SHARED OPINION

Never in the field of human conflict has one man taken on so many RAF pilots

FRANK JOHNSON

Peterborough, in the Daily Telegraph, reported this week that, as well as farmers, road hauliers and others, the Prime Minis- ter had just upset RAF Battle of Britain vet- erans. He failed to join the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Westmin- ster Abbey service on Sunday to commemo- rate the Battle of Britain's 60th anniversary.

The chairman of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association, Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris GCB, KCB, CB, DSO, OBE, was quoted as commenting, `People were expecting Blair to come. He is the Prime Minister, after all. Sadly I don't think he is particularly interested in history. Even if he had come, he would probably have worn a sweatshirt.'

It is easy to imagine Mr Blair's first thoughts in reply to such adverse criticism: `This government will not give in to this anti-democratic pressure from such an unrepresentative section of the electorate as an extreme group of Poujadist ex-Battle of Britain pilots who are holding the nation to ransom. And this Prime Minister will not have a dress code for Westminster Abbey imposed on him. The vast majority of the British people wear little else but sweat- shirts, especially in Westminster Abbey.'

Over to Mr Andrew Marr. He is in his first month as BBC political editor. The Daily Mail accused him of being something of a propagandist for Mr Blair at the start of the fuel crisis. (He likened Mr Blair's response to that of Mrs Thatcher in her numerous strug- gles with the nation's enemies.) If the Mail is right, Mr Marr would have gone on the nine o'clock to assure us that 'there has undoubt- edly been intimidation by flying pickets, made up of ex-Battle of Britain pilots, and it has caused the National Health Service to go on red alert. But Mr Blair is not going to give in to them. Among other things they are demanding that he stop wearing sweatshirts at Westminster Abbey services. His view is that no prime minister could submit to such an indignity. This is Mr Blair's biggest test since becoming Prime Minister and he intends to stand up to the pilots in true Churchillian fashion.'

Perhaps, through his earpiece, Mr Marr would have been advised by one of the bul- letin's editors, 'Great stuff, Andy. The job's going really well. But just a reminder: in the Battle of Britain, Churchill was against the Luftwaffe pilots, not the RAF ones. But it's an easy mistake to make in a tense situation like this. Give my regards to Tony and Alastair.'

Probably Mr Blair would have been encouraged by the initial reaction of his focus groups who told him that anyone named Foxley-Norris, and with a lot of let- ters after his name which don't seem to spell anything, must be 'out of touch with ordinary people'. But by the following morning the tabloids would have convinced him that the protesters had a point. Mr Blair would call a press conference to reas- sure us. 'We are a government that listens to ex-Battle of Britain pilots and people with double-barrelled names and DSOs unlike the Tories. Of course we are pre- pared to look at this again in the November budget statement. In any case, I already had plans to attend the Westminster Abbey service next year to mark the Battle of Britain's 61st anniversary.'

Obstreperous reporter (not Mr Marr): `But they're not having one next year, Prime Minister. They only have one when the year has a nought on the end.'

Mr Blair: 'Exactly. That was typical of the Tories. It was always New Labour's inten- tion to have a Battle of Britain anniversary service every year.'

As result of this crisis, Mr Blair's popu- larity would collapse in the opinion polls. But it would then recover. It always will.

Concerning Hamlet, about which I wrote here last week, a few further observa- tions. Anyone can pronounce, with a suit- able air of profundity, that it raises large questions; but most people who do so do not know the answers. They find the play hard to understand, and cannot explain what it is 'about' but do not wish to admit it. They therefore fall back on those big ques- tions which it allegedly raises. Sometimes literally they fall back on the questions. The American scholar Harry Levin's book on Hamlet is called The Question of Hamlet. He works out that Hamlet's text contains more questions than any other Shakespeare play. He implies that not for nothing does the play actually begin with a question — the guard Bernardo's cry as he approaches the battlement: 'Who's there?'

Levin continues:

This at first glance would seem to be no more than a sentry's perfunctory challenge. With the second line and its counter question, we become aware that the original speaker was not the sentry on duty but the nervous officer who has just arrived to relieve him. As the exposition develops, we come to realise that the change of guard constitutes a symbolic prologue, a re-enactment of those dynastic changes which frame the play.

In reality, very few of us 'come to realise' any such thing. But I have a soft spot for the admittedly sometimes cumbersome thoughts of American academics. We Britons mock; but they have helped us a lot with our joint literature. Levin becomes even weightier: "'Who's there?" . . might also be the query of a metaphysician scanning the void for evidence of God.'

That is as good a theory as anyone's. It is, however, as politicians and Downing Street spokesmen sometimes say, 'pure speculation'.

But what of the play's little questions? There is one to which, I think, I have now found the answer. Many of us must have wondered why Hamlet is so rude, or at least patronising, to his beloved friend Horatio in telling him, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' The rest of the play does not suggest that Horatio is not up to it intellectually. In act one, scene one, the guard Marcellus says of the ghost, 'Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio'; the pos- sible reason being that ghosts were addressed in the scholar's language, Latin.

Later, Hamlet says that Horatio is one `whose blood and judgment are so well commingled that they are not a pipe for fortune's finger to sound what stop she please°. Finally, the dying Hamlet entrusts Horatio with telling his story to the world.

Could such a man as Horatio have not much of a philosophy? A pondering of the text, in the Arden edition, convinces us that the answer is no. Those of us who have thought that Hamlet was patronising Hora- tio misunderstood the emphasis of the words in the passage. It should be understood as: `There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

Hamlet was using 'your' in the way that instructed people did until the 19th centu- ry, and as some older cockneys still do. Gladstone and Disraeli would have spoken of 'your Turk' or 'your reform'. The Lon- doner might still speak of 'y'Spurs'.

None of which should suggest that I understand your Hamlet.