Notebook
Some readers may recall that about two years ago the Spectator started a campaign for the restoration of the old counties, several of which were wiped out and many others mutilated in the local government reform of 1974. The reform had been carried out in the name of greater 'efficiency', but writing in these pages five years later, Christopher Booker claimed that its only practical result had been'to increase bureaucracy, to encourage extravagance, and to diminish efficiency'. I suspect that there were readers, even among those who shared our regret at Peter Walker's insensitive re-drawing of the map of Great Britain, who felt that our campaign was motivated Principally by nostalgia and that our arguments about the cost of the 'reform' were of only marginal validity. I can only hope that such doubters, if they exist, will have read an article published last week in the Guardian about the new bridge across the Humber, which is to be opened by the Queen on 17 June. They are not likely to have done so, for the article was contained in one of those supplements which appear to exist only for the purpose of attracting advertising revenue, but it was a very interesting article allthe same.The Humber bridge, as the article recalled, has sometimes been described as the biggest electoral bribe in history. Its construction was promised by Mrs Barbara Castle, then Transport Minister', while she was campaigning in a Hull by-election in 1965, and the go-ahead was given in 1969, by which time the estimated cost of the project had risen from £13 million to £23 million. Construction work was desperately slow and so beset with difficulties that by 1976 there was serious talk of cancelling the whole thing. Not only had the estimated cost risen to more than £50 million, but a new survey showed that earlier estimates of the amount of traffic likely to use the bridge had been about six times higher than what now seemed probable. Why, then, was the project not cancelled? This is what the Guardian said: 'There was by this time a new and compelling reason for pressing on Local government reorganisation in 1974 had welded the north and south banks of the estuary into a separate county. How could the citizens of the newly created Humberside possibly develop a true sense and spirit of identity, and regard each other as neighbours, when the estuary kept them apart? So work went on.' Before Mr Walker's reform, of course, the citizens of Humberside had no problems of identity; they were proud natives of either Lincolnshire or Yorkshire. But because of Mr Walker, we have had to build the longest single span suspension bridge in the world at a final cost of about £100 million: a bridge which, by common consent, is not strictly necessary for any purpose other than that of making the citizens of Grimsby and Hull feel a little closer together.
When the new American Ambassador, Mr John J. Louis, arrived in London last weekend, I read in The Times that he had long coveted the post, that he and his wife had been coming regularly to Ascot for years, and that he likes 'the style of life' over here. Somewhere else I read that, by coming to England, he felt he was returning to 'the source'. Putting these little titbits of information together, I feel more than ever convinced that the principal purpose of the United States Embassy in London is to provide distinguished Americans with a rare opportunity of living out their fantasies about this country. Oddly enough, they never seem to be disappointed, even though the job consists not only of Ascot, grouseshooting, dinners with Lord Carrington and audiences with the Queen, but also of duties designed to demolish such fantasies, such as meetings with trade unionists and Labour politicians. Indeed, when I was introduced to the handsome and extremely amiable Mr Louis this week, he had just concluded a long conversation with Mr Eric Heifer without any apparent loss of good humour.
This may be a book which, once you have picked it up, you cannot put down, but it is very difficult to pick up, as it weighs nearly four pounds. It is called From My Life, it is 526 pagesjong, it is printed throughout on shiny art paper, and it is the autobiography of Erich Honecker, the leader of the German Democratic Republic. A more boring and unsellable book it would be hard to imagine — the chapter headings include 'Trust in the strength of the people' and 'Close conections with sport' — so who could possibly want to publish it, particularly when the publishing business is undergoing such difficulties? The publisher is in fact Mr Robert Maxwell, who writes to his shamein an introduction that 'in the struggle for peace and disarmament it [East Germany] plays an increasingly important part.' The climax of the book is a 16-page 'dialogue' between Mr Honecker and Mr Maxwell himself, of which the less said the better. It could, however, be argued that, at £10, this lavish volume, containing numerous colour photographs, is amazingly cheap. How can the Pergamon Press afford to publish it?
As Wojtyla recovers, Wyszynski is dying: it has been a momentous week for Poland. Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, now 79, has been Primate of Poland for 33 years, and during that time he has played the kind of political role that no churchman has played in Europe since the days of Wolsey and Mazarin. Only last March he attended a secret meeting with the Prime Minister, General Jaruzelski; the result was agree.: ment by the government to accept an independent trade union for farmers. When Wyszynski became Primate in 1948, the baldachino over his monstrance was carried by ministers of the Polish state. Yet only five years later, he was banished to a monastery for his unbending opposition to a Stalinist government. When, in 1965, he was welcomed back to Warsaw as a hero, he said something which could well serve as his epitaph: 'It is now more important to live for Poland than to die for Poland'. More than anybody else, Wyszynski has known how to combine courageous opposition to the Communist state with qualified support for it when its own impotence threatened to provoke 'brotherly aid' from the Soviet Union. 'We do not defend ourselves against the charge that the Church is a rebel,' he said in 1965. (He even declared once that robbery from the state was not a crime.) Yet whenever worker unrest has reached dangerous proportions, he has appealed for order. Last August, his caution annoyed the Gdansk shipyard workers, who declared: 'The Madonna is on strike'. But he subsequently regained the full confidence of Solidarity and will die knowing that both they and the Communist government will regret his passing.
I hope you admired as much as I did the review by Bill Deedes in last week's Spectator of the John Wells farce Anyone for Denis? It is rather hard on Mr Deedes that he should presently be so talked about as the suspected recipient of the Denis Thatcher letters in Private Eye, for he is, after all, editor of the Daily Telegraph and has enjoyed a most distinguished career in both journalism and politics. But he is also a modest man and a sporting one, which explains why he agreed to review the play for us. Furthermore, he never lets one down. When I telephoned to thank him for the review last wek, I found he had left the country. Where had he gone? To Portugal — for a golfing holiday with Denis.
Alexander Chancellor
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