Notebook
Granada Television's What the Papers Say press awards were subjected this Year to even more criticism than usual. They are now widely known as the 'Tony Awards' after the Observer's deputy editor, Mr Anthony Howard, whose skill at getting Its way on the judging panel is regularly documented by Private Eye. The fact that 1wo of this week's four award-winners are Journalists on the Observer was seen as fur- ther evidence of his abilities. But, despite the mockery which these annual Granada ceremonies invite, and the fact that there are no cash prizes — only leather flongs' for the winners, they continue to capture the imagination of journalists much more than other more valuable and more earnest- ly administered press awards. This is partly because Granada always organises a very Jolly lunch at the Savoy Hotel which is ad- dressed by a currently fashionable politician --- this year by Mr Neil Kinnock. And it is Partly, I believe, just because the winners are chosen in such a notoriously chaotic fashion. Press awards are pretty absurd Granada in any event. In the case of the "ranada awards, their absurdity is made evident and greatly enjoyed. For this we °we a debt of gratitude to Mr Howard, for without him the whole business would un- doubtedly be much drearier. And it should [II fairness be added that the journalists who win awards are seldom actually undeserving.
In his speech at the Granada lunch Mr Kinnock called for a press that was 'more Inquisitive, more discerning, more free'. It was a well-directed appeal, for he avoided attacking the press for anti-Socialist bias, concentrating instead on its predilection for bingo and chequebook journalism. He struck a responsive chord in me, as a Reuters bore, when he said that the press should also be free `to break through the reticence which Fleet Street has about in- quiry into its own motives and manoeuvr- m8'• Fleet Street has, indeed, shown ex- cessive reticence on the background to the Proposed Reuters flotation. But Mr Kin- nock still clings to the idealistic belief that People only buy the Sun and similar papers because they have been conditioned to do so. 'Was there sometime, somewhere an eruption of demand?' he asked. 'Or was it more a case of taste (or lack of it) being created and then fed and then justified on the grounds that this is what the people want?' The answer to this second question must be No. Papers that have tried to resist lave public obsession with money and sex 'ave unfailingly been beaten by their less squeamish competitors. Whether people would be happier, and society healthier, if newspapers did not pander to such tastes is certainly a question worth asking. But it is impossible to doubt that such tastes exist. Mr Kinnock, however, is a good deal less deluded than Mr Tony Benn. I quote from an interview given by Mr Benn last week to the magazine City Limits. Benn: 'For the first time in many years we now have a par- ty in power that's bitterly anti-working class, that's discovered how to use the media to beat them. Instead of sending the Army all over the place, send the Sun all over the place CL: 'But the workers buy the Sun. People may do the wrong things, but they do them voluntarily.' Benn: 'Ac- tually, the entire British press is financed by the Treasury ...' CL: 'But why do people buy the Sun?' Benn: 'They can buy what they like, but the fact is the Sun is financed by the Treasury.' CL: 'I don't know how many times I've asked you now why workers buy it — if we don't know why, then there's a terrifying distance between us and them.' Benn: 'But what you haven't turned your mind to is that the Sun is a sub- sidised newspaper, and if it had its proper cover price, they wouldn't.' I don't know what Mr Benn is talking about, but I do know there is a terrifying difference bet- ween them and us.
T don't know what the Director of the 1Courtauld Institute was paid in the days when the late Professor Anthony Blunt had the job, but it certainly cannot have been enough for him to have saved nearly £860,000 out of his earnings. And the posi- tion of Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, which Professor Blunt also held for many years, is honorary and unpaid. There is no evidence that he inherited much money. His nice elder brother Wilfred, who used to be arts master at Eton College, has no money
to speak of. Professor Blunt must, of course, have earned something from his writings. But there are only two obvious sources from which he might have been able to accumulate such a fortune. One was his work as an authenticator of paintings by Poussin, as dealers would presumably have been willing to pay well for his imprimatur. The other was his work as a Russian spy. If it were possible to prove that any of the money Professor Blunt left in his will came from his Soviet employers, then it should surely be confiscated for the nation.
If Mr Ken Livingstone's Greater London Council demanded that its name be changed to the Greater Derry Council, I wonder whether its request would be granted by the British Government. In fact the name wouldn't suit it too badly, though the Greater Mandela Council might be bet- ter. But it does seem rather strange that the Council of a town which is still, according to the Government, officially called Lon- donderry should be allowed to call itself by a different name. In reality, I doubt if it makes much difference to anything. The Irish never take any notice of edicts from Westminster. In the Heath-Walker local government reform, County Fermanagh was abolished and merged with County Tyrone, but the news does not appear to have reached Ulster yet. As to Lon- donderry, there is actually nobody in Nor- thern Ireland who calls it in conversation by that name. Catholics and Protestants alike know it as Derry.
agree with Lord Grimond (page 14) that Mr Enoch Powell is perfectly entitl- ed to criticise the Queen if he wants to, just as we all are. I also agree with Mr Powell that the Queen's Christmas broadcast was a sorry affair, containing as it did no message of any comfort to the people of Britain. But Mr Powell is nevertheless a maddenning in- dividual. While he blames the Queen's Ministers and not herself for the words she utters, he knows in reality full well that they do not advise her on the contents of her Christmas message. He also deliberately ig- nores the fact that, for good or ill, she is not only Queen of England but also head of the Commonwealth and that her Christmas message is in fact a Message to the Com- monwealth. It would be odd in the cir- cumstances if she did not display an interest in 'affairs of other countries in other con- tinents'. It is quite unfair to accuse the Queen (sorry, her Ministers) of being 'more concerned for the susceptiblities and pre- judices of a vociferous minority of newcomers than for the great mass of her subjects'. Indeed, such an idea will have oc- curred to practically nobody until Mr Powell raised it, thereby sowing suspicion in the minds of her subjects. It is such a suspicion, not the Queen's speeches, which could be 'pregnant with peril for the future'.
Alexander Chancellor
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