The sorcerer's apprentice
i °hn Calder .heGrain of Wheat Lord Longford i (Collins £4.00). Nmost extraordinary thing about Lord , Ivjleford's third volume of autobiography, cillieh brings his unusually varied life up to Ite, is not the name-dropping and the th'filldlike desire to be noticed and liked, but , e very un-British overstatement and lack of 'theserve. Hardly a word of modesty interrupts a"e flow of this exercise in self-adulation. We je not only told how well he accomplishes ',!Is tasks, whether official or self-appointed, pt every other opinion is dragged in to add ,Ls praise to his own. It is incredible that a n so lacking in the essential public school 144alities of tact, understatement, public inhludesty and unobtrusive good taste should ,nave had a prominent, even a distinguished l'areer of public and political service. 1610 read The Grain of Wheat is to be con:hilally embarrassed. Events of importance, "ether international crises or routine meetof the Labour cabinet, are described ,61"arelY in terms of the part Lord Longford a„Yed in them, and how well he was regarded how often congratulated by his leagues. He does not exaggerate his role, D''t insists continually on his popularity and roreStige at the time he played it. His "dilemLr When he hoped to be invited into the our Cabinet after the 1964 election is , i(lulical: whether to stay at his country seat Possibly miss the appointment (as it was Oconceivable that Cabinet ministers would 7 invited on the telephone") or sit alone all heekend in his Chelsea flat and risk a :10iliation? Such dilemmas must have faced 1h41137 Public men, but only Frank Longford or the temerity to describe them. The effect ,h this naive and childlike approach to events I n4os the effect on the reader of demystifying, otitlohly the author himself, but almost all the er well-known and public personages isuaged so lovingly through the book. History Threduced to the level of School Cricket. iqiere are no real cads, only allies and those ' L,c'sell to play on the other team. Lord , ,i'llgforcl, is a nice person, who reduces wYthing to a game, usually good natured, !re friend and foe alike admire his batsship, and and are extensively quoted in prais 61Nlevertheless the political chapters retain Neir interest, partly because the author writes better than most politicians, and largely use his desire for universal popularity has phed him into meeting all the protagonists k4our time, all leaders of disputes, all wellPe,T'vn commentators on particular issues. "alps, for this willingness to present all Vvs without himself being influenced, his hs'ok is best when he deals with Irish iivtZ)blerns. He is too open and bland to give the 11,Pression that his understanding goes deep, "t the tweedledum-tweedledee similarities of
the opposing Ulster attitudes gain in comprehension for that reason in his account.
If you can drink tea and discuss St Paul with Ian Paisley, chat with and advise prime ministers and cardinals over Eire and exchange views with O'Neill, Craig and Faulkner without change of urbanity or temperature on successive pages, it becomes clear to the reader that the problems of Ireland (as most problems of the world) are childish in essence and need a child's mind to comprehend them.
His efforts at prison reform can only be commended, although one would be more impressed if his choice of prisoners to visit and correspond with was less newsworthy than Ian Brady, Myra Hyndley and the Kray twins. His concern is no doubt genuine but he cannot help self-congratulation, nor go out of his way to attract personal attention. It is for this reason that his anti-pornography campaigns give a real clue to the man.
His interest in scandal and sexual mores is hardly underdeveloped, but reading this book has convinced me that he is not as abnormally obsessed by a self-denied sexuality as I had once supposed, as were Ruskin, Peter Howard and other well-known puritans. It is the limelight that draws him to take an interest in pornography, and it Was his eminence as a socialist peer that caused such a motley collection of late-Victorian puritans, cranks and misfits to gather round him against the 'permissive society.' One senses that occasionally Frank Longford, who achieved notoreity and success himself by moving to the left in politics in the 'thirties against the grain of his class, is occasionally discomfited by his right-wing, reactionary entourage on this issue, because he does admit that permissiveness, tolerance and civilised values are closely connected and he cannot disavow his own past work in liberal reforms.
But the 'anti-porn' bandwagon was too good a thing to let pass by, and he is better known to the public now as "Lord Porn" than for any other activity. It is clear in this book, as in his much ridiculed report, that he has never thought deeply about the subject of pornography and human sexuality, and I do not think he is overly obsessed by it. The issues are complex and go to the very roots of what man is about, but Lord Longford is not willing to examine the complexities, nor listen to other argument. In public confrontation he makes debating points in an undergraduate manner. He is most dangerous in giving a public respectability to people and organisa tions that would otherwise attract little support. Certainly the very dangerous changes in the laws of obscenity recommended in the Longford Report, later echoed in the Indecent Displays Bill which died with the last government, could have created an impossible position for writers, artists, booksellers and even ordinary people in no way.,concerned or interested in pornography: a sitrUation where ignorance, Prediudice and philistinisrn in its worst forms could have directed our cultural climate. Longford could have been the innocent and naive carrier of the infection. Perhaps rather late, he would have understood what it is to be a sorcerer's apprentice, playing with forces you do not understand. Longford finally emerges, for all his Irishness, as a Wodehousian English eccentric, apparently unaware of his own oddness. It is tempting to speculate what he would have become had he been bred a German Junker or an Italian Count. As a German he would probably have been sent to an English speaking country as Ambassador, an amiable apologist for Hitler, never really knowing about Nazi crimes, or else in charge of the deportation of Jews, fondly imagining that they were going to holiday camps. As a Latin, it is difficult to imagine him at all, perhaps better not to try, because Latin politics have no place for the naive and quixotic. His final grace, which he can disguise neither in person nor on paper, is a fundamental decency which enables him, sometimes dangerously, to see more good in people than evil. He is unaware of malice, still a schoolboy playing games to win, an egotist who feeds his own popularity and fame and, like a power addict, needs ever more attention to sustain him. In Britain, with its basic love of eccentricity, he will probably do little harm because he is intuitively understood. It is a pity that he does not turn more of his energy into better causes, as a concession to the humility he claims to seek to reduce his anticipated time in purgatory.
John Calder is a director of the publishing firm Calder and Boyars.
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