A Spectator's Notebook

In the Woodpile loNcE had lunch with an African Negro in a Victoria Street pub (which, just to make the whole Reche,rche more charming, was in those days one of the few places that would let a room to Sir Oswald Mosley for meetings); he told me a lot about his father. Afterwards, walking down the street together, we came to a side turning; he was just about to step off the kerb under the wheels of a passing taxi when I caught his arm and checked him. The taxi-driver swerved, shouting as he did so (but in a very friendly way; there had been no serious danger of an accident), 'Watch it, Samba!' I don't think I have ever been quite so embarrassed in my life; but if there was any embarrassment on the part of my companion, he certainly showed no sign of it.

1 was reminded of this odd and unimportant vignette at. Lancaster House, of all elegantly unlikely places, on the day that the Kenya Con- stitutional Conference opened. For the African in the story was Mbiyu Koinange, and he has come a long way since then. Things being what they are, 1 suppose I run serious danger of being misunderstood if I describe him as the nigger in the woodpile; but certainly he was the rock on which the Kenya Conference very nearly foundered before it had begun. There we all were, on the soft, royal-blue chairs of the main con- ference room at Lancaster House, admiring the Veronese on the ceiling (or Sheikh Mafood S. Mackawi, depending on the degree of serious- mindedness with which we approached the pro- ceedings), when horrid rumours began to circu- late. The fourteen elected Africans. it seemed, weren't coming.

Why not? Rumour swiftly (and surprisingly accurately) provided the answer. Mr. Mboya and Mr. Ngala, the leaders of the group, had asked for a second 'adviser' to sit with them throughout the conference; they already had Mr. Thurgood Marshall (formerly the chief lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and the leading Negro• advocate of integration before the United States Supreme Court), but wanted another. There was no objec- tion in principle to a second adviser, but the name proposed immediately gave the Colonial Office palpitations. Mr. Koinange, though a free man in Britain, would be interned under the special regulations if he ever went back to Kenya; he did go back for a few days not long ago, as a matter of fact, but under strict surveillance and for the sole purpose of visiting his aged and ailing father.

Consternation. Agitated whispering. Hurryings to and fro. Eventually, the conference settled down, with fourteen empty chairs grouped round one corner of the great rectangle (a television camera lingered long on the lonely place-card that read 'Mr. Tom Mboya'). Mr. Macleod, looking, I thought, not quite his usual composed

self, came in; he made his way to his place, pausing to talk to delegates as he went by (dark faces first; Mr. Macleod knows what o'clock it is).

'First,' he said, with only the merest sigh of double-entendre, want to welcome those of you who are here.. .' Then he explained the posi- tion of the Government, causing an intolerable state of confusion and curiosity among those who did not know to whom he was referring when, without naming Mr. Koinange, he referred to those 'who have a heavy responsibility for the unhappiness in Kenya.' Then he hoped that, hav- ing made their protest, the African elected mem- bers would see fit to join in the conference.

So do I. The whole business is one more illustra- tion of the extent to which 'face' has now become the arbiter of political decisions in this country. (The deadlock in the Cyprus negotiations, which may yet wreck the whole settlement, is another example.) For matters were promptly made worse when, after an uneasy compromise had been worked out between Mr. Macleod and the African elected members, whereby Mr. Koinange would be permitted to attend some of the conference sittings as an observer only, the representatives of the European members objected to his being allowed in at all. The negotiations continue. But the brutal truth is that if the African'elected mem- bers finally decide not to take part in the con- ference, there is no point at all in holding it. The method by which Kenya moves towards self- government, and the speed at which the move is made, have yet to be determined; but without at any rate the consent, if not the active approval, of the Africans, any scheme will be dead before the signatures on it are dry. If the price of African- elected participation in the conference is the admission of Mr.. Koinange, it will have to be paid.

Mr. Blundell and Group-Captain Briggs have insisted that it must not be paid; but Mr. Blundell, at least, will not take his protest to the point of walking out. There is a parallel in Sartre's Crime Possionnel; when Hoederer states the terms on which his Proletarian Party will join the coalition cabinet, his terms are outrageous and excessive. The Conservative leader refuses them contemptu- ously and prepares to leave; but the wily Monarchist leader ('It's just like my father's palace,' he says languidly, when somebody throws a bomb through the window) knows that they have no choice but to accept. Events are on Hoederer's side; and they are on Mr. Mboya's-- and Mr. Koinange's. And Dr. Banda's, for that matter.

