Notebook
One aspect of our industrial troubles which has deeply shaken people has been the Willingness of trade union officials to make cynical public statements revealing an apparent indifference not only to the national interest and the public good, but to human life itself. There was Mr Bill Astbury, Chairman of the Manchester lorry drivers' strike committee, who said: 'If I cannot afford to buy food, why should anyone else have it?' Then, most notoriously of all, there was the London ambulancemen's leader, Mr Bill Dunn, who said of the ambulance strike: 'If it means lives lost, that is how it must be.' And I have heard others boasting on television about their lack of conscience. Are these people really as vile as they seek to appear? I suspect not. Anyone asked repeatedly by reporters if he minds putting lives at risk is quite likely to be driven eventually into replying that he doesn't, if only to try to concentrate attention on what he regards as the principal issue — his wage claim. I also think that union officials are developing a line in self-parody. The best example of this was a T and GWU official in Hull who, interviewed on television by the Washington Post correspondent, Mr Bernard Nossiter, argued that a 20 per cent wage rise would be inflationary because 'economic experts' like the CBI and the Tory Party said that wages had nothing to do with inflation. 'So you mean to say,' asked Mr Nossiter, 'that you take your economic advice from Mrs Thatcher and the CBI?' If It suited us, we'd take it from Old Nick,' he replied. I expect that this also created terror in the land.
On Tuesday, I hear, Mrs Thatcher was to be found sitting — literally — at the feet of Harold Macmillan. He was on a chair and she was on the floor. This touching scene took place at the Carlton Club after Mr Macmillan had unveiled a new bust of the Tory leader given to the Conservative Party by a Canadian admirer. Supermac, who will be 85 next month, was in sombre mood, Predicting national disaster if Labour were returned to office at the next election. And then, addressing himself directly to Mrs Thatcher, he said: 'I wish you well with all my heart, Madam. God bless you.' No wonder she sat at his feet.
The Turks, according to the Spectator of 1876, were a people of 'fiends' and 'barbarians', 'as merciless as the Red •Indians, and frenzied with a fanaticism which the Red Indian never knew'. This referred to their behaviour towards the Bulgarians at the time, but would be quite inadequate as a description of how the Turks are portrayed in a film still showing in London called 'Midnight Express'. The film is based on the `true story' of a young American called Billy Hayes who was jailed for 30 years in Istanbul for trying to smuggle drugs out of Turkey. It purports to relate his experiences up to the time of his escape from prison. The Turks in the film are portrayed, almost without exception, as lying, treacherous sadists and homosexuals, as well as enormously fat and hideously ugly. Conceivably, the Turks are like that. I have never been to Turkey. But even in the most extreme of war propaganda films, the Nazis — even the Japanese — were shown in a more amiable light, and there were always a few `good Germans'. The film does, as the Turkish Embassy says, seek to discredit an entire race. According to the Embassy, the film was made in Malta and there were no Turks in the cast, some of the extras being Greeks and Armenians. The horrifying account of Mr Hayes's imprisonment was also, by his own admission, very far from true. What I cannot understand — given that incitement to racial hatred is illegal under the Race Relations Act — is why the makers of the film have not been prosecuted. For I have never been so incited in my life.
I don't know, any more than the Shah seems to, why the Iranian people loathe him and his family quite so much. But one of the reasons often given for his downfall is the enforced westernisation of his country and the attempt to impose alien cultural standards. Mr Kenneth Rose of the Sunday Telegraph recalls with admiration how the Empress Farah was a patron of culture. The arts festivals at Shiraz owed much to her inspiration, he wrote last Sunday, even though they were 'often too avant-garde for Persian audiences'. `I particularly remember,' he said, 'how, at one of them, an orchestral concert that depended on polyphonic tapes was received without applause. The Queen, who had followed the piece through workmanlike spectacles, went on and on applauding until others were shamed into' joining in.' How long would the Queen of England survive if she did that sort of thing?
Following the established practice of other newspapers in their treatment of press awards — that is, to report them only if they themselves are honoured — I am pleased to reveal that on Monday Auberon Waugh was named Columnist of the Year by the Granada television programme What the Papers Say, and presented by the Prime Minister with a leather replica of a flong, a sort of mould used in printing. Mr Waugh contributes regularly not only to the Spectator, but also to Private Eye, the Evening Standard, Books and Bookmen and British Medicine, and would deserve an award for his articles in any of these journals. But it seems to have been the Spectator column that the judges had in mind, though Anthony Howard, who read out the citation, failed to clarify the point to my total satisfaction. Apart from a twoand-a-half-year stint as a columnist on the New Statesman (when Mr Howard was its editor) Mr Waugh has been involved with the Spectator for 12 years. He joined as political correspondent in 1967 and was sacked three years later by the then editor, Mr Nigel Lawson, who is now Conservative MP for Blaby. His offence had been to substitute the words `Lunchtime O'Gale' for the name of the distinguished columnist George Gale when he was putting the paper to bed at the printers. But for our hero this turned out to have been a profitable joke. He not only was re-employed almost at once as a novel reviewer by Mr Gale himself, the paper's next editor. He also, with the support first of Lord Goodman and then of the National Union of Journalists, sued for wrongful dismissal and obtained damages in court of some £800. Since 1976 he has been what Mr Howard called 'the pin-up of page 6 of the Spectator'. Not least among his admirers, we learnt on Monday, is Mr Callaghan, who confessed however to belonging to that section of the population which Mr Waugh regards as irredeemable.
As the Daily Star, the new gutter newspaper of the Express group, continues to decline, it is important to give the widest possible publicity to a pledge given last week by the group's Chairman, Mr Victor Matthews. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, he said: 'I hope the Star is going to be around for a long time yet, otherwise I am not going to be around here either'. It would appear that we have a sporting chance of killing two birds with one stone.
Alexander Chancellor
Previous page
