Spectator's Notebook
'We will fight on the beaches . . . we will fight in
the streets.' Twenty-four
years on, the louts at the seaside and the hogs on the roads have written a sar- donic footnote to Winston
Churchill's defiance. No
one seems to know what
to do about the 'Mods' and the `Rockers'—the new mobility, as Vincent Mul- chrone called them in a fine phrase in the Daily Mail. Certainly I don't. When the Easter risings took place most of the blame was fastened on the Weather, cold, wet, and wretched. But the Whit- , sun holiday was sunny and warm. Almost every- one tries to understand; almost everyone fails. It is the utter pointlessness of so much of the trouble that is disturbing. The soldier's endless dirge comes nearest to it: 'We're 'ere because we're ere because we're 'ere because we're 'ere.' And so on. It is probably baying at the moon to sug- gest that all of us join in a conspiracy of silence. know why the television cameras feel they have to be there: it's news. But no one doubts that their presence swells the crowd, and puffs up the Chicken hearts of the demonstrators. Last week I ree°mmended that the BBC should be abolished. 1 would be prepared to suspend sentence if they Would give a lead here. But of course they won't.
have a private complaint, incidentally, about "r. Simpson, the chairman of the magistrates at Margate. Next week I intend to review Sir Roy Welensky's book and I had called my review `Sawdust Caesar.' In his (admirable) comments Dr. Simpson has laid prior• claim to this title. I shall have to think of something else.
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