I think the days of the County Hall dictatorship are numbered, and if the Piccadilly affair has helped to number them, some good will have come out of it even if Mr. Cotton's scheme goes through. Sir Isaac Hayward and his chief of staff, Mrs. Freda Corbet, are piling up the sand- bags to keep out the sea; but I think there is more water coming over than they have reckoned with. A long time ago, my dear, departed friend Taper

(Heaven rest his spotted soul) told the story of the Labour caucus's determination to stamp out any vestige of democratic activity within the majority party at County Hall, Soon afterwards the notor- ious resolution that forbade Labour Councillors to dissent in public from .party decisions was passed, and there was a rather merry row. At one point Mr. Hugh Jenkins. who sits for Stoke New- ington on the LCC, wrote to the Spectator, courteously and gently disagreeing with Taper's estimate of the seriousness of the situation at County Hall. He said, among other things

It should not he lost sight of that under the 'oligarchy' at County Hall. Labour has given London extraordinarily good, efficient and clean government for many years. Tammany Hall should not he mentioned in the same article with a group of people whose only fault is that they are a little set in their ways and perhaps inclined to fear overmuch that newcomers will disturb the many fine things they are doing and upset the excellent arrangement, they have made for so long for the good of London and of Londoners.

P seems, however, that the 'group of people' whom Mr. Jenkins had in mind have acquired other faults since he wrote that letter. For he has just circulated to the members of his local Labour Party a document in which he says of the 'oli- garchy' (Taper's word. Jenkins's quotation marks):

The LCC Labour Party has grown apart from the mass of the movement; it has become obsessed with its own importance and halluci- nated by visions of its own perfection. Sometimes it does not act as a Socialist body should act. It needs going over, loosening up. revitalising.

And Mr. Jenkins gives some examples of what he means.

. . . I tried to get Minutes of the LCC Labour Group circulated, At least. I thought, if our comrades are not allowed to come here and see what we are up to, we ought to he able to report to them from the basis of an agreed record approved at each meeting and held in common. I failed . . . and we still go on the basis of a note held in the Chief Whip's office at County Hall which is not even read to the following meeting.

My italics. The italics in the next example are mine. too.

In May. 1958, in accordance with the restric- tive practice of the LCC Labour Party I sent in a question to the Chief Whip asking for it to be put down on the Council Agenda. . . . It did not arrive on the Couhcil Agenda, nor even on that of the Party meeting. The Chief Whip told me that the question was unnecessary and, any- way, it was a matter which [another member] specialised in am/ there was no need for me to interfere. . . . I . . . pressed the matter so that it went to the Policy Committee (the LCC Labour 'Cabinet'). I received a letter from the Chief Whip . . . telling Inc that 'there was no cause for anxiety' and that 'the House of Commons was the right place for such questions to be put' [the question was about H-bombers over London]. I felt very strongly about this matter and 1 there- fore sent the question direct to the Clerk of the Council, asking him to put it down on the Agenda of the Council.

The action the Clerk then took is unknown to me. Whatever happened, the motion certainly did not appear on the Agenda . . . the role of the Clerk of the Council in ibis matter leaves room for question.

And finally, a more light-hearted example of the state matters are in at County Hall. . . my wife represents Battersea South on the LCC and . . . on one occasion we were treated as one unit. I pressed the Clerk of the Council to give us an undertaking that this would not occur again and that Mrs. Jenkins and 1, while we both remain members of the LCC, will always be treated as two separate Councillors representing separate constituencies. The Clerk has categorically refused to give this undertaking!

It is related that, just after Mr. Hemingway had demonstrated to a group of correspondents in Civil War Madrid that the trajectory of the Fascist guns ensured that their shells must pass far over the correspondents' hotel, a direct hit was scored on the floor above, causing the ceiling to collapse on top of them. Mr. Hemingway, not a jot put out, waited until the plaster had settled, and then asked coolly, 'Well, gentlemen, how do you like it now?' I might ask Mr. Jenkins the same ques- tion. -There must be something very seriously wrong at County Hall if the Clerk accepts from the Labour oligarchy instructions as to what he shall put on or leave off the Council Agenda. What is wrong is made clear from the correspon- dence between Mr. Jenkins and Mrs. Corbet, after he had written to The Times. Mrs. Corbet said crisply, 'After careful consideration, the Policy Committee are still of the opinion that it was improper of you to write to a newspaper or any other publication expressing views contrary to the decision of the Party. They are hoping that you will be able to give an undertaking that this will not be repeated.'

But as I say, I think the days of that sort of thing are numbered, and high time too Mr. Jenkins firmly refused to give the undertaking asked for, and his circulation of this frank docu- ment strengthens my belief that the caucus is bluffing, and that its bluff has been called. The `Adenauer' performed by Sir Isaac may only put off the day of reckoning for a short time. and when he goes there is little chance that the highly unpopular power of Mrs. Corbet will survive. With a majority as huge as the Labour one on the LCC, there is an inevitable and ultimately irresis- tible movement towards democracy within the party; all the signs are that the movement is gathering momentum.

BERNARD LEVIN