SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
'I am afraid I am doomed to disappointment all round," wrote Jo Grimond when offering his 'Hopes for 1967' in the SPECTATOR symposium on the new year just twelve months ago. Oddly enough he was wrong: one at least of his hopes, that Britain would not go on sacrificing her own industry to maintain a world currency at exactly the existing parity, was memorably fulfilled. But most of the things people hoped for in that wistful collection last January re- main remote, perhaps even remoter now than they seemed then. The participants, put under the obligation of being reasonably optimistic, discovered desires as variously doomed to dis- appointment as the appearance of a poem as good as The Waste Land and the entry of Britain into the Common Market. In the event hardly anything went as wished.
I mention this because I'm beginning to think we are in danger of forgetting that this is the normal human lot, that it would be a year of miracles indeed if people's hopes were . , ever to be realised wholesale. The distinguished participants in this year's symposium reveal a chilly realism in their approach to 1968, and I certainly share the sense of fresh buffetings to come. But if I possessed the power to make a New Year resolution on behalf of the entire country it would be, I think, to try for a rather more high-spirited approach to our problems than we've been displaying lately; remembering the infinitely more threatening new years which have confronted the country within the memories of at least half the population, and the far more wretched prospects of a large part of the human race at this moment. Heaven for- bid that Britannia should `sink beneath the waves with a giggle,' which was Desmond Donnelly's gloomiest fear for 1967. A little more attack, and a little less moaning, would make a nice change all the same.
The axeman cometh
Roy Jenkins's period of silent cogitation will have to end' soon. The disclosure of how he --means to use the• painful powers of the Treasury will at least provide a political' spec- tacle of the highest interest during the coming months, even if it simultaneously supplies us with a deal of unpleasantness. Most of the appraisals of his potentialities as Chancellor 'have concentrated upon whether or not he will be 'tough' enough. Such evidence as exists indi- cates that he 'certainly intends to show his toughness. But it shouldn't be forgotten that Mr Jenkins's career has so far always revealed a keen regard for the projection of a distinctive political personality—a well-groomed, liberal, agile, radical sort of persona, and one which will not submerge easily in the grim outlines of –an iron chancellor. My guess is that he will wish to do much more than merely wield an -axe.
`The Treasury's role was to enforce economy upon other departments rather than to initiate policy of its own. So long as this view pre- vailed . . . the Treasury was rather a dull de- partment over which to preside.' Thus Roy Jen- - kins, biographer, in his life of Asquith. He won't be happy to pass his own time solely in enforcing economy, and the last thing a poli- tician of his mould wishes to be is dull. Con- ceivably there's a clue elsewhere in Asquith as to how his ideas may develop: at any rate he writes with warm approval of his subject's introduction (in the 1907 budget) of the novel idea that unearned income should be clobbered more heavily than earned income. And if Mr Wilson cares to brush up on the uncertainties of Cabinet life as seen by his new Chancellor, he could do worse than glance at the passages relating how Asquith moved smoothly from Chancellor to Prime Minister when the PM who had appointed him fell by the wayside.
Keep out
Probably the most revealing exchange at the recent Anglo-Soviet press conference organised by the Daily Mirror concerned the Russians' refusal to permit western newspapers (except the communist variety) to circulate in their country. Soviet apologists are old hands at find- ing reasons to justify this example of unyield- ing censorship, of course, not least because visitors to the Soviet Union are usually more irked by it than by other irritations of Russian life, such as unbelievably slow restaurant ser- vice or hotel lifts that seem to.roost for hours somewhere up on the roof. But I was interested to learn what hvestia had to say on the subject in its lengthy report of the conference. It took the protest seriously, but was quite un- repentant: there's clearly no question of the ban being lifted. 'Cultural relations' are one thing, 'ideological coexistence' is something altogether different. 'We have been and we remain absolutely opposed to the export into our country of that which we regard as totally alien to ourselves.' It would be hard to find a sentence which unintentionally expressed so succinctly the difference between the liberal and the totalitarian views of society.
Perhaps there was a hint of uneasiness, though, in the manner in which the Russian journalists proceeded to add the 'information' that Soviet papers are not to be found on the ordinary bookstalls of London. This is of course true, for obvious reasons, but there are probably a couple of dozen places where they can be bought, and anyone who so wishes can subscribe: you can have Pravda delivered by air mail the day after publication for £2 a year (which means 365 issues), and the loss per copy on that deal must be on a scale which Fleet Street in its blackest moments wouldn't bring itself to contemplate.
Riposte
The first time President de Gaulle vetoed British entry into the Common Market Mr Macmillan turned, rather clumsily it will be re- membered, to Britain's ultimate deterrent in international affairs: the royal family. Princess Margaret- abruptly cancelled a visit to Paris. Did the French reel back in alarm? Perhaps they did: but if so the effect must have worn off in time to permit de Gaulle to veto us all over again. What next by way of retaliation? Mr Wilson, after all, has followed many a Macmillan precedent. I merely note that the Queen's Christmas broadcast opened up with a powerful piece about Canada, and the de- termination of different groups there to co- operate for the greater national interest: a crisp retort to the General's 'Vine le Quebec libre,' perhaps? If this is a case of escalation, where will the next Anglo-French tiff lead to?
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