Westminster Commentary
Tapping the Leak
SLOWLY, slowly, Cape St. Vincent to the north-west dies away; the strains of 'I do like to be beside the seaside' become ever fainter; the Labour Party sternly frowns upon the plan to hold its conference next year in Edinburgh (to the great sorrow of Taper, whose favourite city it is, but • the great pleasure of all the worthy folk from Kirkby Lonsdale and Holmes Chapel, who imagine that there is such a thing as ozone and are off to Scarborough as usual to get it); Miss Jennie Lee rouses the whole civilised world to an outburst of uncontrollable apathy with her decision to support the Old Man and the Bomb; Ipswich goes to the polls; Brigadier Terence Clarke, in an article in the North End Review, his parish maga- zine, delivers himself of the opinion that 'if the British people are prepared to make homosexual- ity legal then I believe as a nation we are doomed to go the way of all the other nations that have fallen prey to this vile practice' (apart from Sodom and Gomorrah, I can't think of any, and I dare say the good Brigadier can't either), and then spoils the whole thing by saying that he asked a large number of his constituents for their views on this matter and they `were 100 per cent. against making homosexuality legal,' which is hardly startling in view of the fact that he sits for Portsmouth and in consequence probably has more harlots and madames among his constituents than any other MP in the land; the Tories of Beckenham rather surprisingly decline to pay twenty-five shillings a head to say good-bye to Lord Hailes (I am sure I speak for a large number of worthy citizens when I say I would willingly pay as much as twenty-six shillings to say goodbye to Lord Hailes, and that with a reasonable chance of never having to say hullo again I would even put the ante up to twenty-seven); the air over the Atlantic becomes thick with Queens, Prime Minis- ters and critics of both; a thousand camp-fres are reflected in a thousand breast-plates polished by a thousand hands; the generals, heavy with care, pace by the sleeping tents; and far away, in the cold and silent night, a small, round object with projections sticking out on either side continues to rush round and round in circles at an ever- increasing speed, uttering shrill, meaningless cries (a description of Dr. Hill which, it occurs to me, could apply with equal force to the Russian satellite).
And the leak is plugged; or is it? It would be difficult to find a more compact example of the ineptitude with which this Government seems determined to hand itself over to the Opposition `bound, and living, and with open eyes.' At the next election Mr. Harold Wilson will, of course, virtuously refrain from alleging that half the members of the Cabinet have bought themselves new yachts on the strength of their Stock Ex- change killings (though some of his less restrained followers will be less retiring), but he will cer- tainly denounce them for their refusal to hold an inquiry. And I think anybody but an idiot or a Prime Minister must see that he is right.
Let us, however, review the situation. We may, I think, dismiss at the outset all this tripe about eighteen-year-old employees of Conservative Cen- tral Office being in the know; without actually claiming the acquaintance of any eighteen-year- old employees of Central Office, I think I am on fairly safe ground in doubting whether anyone fitting such a description would know what the Bank rate was. And one does not have to get one's crystal balls at Negretti and Zambra to make a fair guess at the identity of the Journalist Who Was Suddenly Recalled To London, or—for that matter—at the name of the Editor Who Recalled Him. Nor need one be suffering from the political DTs to see things crawling out of the woodwork in Mr. Thorneycroft's eve-of-depar- ture press briefing; I don't care if they discussed nothing but the weather, it was still a characteris- tically tomfool thing to do.
