. THE

SPECTATOR'S.

NOTEBOOK

Those who heard Harold Wilson in the House of Commons this Wednesday, expecting him to be murdered, heard instead someone who sounded more like an executioner. When Wilson sat down, the Prime Minister's face was as flint. Some of the Opposition leader's demands were obviously extremely difficult to answer. Wilson is convinced that the estimate of the cost of entry to the balance of payments of £500 millions a year, which appeared simultaneously in a number of newspapers, came from a government source, who ought to know. I have heard the name of Rippon whispered in this context among Labour members. No mention of this figure appeared in the White Paper; and there was no response from the Government front bench when Wilson demanded a Select Committee to examine and to report before October on this single point of the cost of entry on the balance of payments.

Lord George-Brown (and Mr George Thomson, for that matter, although his role in the Common Market negotiations is critically described by senior Labour men as no more than that of a messenger) can take little comfort from Wilson's account of the Labour Government's demands for New Zealand, made in the course of the European tour carried out by Wilson and Brown early in 1967. Again and again, according to Wilson, it was George Brown, who demanded that the transitional arrangements for New Zealand should extend towards permanency and cover at least a generation. This was was also the position apparently adopted by the Labour cabinet; and if so, it makes nonsense of the latest utterances of Roy Jenkins, Lord George-Brown and others that the present New Zealand terms (which fall far short of those demanded by Labour when in office) would have been acceptable to a Labour Cabinet.

Tame affairs and passionate conflicts

Whatever view one takes of the Common Market debate, and of the Tory and Labour parties, one thing is quite clear: the Labour party one-day conference at the Central Hall, Westminster, last Saturday

was an altogether more serious affair than the Prime Minister's question-and-answer session in the same place three days earlier. I do not believe that it is the desire of the Tory party managers to emasculate their conferences and other public meetings; but they are almost invariably tame affairs. Mr Heath is perfectly capable of standing up to a tough debate; and it would not damage the Tory party to be seen to be seriously and deeply divided on great issues such as Europe. The open display of passionate and intellectual conflict within the Labour party onSaturday was impressive.

Chairman, and speakers

Ian Mikardo's handling of it could not, I think, be faulted. It occurs to me that he would make an admirable Speaker — which is more than Mr Selwyn Lloyd seems to be doing. It was odd at the time that he was preferred over Mr John BoydCarpenter — I would have thought that memories of Suez and of Mr Lloyd's part, as Foreign Secretary, in the collusion between Britain, France and Israel, would have made him persona non grata so far as the Labour party was concerned. But 'the usual channels' decided he was acceptable, the Tories officially preferred him to Boyd-Carpenter, the House voted accordingly — and, if the first year's experience is anything to go by, the wrong choice was made.

Potential power

By common consent of those present at the special Labour conference, John Mackintosh's was the best of the proMarket speeches, although those who saw his performance on their television sets thought that he, like Michael Foot for the anti-Marketeers, shouted too much. This left Peter Shore's performance, good botl live and on the box, as the most successful, although there was a defeated dignity about both Michael Stewart and George Thomson. Shore was very powerful: his was the voice of a potential Prime Minister, and was received as such

Distressed intellectuals

Harold Wilson, predictably, both infuriated and distressed the pro-Market intellectuals. Their dismay at the end of his speech reminded me irresistibly of a similar dismay (in some cases of the same men) at the end of Hugh Gaitskell's great and famous speech against the Common Market at the Labour conference at Brighton in 1962. This time people like Peter Jenkins of the Guardian were furiously angry, saying, "shabby, shabby," Bernard Levin, writing to much the same effect in the Times, says, "suppose the Labour party was once again led, as it has not been since 1963" (when Hugh Gaitskell died) "by a man both wise and steadfast. Imagine the sense that would have come out of Downing Street. Imagine the inspiration that could be offered to a people setting out on the great European venture. Imagine being able to vote Labour without a clothes-peg on one's nose." Hugh Gaitskell's steadfast wisdom, the sense and the inspiration that would have come out of a Downing Street occupied by him, would have steered this country away from the present European venture for good and all. Where Harold Wilson and his colleagues are to be faulted is when they broke faith with Gaitskell. They went wrong with their application in 1967, when they set aside the clearly unacceptable conditions laid down by Hugh Gaitskell in 1962. What the Labour party now is doing, led by Harold Wilson, is getting back on to its proper course.

Cheese and wine tasting

The Spectator's ' Jac' crosswords are being very well received. Entries for Jac 2, which I see has been won by Lady HartDavis, came from as far apart as Las Palmas, Canary Islands, and Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and one entrant added this note to his entry: "1 invite Jac to spend a non-stop session of three hours consuming the cheeses in this crossword with the French wines in its predecessor and after that displaying a smile that is neither drunken nor imbecile." Incidentally, if you do want to comment on the puzzles, I suggest you write separately, to make sure your remarks are seen.

Comic wisdom

Marty Feldman is a comic who I see, according to the Daily Telegraph, said at the end of his evidence in the Oz trial, of the judge, " He's a boring old fart." As a comic, Mr Feldman bores me, although he seems to have been quite a funny fellow in the witness box. He said, for example, "I think the Bible is un-Christian." Das Kapital is not Marxist, nor The Republic Platonic. The Koran is, of course, Buddhist. It is in this sense that Marty Feldman •is a comic.