DIARY
CHARLES MOORE 13 efore the current argument began, I held no very strong views on Sunday trading. Ditto, fluoridation of the water, site value rating and whether or not we should have proportional representation for elections for the European Parliament — all of them matters of legitimate public interest no doubt, but not, as it happens, of great interest to me. But after hearing the arguments over the past months, I know where I stand. I have come to long for Sunday trading with an inordinate passion. This is simply because the case advanced by its opponents is as exaggerated, spe- cious and canting as it is possible to be. Bishops have argued that the warp and Woof of British life will be rudely torn apart (if you can tear warps and woofs). They make pseudo-Burkian speeches about so- cial cohesion and spiritual refreshment. Tory MPs go round complaining of the upset caused to their 'traditional suppor- ters' and Lord Stockton has tottered for- Ward yet again to throw his equally tradi- tional spanner in the works. Yet all that is Proposed is that the Sunday trading which is at present forbidden (some is already authorised) be permitted. The bad effects will be that a few residential areas will be noisier on Sundays than they are at present and a few workers will find that their job in Practice entails Sunday working against their will. The good effects will be to create More part-time work, to make life easier for a great many people who find it difficult to shop in normal hours, and probably to expand the range of consumer choice. On balance, the good effects outweigh the bad: that is all. As for the religious argument, I cannot see how bishops who doubt the Incarnation can expect us to get Worked up about the Fourth Command- ment — the day of rest is obviously less 411Portant when most people work a 40- flour week than it was when everyone laboured throughout the hours of daylight tor six days out of seven. It is typical of the depressing British attitude to religion to regard this sort of question as vital. In countries where piety is much stronger, Sunday trading flourishes happily. It is °ItlY our mixture of puritanism and sloth Which makes the British think that there is something holy about everything being closed. Our local church in north London stands right beside a large market which is ,exempt from existing Sunday restrictions. There is nothing more enjoyable than emerging from the morning service, plung- ing in among the stalls and buying quanti- ties of God's gifts to prepare a large lunch.
The he policemen who beat up five youths in Islington two and a half years ago are known to have come from one of three has which were on duty that night. There nas been a 30 month investigation, with no definite result except that the Home Secretary, Mr Douglas Hurd, has kindly offered to see the boys and apologise to them, perhaps hoping that the sight of a politician apologising will plunge the ,youths into amazed silence. Mr Colin Sutton, Assistant Commissioner, is quoted as saying: 'We cannot prosecute people in a criminal court without proof, and for precisely the same reason we cannot in- voke disciplinary measures either'. Of course he is right, but why can he not obtain proof? Obviously the policemen who were on patrol that night are covering up, but the police investigating — who have been furnished with quite detailed descriptions including accent, height, col- our of hair and so on — are supposed to be capable of detecting things. It is useless to protest that it is hard to detect things when those involved are uncooperative: it is precisely because criminals tend to be uncooperative .that detection is necessary. If a lack of proof is really the reason then the police are very, very incompetent.
If one has to work at Wapping, besieged by pickets and bemused by one's new surroundings, it is understandable that one becomes more defensive than usual; but that defensiveness may still be mistaken. In recent days, the Times has been guilty of a number of evasions and suppressions. The paper failed to report the part of the speech by Mr Kenneth Clarke, the employ- ment minister, in which he criticised Mr Rupert Murdoch for his bad 'public rela- tions'. Mr Clarke's speech was an impor- tant news story, indicating the cringing quality of Mrs Thatcher's new men, and should obviously have been fully reported. The Times also refused to publish Peter Kellner's regular column because he attacked Mr Murdoch in it. By writing this attack, Mr Kellner was clearly trying to challenge the Times to drop him. Surely it would have been smarter to publish and keep an embarrassed Mr Kellner on the books? Now there is an argument in Wapping about reviewing the new book on the Hitler diaries. The literary editor has already included it in his published list of `interesting books', but the book has not yet been sent out for review. The Times's reputation would benefit if it were to review the book, choosing a reviewer who had nothing to do with the paper. All these mistakes seem to have been made out of an excessive deference for Mr Murdoch's feel- ings. It may feel in Wapping as if he is the unseen presence behind every VDU, but the truth is that he runs a vast empire of which the Times forms a small part, and he spends a high proportion of his time in aeroplanes. Mr Murdoch likes saying what he thinks: this does not mean that he expects it to pop up verbatim in his newspapers. Proprietors become bogey- men partly because of the status which journalists accord them.
Isee on ITN News that cruelty to animals is `up by one third' on last year. This is an example of how statistics are used to show anything. What has happened is that the number of complaints made about cruelty to animals has risen by one third. The number of animal cruelty con- victions has gone up from 1,889 to 2,112. Neither statistic proves anything at all about the level of cruelty to animals. They may show that the RSPCA has more branches and telephone lines so that it is easier to complain to it. They may suggest that people are more alert to cruelty to animals, that there are more informal organisations of animal cruelty vigilantes than in the past, even that there are more people who simply like complaining about their neighbours. In fact, there might even be a reverse relationship between levels of cruelty and levels of reporting — the less tolerated is the animal cruelty, the more each example of it is noticed.
The New English Hymnal, just pub- lished, has been much more restrained than most in its revisions of old hymns. As the introduction puts it: 'Well-known and popular hymns have rarely been amended, though we felt it desirable to abandon the description of our Lord as "lone and dreary".' In fact, the rewriting of anything does have one advantage, that it makes the reader look at the original text attentively. There are occasions when the change of one word will update to reflect the facts of modern life. Thus, 'Where there's oysters, there's poverty' (Pickwick Papers): for `poverty', substitute `wealth'; or 'One of the low on whom assurance sits like a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire' (T. S. Eliot): for `hat', substitute 'turban'. But frequently something much more drastic is called for. Ben Jonson says: 'Thou lookst like Anti- Christ in that lewd hat'. A truly modern version would have to render this as: `You're a dead ringer for South Africa in that headgear which exploits and degrades women'.
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