Mr King made only one speech. This was not immediately apparent from the reports themselves.

In the Guardian, for example, under the bold heading 'Profits—but no thunder expected from The Times,' we read that Mr King doubted whether 'the clap of thunder would ever be heard over Printing House Square again . . . it is doubtful whether an editor of The Times will ever again nobly put his paper at commercial risk by coming down heavily on the unpopular side in some great controversy which funda- mentally divides the nation. . . . The Times has had to surrender its most precious moral asset, its absolute independence.' No mention of the Guardian.

Oddly enough, however, none of this thunder about The Times appeared to have reached the ears of Auntie herself. The version according to Printing House Square was headed: 'Press cir- culation battle starting—Mr King,' and the one and only reference to The Times occurred in the second paragraph. This read:

An expanding Times would certainly com- pete with the Telegraph and Guardian, and possibly with the Financial Times. The reper- cussions could affect the Sunday Telegraph, which is sustained by the Daily Telegraph.

And in the Telegraph itself? Nary a word.

Tailpiece True dialogue from Blackpool last week.

Tory Central Office Person to Hotel Recep- tionist: I'd like some sandwiches to take up to my room.

Hotel Receptionist : Sorry, we haven't got any sandwiches.

TCOP : Well, let me have some bread, then. HR : Sorry, we haven't got any bread either. TCOP: 1 think I'd better have a word with

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the Manager.

HR: Sorry, the manager doesn't speak to guests.

NIGEL LAWSON