DIARY
Generations of students have been mis- led by Ivor Jennings's confident statement, repeated several times in his Cabinet Gov- ernment (3rd edn 1959), that the dissolution of Parliament is never discussed in Cabinet, being a matter for the prime minister alone. On the contrary, there is abundant evidence that it has been — still is — dis- cussed. The facts were readily available to Jennings before his relatively early death at 62 in 1965. But the practice varies. What usually happens now is that the prime min- ister assembles a committee of favoured ministers, placemen and apparatchiks to decide the date. This is then presented for- mally to the Cabinet for ratification. Never- theless, ministers can dissent if they wish. They rarely do. But what if they became less complaisant? Can Cabinet overrule prime minister? After all, in the 19th centu- ry dissolution was not for the prime minis- ter solely but for the Cabinet collectively to decide. During the Maastricht debates in 1992-93, the Whips threatened recalcitrant members with an election several times. Could Mr John Major have called one then? As one minister put it, 'We wouldn't have let him get halfway down the Mall.'
There is much excitement among Cam- bridge historians about a forthcoming authorised biography of Herbert Butter- field (1900-79) by Mr Paul Higgins of New Hall. Butterfield, who became Master of Peterhouse, was one of the most powerful influences of the postwar era. As much as Michael Oakeshott of Caius, he made Con- servatism intellectually respectable. He accomplished this chiefly through three books, The Whig Interpretation of History, Christianity and History and Christianity, Diplomacy and War. They all had the merit of brevity. Butterfield confessed himself surprised by their effect, for he was himself a Yorkshire Methodist and, politically, an Asquithean Liberal. His one known vice was smoking cigarettes. He was a teeto- taller who, on his deathbed, asked for a glass of champagne, to know what it tasted like before he died. The impression he con- veyed was of stern asceticism tempered by kindly eccentricity. But it seems he was not like this at all. He visited prostitutes in London. In his papers there is much porno- graphic material, whether composed or col- lected by Butterfield; perhaps both. And he intrigued endlessly to deny preferment to graduate proteges of his rivals, Geoffrey Elton of Clare and Sir John Plumb of Christ's. Nothing very surprising about that, you may say: academic life everywhere is full of such factionalism. But it appears Butterfield went further. He conspired to have promising undergraduate pupils of his academic rivals marked down in their Cam- ALAN WATKINS bridge degree examinations. If he really did this he is, I am confident, frying merrily away in whatever circle of Hell the Wes- leyans have allocated to crimes against innocent and blameless young persons.
It is with trepidation that I cross knives and forks with the redoubtable Dr Digby Anderson. He has a tendency to treat food as a kind of assault course which separates men from boys and girls from chaps. Last week he recommended dicing with death in the manner of Mr Michael Portillo's own SAS. Untypically, I feel it imperative to issue a health warning. He wrote of Istan- bul: 'You will not often get good drink at the little stalls where the best food is.' The `little stalls', I feel compelled to point out, also stock the finest bacteria. While it is usually safe enough to buy melons, nuts, bread and sticky cakes from street vendors, anything involving lamb or chicken should be shunned like . . . well, like the plague. My son, who is strong both physically and constitutionally, worked as an engineer in the city. Once he was overcome by hunger and, knowing the risks, devoured a chicken kebab. He was laid low for a week, thought he was at death's door and continued to suffer from feverish night sweats for over a year. His older senior colleague nearly died from the same cause. The best food is to be found in restaurants, chiefly though not exclusively fish and mainly along the Bosphorus. Turkish wine is quite palatable `It's really about the little people. Why should they know about my private life?' too and freely available, though the form of Mohammedanism largely adhered to by the Turks forbids the fermented juice of the grape. Accordingly they drink either the excellent Efes beer or the spirit raid diluted half-and-half with bottled water. Evidently getting drunk is all right by Allah provided it is not done with wine.
It was on the day he set up the inquiry into the Ely Hospital, Cardiff, under a then obscure lawyer-politician, Geoffrey Howe, that I lunched with R.H.S. Crossman. "Course,' Dick said with his customary genial brutality, 'the only people who'll do these bloody awful institutional jobs are either sadists or queers.' I expressed assent and suggested that the trick was presum- ably to spot the sadists and give the jobs to the queers instead. Dick responded with a flatteringly puzzled expression, as if he had been presented with a startlingly original thought. After a delay of some seconds he shook his head vigorously. 'No,' he said, `can't agree with you there, I'm afraid. The queers give us much more trouble.' From recent widely reported cases, it seems Crossman was right. In one of his works J.S. Mill has a section entitled 'Persons Exercising Disciplinary Functions in Soci- ety'. His point was that in any civilised country there were certain jobs, such as prison warder, which had to be done by somebody but which no normal person would want to do. His solution was that those appointed should be carefully chosen and, afterwards, their activities closely supervised. In our society today, neither of these obvious tests is satisfied.
0 n the one occasion I met Sir James Goldsmith he struck me as charming, men- acing and barking. When I took out a pack of Gauloises cigarettes he asked for one too. This I duly gave him. He proceeded to puff away at it with every appearance of satisfaction and enjoyment. It was at around this time that he was trying to buy the Observer. Indeed, he gave a dinner to which he invited leading contributors and members of the staff who, perhaps happily, did not include me. I was, however, provid- ed with a full account afterwards. Before every guest there had been placed a whole open bottle of fine old French-type wine. My colleagues considered this a gesture of the utmost vulgarity, demonstrating — if further demonstration were needed — Sir James's utter unfitness to own such a paper as the Observer or even a paper of any description with the possible exception of the Daily Mail. Told of this response, he was puzzled and a little hurt. He said, 'But I thought all journalists liked to drink.'
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