DIARY
CHARLES MOORE Aan editor, I find the Piers Morgan affair a little embarrassing. The Daily Tele- graph revealed last week that the editor of the Mirror bought shares in a company called Vig,len, the day before his paper tipped them. The value of his shares shot Up, and now Mr Morgan is being investi- gated and his two tipsters have been sacked. Asking myself how I pass muster on this subject, I must confess a sad and sim- ple fact — I do not know how to buy shares. I know how to buy an ISA and I exercised my share options in the Telegraph Group when they existed. Otherwise, the only shares I have ever bought were some of the privatisations of the Thatcher years, when there was a coupon you could cut out in the newspapers. I have sat on them ever since and probably own about £4,000 worth of BT, BAA, etc. It is, I expect, the work of a moment to find out how to buy shares, but, now that the subject has come up, I find a remarkably large number of my friends are in the same position as I am, and have never got round to asking how. I can see that the situation is very different if you are the editor of a People's newspaper, and therefore rich beyond all telling.
B. y the way, I certainly shall not sell my little pile of shares as a result of this furore. The idea that journalists should not own shares because of a possible conflict of Interest is one of the demented moralisms of our time, like the Nolan reforms of Par- liament. You might as well say that the edi- tor of the property pages should not buy or sell a house. It is a positively good thing if Journalists own shares, since they are Putting their money where their mouth is. The point about a conflict of interest is not that its possibility should be avoided in all circumstances but that, when it occurs, it Should be declared and sorted out.
We spent last weekend staying with friends in Kent. They are called Richard and Amicia Oldfield, and their late Victori- an house looks from its high hill across a valley to the house of their great friends and neighbours, Kate Lampard and her husband, John Leigh-Pemberton. We spent Saturday hunting on both families' land, and that evening John and Kate came to dinner at the Oldfields'. But this Saturday, I discovered, the two households will be in competition, because Richard and Kate have both put themselves forward to be the Tory candidate for Faversham and Mid Kent, and have reached the first round of Interviews. This could be a ticklish matter because both are serious candidates with deep roots (in Kate's case, by marriage) in the constituency and an excellent knowl- edge of public affairs. It would be hard to find stronger local candidates. But at least one of them will eventually have to lose. So far, all is amiability, and Richard, who thought of standing first, urged Kate to put in for it. Nevertheless, I see the plot of a good novel beginning here — an eventual breach, perhaps, leading to centuries of dynastic rivalry. Perhaps Faversham and Mid Kent will solve the problem by select- ing the usual property developer or Central Office product who has little to do with the place, but I do hope not.
At Mass on Sunday in Faversham I stared at the altarpiece and noticed that it was a bit different from the standard, unlovely work to be found in most English Catholic churches. The style of rather rounded bodies, and the cross-hatching, reminded me of the 'Tim and Ginger' books which I loved in childhood. This turned out to be right: Edward Ardizzone lived in Faversham, apparently, and did the painting for the church. The only thing missing, I felt, were the words of Scripture, e.g., 'Lord lettest now thy servant depart in peace,' written out in Ardizzone's familiar hand, and coming out of the holy people's mouths in a box.
Everyone says about everything now, `. . . it's time to move on'. Why? Isn't it often time to stay put?
Is anything sacred in the British consti- tution? Yes — the rule that lawyers must earn more than anyone else on the public payroll. Apparently, it is actually the law of the land that the Lord Chancellor must earn more than the Lord Chief Justice; and, since the Lord Chief Justice gets a decent whack, that is very nice for Lord Irvine. The Lord Chancellor earns more than any other member of the Cabinet (and always has done, I think). And Lord Irvine, unlike Mr Blair, takes the full amount due to him. Asimilar deference to the profession is shown by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, author of the notorious report on the Lawrence case. In the Daily Telegraph on Monday, he outspokenly denounced institu- tional racism not only in the police, but also 'undoubtedly' in the fire service, the army and Parliament. About the law (Sir William, by the way, is a lawyer), he was more circum- spect: 'Probably the judiciary has to examine itself.' Sir William is head of Clan Macpher- son. That is surely a racist body by definition, certainly by his definition. There can be no place for racist clans in a modernised Britain.
This year the Labour party is 100 years old. So is the Queen Mother. Which of the two is the better loved by the British people and has done more good for us?
Next week I have been asked to unveil a plaque at 9 Pelham Crescent, Hastings, to commemorate my great-great-great-aunt, Barbara Bodichon, who lived there. She was well-known in her day as a painter, friend of George Eliot, co-founder of Girton and campaigner for women's suffrage, and there is renewed interest in her now. Some of the women in my family are irritated that the ceremony falls to me, on the grounds that I am too reactionary, and also a man. At least half of the charge is correct and I am not really qualified for the unveiling, but the invitation has made me give thanks for my luck in growing up in a family where it was never wrong for anyone, man or woman, to be intellectual. My great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and sister all went to Oxford or Cambridge, and so it was only when I was 16 or so that I became dimly aware that even then (in the 1970s) there were many who strongly believed that women should not be educated. They had their reasons, of course, and it is perhaps too easy to ridicule them now that this atti- tude is finally dying. But, nevertheless, the change is a feature of the modern world which is almost wholly good. You read a great deal in newspapers (particularly the Daily Mail) grimly warning modern women that they cannot 'have it all'; but the very existence of such articles is a back-handed tribute to the change of expectations. Aunt Barbara first thought of what much later became Girton when her beloved brother went off to Cambridge in the 1840s, and she grieved that she could not follow him. Thanks to people like her, our daughters are not in the same position. Would I have been on her side at the time? I wish I could say 'yes' with more confidence.
Charles Moore is editor of the Daily Telegraph.
Previous page