For assume, if you will, that there was no leak; that is to say, that all the people who were neces- sarily in the know about the Bank rate rise the day before the official announcement scrupulously refrained from telling anybody who was not sup- posed to know, and also scrupulously refrained from saying anything which a shrewd listener could add up to the right answer. (Nor, in fact, is it necessary to postulate lack of scruple if some- body did in fact arrive at the right answer by adding up such straws as were floating about in the wind; lack of care would suffice.) And on the whole it would seem as though this was the case. As the Spectator has already pointed out, selling which stopped with the after-hours transactions on Wednesday, despite the fact that there Was more than an hour of morning business on Thurs- day before the bomb fell, hardly seems as inspired as all that. Moreover, great play has been made with the fact that the selling took place on the night before the ball, a sinister point to those who do not know their way about. But those who do know that Bank rate changes are invariably an" nounced on a Thursday; and one would not have to combine the financial acumen of Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Bernard Baruch, Montagu Norman, Ivar Kreugar and Dr. Schacht to work out that this particular Thursday, in view of the fact that speculators were clubbing the stuffing out of ster- ling all over the world and that Mr. Thorneycroft was off on a swan in which the strength of sterling would figure prominently, was a particularly likely Thursday for just such measures as were adopted.
But that still leaves a number of problems un- solved. Most entrancing of these, to my way of thinking, is that of the Treasury's two replies to the question `Was there any briefing of journalists the night before the rise?' Asked whether there was any official briefing, the Treasury Press spokesman said immediately that there was not. Asked whether, then, there was any unofficial briefing, the Treasury mouthpiece took two hours to consider his reply, and then said `No comment, —a piece of ham-fisted fatuity that would have done credit to Commander Colville.
Next, one is entitled to know how the Prime Minister came in twenty-four hours to the conclu- sion that it took Lord Kirmuir a full fortnight to reach; the suspicion grows that Mr. Macmillan, understandably reluctant to believe that there, Is anything much in anything that Mr. Wilson saYs, dismissed the original allegations out of hand after the most cursory and inadequate investiga- tion, and was then, owing to that super-Oriental horror of losing face with which British party politics is so largely concerned, committed to refusing an inquiry come hell and high water.
But, for goodness' sake, at what does Mr. Macmillan think he is playing? I think politics is a game, of course, but he isn't supposed to What conceivable harm could a formal inquiry have done, governmentally or politically, if there had been no leak? Indeed, would it not have been jolly, politically speaking, to wallop Mr. Wilson soundly with the stick he had provided? I can just imagine the scene; a crowded House, sub- dued cheers as the Prime Minister rises, clears his throat, adopts the specially fruity tone which he reserves for imparting his more thickly but- tered slices of humbug, and proceeds. 'These grave allegations . . . of course, I acquit Mr. Wilson of any but the most honourable intentions . . . nevertheless feel bound to say . . . at a time when international confidence in sterling Is of paramount importance . . . wholly—I repeat wholly—without foundation [a pause, and a back- ward glance to make sure even the most stupid ones cheer]'. . . loyal and devoted body of men . . . country may well come to the conclusion that the Socialist Party is more concerned with the making of party points than . . . trust that We shall hear no more of this unhappy episode.' Loud and prolonged cheers, and from none more loud and prolonged than Sir David Eccles and Mr. Niall MacPherson.
The whole. episode, as far as the Government's handling of it is concerned, is a prize specimen of idiocitas salkvaccinentis. There was only one way to ensure that the Government got out of this with the minimum amount of credit, honour, dignity and party advantage, and that was the Way that was followed. So when they shuffle through the gates next week there will be yet another reason for the bunch on that side to crow over the bunch on this. 'Yoh, yah,' it has long been possible for Tories to yell after Socialists in the street, 'you ain't got no policy and yer split's showing.' Well, the Labour Party has got a policy and its split is not showing. True, the policy is a
silly one and the split has been repaired at what may yet prove a ruinous cost; but they march in step and they know where they're going—or they think they do, which is what counts. All the other lot have got is Lord Hailsham, and, as I suggested last week, this is insufficient. What is more, it will remain insufficient until the Prime Minister cottons on to the fact that Britain is not an after-dinner audience of slightly boozed pin- heads, fit only to be regaled with fifth-rate epi- grams wrapped in cant, but a community of some fifty million persons, many of whom are fools but many of whom are not, sonic of whom would like to hear a little less about Britain being great and a little more about what Mr. Macmillan proposes to do to stop the International Bacon Council from stealing their money, and thirty
million of whom have votes. TAPER
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