Who dunnett?

RADCLIFFE REVEALED AUBERON WAUGH

Strip-cartoon rights in the Radcliffe Report are at present vested, like most of the good things in life, in the Crown, but the first action of a libertarian government must be to de- nationalise them. I am not even sure that it would not have been better to publish it as a strip-cartoon in the first place. How can we talk of a well-informed democracy when some of the best information is printed in 288 pages of small type and costs £1? Many old age pen- sioners must be deterred by the price alone. Only a strip-cartoon could do justice to the rich drama of how the Daily Express published something which had been common knowledge for forty-seven years and shook the Govern- ment until it squealed.

We open our narrative in the house of Mr Ronald Grierson, a reformed banker who now sits on one of the Government's innumerable committees. George Brown is there. It is the witching hour of ten o'clock, when—a fact known only to his closest friends—the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs changes from being a nine-stone weakling behind his office desk and becomes—wham! -SUPERMAN.

Meanwhile, Sir Max Aitken, chairman of Beaverbrook Newspapers, is at a mysterious function called 'the Trevor Evans Pinner,' in the Garrick Club. A waiter comes and tells him that 'a Mr George Brown' is on the tele- phone. Sir Max takes up the narrative: . so I left the dining room, and I thought that there would be someone to show me a box, but I could not find anyone and I went down to the porter's box on the ground floor and asked where Mr George Brown was ringing from, and they did not know .

The telephone was off the hook, but eventu- ally Sir Max gets through, and there follow what are described as 'a few pleasantries.' Sir Max: 'We said hello to each other in a pleasant way.' Then the story becomes confused. Mr Brown swears that Sir Max said that Derek Marks, editor of the Daily Express, was by his side. Sir Max denies this. At any rate, Sir Max is left with the impression that a D Notice is being breached by something in the Glasgow edition of Tuesday's Daily Express, and that if he kills the story now he will be given a much juicier one to print later. Super- man had not intended to give any of these impressions, and when he heard that his orders were being disobeyed 'he was in a great rage and he was threatening all sorts of things. He had even gone as far as to say he would ring up Cecil King as chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association and complain that Sir

Max had broken his word.' History does not relate whether his dire threat was imple- mented.

Now we flash back to the incidents behind this drama. Mr Robert Lawson, a former student, first reported to Mr Angus Mac- Pherson of the Daily Mail that cables were being vetted now as they had been quite legally for the last forty-seven years. He and his assistant, described as 'a Miss Celia Hadden' (or later as a Haddon, a Haddow and a Hutton —no doubt the Mail employs several of each). were cunningly put off by a barefaced lie from the Ministry of Defence that there was no truth in the story. They only learned that it was true when Colonel Sammy Lohan, secretary of the D Notice Committee, telephoned to ask them not to use it. That is how the D Notice system works. However, they agreed not to use it when they misunderstood Colonel Lohan to say that there was a specific operation involved, which was not the case, although Colonel Lohan may have given that impression by say- ing that it was so.

But Harry Pincher of the Express was a tougher nut to crack. Sammy decided to appeal to the mother in him. When they sat down to their fateful meal at L'Ecu de France in Jermyn Street, Sammy said: 'My God, I have been under terrific pressure this last forty-eight hours.'

Mr Pincher: You need a drink.

So they had one, under the nose of a 'security wallah' who happened to be sitting at the next table. Mr Shinwell was not happy about this lunch at all.

Mr Shinwell: How long did this lunch last?

Mr Pincher: I would have thought—I know it began at five past one—I suppose it lasted until about a quarter to three.

Mr Shinwell: That is a long time for lunch, is it not?

Mr Pincher: I usually take that time.

Mr Shinwell: Did you have a good lunch?

Mr Pincher: Reasonable.

Mr Shinwell: Quite a long conversation?

Mr Pincher: A long conversation. Mr Shinwell: Did you drink much during the period?

Mr Pincher: I had a glass of white wine to begin with, and the' Colonel had a small dry Martini, and we shared a bottle of red wine between us and that was the sum total of our lunch drinks.

Mr Shinwell: You have a clear recollection of what happened?

Mr Pincher: Indeed.

At the beginning of lunch Sammy produced two D Notices, whereupon Harry said he kirw them by heart and Sammy put them aside with a colloquial expression. In fact, colloquial ex- pressions sometimes intrude in the narrative, where they are represented thus: It is often hard to know when these dots hide the true identity of 'M,' state secrets, colloquial ex- pressions or just indicate where a speaker has run out of words.

Constant reference is made to something called the old pals act, much more binding than any Official Secrets Act or D Notice.

Under this act, Mr Pincher had already sup- pressed a story about trainee MI5 agents who had accidentally kidnapped a civilian from a London street. He also sat on the fact that the Windscale atomic reactor, when built,

turned out to be as porous as a sponge atId had to be rebuilt. So he left Sammy promising that he would present the official case to his editor under the act.

When they spoke later on the telephone, and Colonel Lohan asked when the editor would

make a decision, Mr Pincher replied (my italics): 'My dear boy, get off the telephone; I must get on with my writing; you are holding things up.'

Now, 'Get off the telephone' are words which any of us might use to a secretary of the Ser- vices, Press and Broadcasting Committee who

was annoying us. But, my dear boy! When one thinks of the fun we had in the Express when we discovered that Tam Galbraith had written to the spy Vassal] as 'My dear Vassal(' . . .

The mystery of what the fuss was all about remains. Mr Brown, who takes a fine, inde pendent line on most things, offers this ex- planation: 'I was told that photographs had been taken of vans which would be identified as to whom they belonged. That is what really bothers me about the whole thing.'

There we are. Here are my recommenda- tions: (1) that Sir James Dunnett, the chairman of the D Notice Committee, should resign from all his posts and be appointed Governor of Tristan da Cunha, where he can spend his days posi- tively vetting the natives; (2) that D Notices should in future be com- posed by the Poet Laureate, when appointed, and sung in all government churches to the tune of the 'Nunc Dimittis'; (3) that George Brown should be made the subject of a D Notice; (4) that Colonel Lohan should be appointed chairman of the D Notice Committee, which

should be reconstituted as a luncheon club, comprising: (a) Chapman Pincher (henceforth referred to as Mr . . .), (b) George Brown, (c) the Trevor Evans, (d) at least one Miss Celia Hadden, Haddon, Haddow or Hutton for feminine interest, (e) the 'security wallah' from L'Ecu de France as food secretary, (f) a negro, and (g) Lord Radcliffe, Mr •Emanuel Shinwell and Mr Selwyn Lloyd, with their invaluable secretary, Mr D. J. Trevelyan, as honoured guests.