SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

GEORGE HUTCHINSON

Since he became Prime Minister, Mr Heath has received some 13,000 letters of congratu- lation. There hasn't been a postbag to equal it at No 10 since Churchill returned to office in 1951. I can't say that the secretarial staff —known collectively, for geographical reasons, as the Garden Room—are daunted. They are merely overwhelmed. With such a volume of correspondence, all of it so agree- able, and tales of his romantic attachment to this or that lady who comes his way (Mrs Katherine Graham isn't the first and won't be the last), Mr Heath will not be in want of diversion from the cares of office.

Mr Jenkins's prudence

With Roy Jenkins as deputy leader, I would expect the Labour party to draw closer in outlook to their political friends across the North Sea. He has always seemed to me to be rather in the mould of the successful Scandinavian social democrat. He is, I think, a man of reason and discernment. He is also a man of great personal charm, witty without being hurtful, amusing but humane. The idea—put about by some of the more boorish or clottish members of the Labour party—that he is too grand by half is merely silly. He isn't grand in any objectionable sense at all: he is simply a man of style and good taste with a capacity for enjoyment, friendship and intellectual adventure.

He so arranged things, I may add, that his own house in Ladbroke Square, which he had been letting while he was at 11 Downing Street, was free for him to return to on the morrow of electoral defeat. That's prudence for you.

Only connect

As head of the Post Office, Lord Hall has an uphill struggle which few people could take on without lasting damage to their health and well-being. The latest telephone nonsense in my own home occurred when my wife was trying to ring her sister in Hertfordshire. As nothing happened when she dialled the number, she spoke to the operator. Oh, said the operator, you can't dial that number. Oh, but I can, said my wife, and I've been doing so for more than a year. In the hour that followed she was told flatly, and none too politely, by the supervisor and then by the superintendent that STD wasn't yet operating in that part of the country and no such number existed. My wife then dialled her sister once more—and was instantly connected.

The Whitehall specials

Few people in Whitehall, let alone the general public, have any understanding of the role intended for the business brigade who are now being recruited into the government service (five have already been appointed and a further nine selected). Exactly what each one of them will do has still to be determined, but the brigade will apparently have the status of auxiliaries rather than principals, and in their dynamic application of scientific management tech- niques to the public weal they will all (thank heaven) be subject to ministerial check and veto. Mr Heath gave his colleagues in the shadow Cabinet a disserta. tion on it all at a dinner last December, and I have his words before me.

There was (he said) a widespread expecta- tion that the Conservatiyes, in _contrast to the Labour party, would be able to come to grips with public spending. To carry conviction on this point there would have to be more than just declarations of intent, particularly since some Conservative policies—for instance improvement in urban transport, a continued presence east of Suez, and more help for those in genuine need—clearly involved increased public spending. Conservative policy leaned to- wards greater provision of community requirements through private enterprise, voluntary effort and the price mechanism, and less through state operations. For example (he said), they wished to see a substantial revival in the private housing sector, a halt, at the very least, to the erosion of private pension schemes, and a shift in the industrial research effort to the private sector. If their intentions were to be developed into effective programmes, they would have to challenge long-established official assumptions and viewpoints.

It was this approach to the activities of government (Mr Heath continued) which had opened up the argument for drafting business managers of the highest calibre into Whitehall on the basis of real responsi- bility for the management of clearly defined programmes and the achievement of defined policy goals. But (he warned his colleagues) without full civil service cooperation there would be little progress.

I wonder if all the mandarins in Whitehall, and their many minions, will prove as co- operative as Sir William Armstrong?

Praise and blame

Ever ready to give credit where due, I salute the Pakistani High Commissioner for smartening up the front of his offices in Lowndes Square and setting his little garden to rights. The place was looking a mess, as I remarked in this Notebook some time ago. The High Commissioner can again look his neighbours in the eye.

But no credit to the Oxford University Press for clothing the Prime Minister in such unsuitable garb as they have run up for the cover of Old World, New Horizons. This small but important book (price 10s) brings together the Godkin Lectures, three in all, which Mr Heath delivered at Harvard in 1967. They form the most comprehensive statement so far available of his outlook on the world. The cover, sad to say, has no dignity and is altogether at variance with the 'weight' of the content. Among other infelicities, the author's name is printed thus: edward heath. The oup would do well in future to stick to the styles which norm- ally distinguish their productions.

Goodbye to all that

Three cheers for Sir Alec. And one in the eye for Sir Val. It was Sir Val Duncan's committee (on the Foreign Service) which produced the proposal for a one-page passport with a plastic cover. On coming to office, Sir Alec (as one would expect) has killed it. Sir Val will still be able to travel the world, on behalf of Rio Tinto Zinc, with a passport that is, and looks, worth having.