Notebook
When I was in the army, a soldier, unqualified to drive, took a Bren-gun carrier without permission, knocked down a lamp post and killed a passer-by. His commanding officer wrote across the court of inquiry papers: 'This accident could not have been foreseen, no one is to blame.' Rather the same response is being made by the Government and some of the press to the Franks Report. It is not entirely Justified by that document. The final Paragraph which has been taken as ex- onerating the Government only says that they were not to blame 'for the Argentine Junta's decision to commit its act of un- provoked aggression in the invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982'. The report criticises the Intelligence services, the failure to deploy more naval forces in the South Atlantic and criticises earlier inertia on the part of governments. Two questions stand out. If the Government were not to blame, why did three Ministers resign? If the Government did not have, and could not have had, warning of the invasion, need we keep such large staffs abroad? A few Journalists and a trade mission might be enough. At the end of the day we are locked up in Fortress Falkland.
Aword of hope for the Government. In my experience, and I have some, if you give people who live in remote and in- hospitable islands enough money in their Pockets they will probably leave. Machiavellian as it might be, instead of spending millions on airstrips etc, what about a general distribution of bounty to individual Falklanders? On the other hand, if the Government want to build up the Population, quite a number of people come to Orkney and Shetland `to get away from It all'. You could hardly get farther away than the Falkland Islands. Free passages? The morale of the Foreign Office is said to be low. Though self-pity is never at- tractive and 'low morale' today is usually a prelude to demanding more pay, I take this loss of morale as a sign of grace — possibly the beginning of humility. Over the last 50 Years, while many individual foreign of- ficers have been percipient and right, the Foreign Office itself has been blind and wrong on many major issues, e.g. Appease- ment, The Middle East, our original rejec- tion of entry into the EEC, not to mention its curious inability to recognise its own traitors. Yet it has remained remarkably Pleased with itself. Now like the British in general it wants to be loved. This wanting to be loved is a sure sign of decay. Senior Foreign Office officials are still well basted with medals, supplied with good living when en poste and good jobs in the City when retired on good pensions. What more can we offer to comfort them? Perhaps a new order of chivalry — The Jumbo GCMG.
Does it strike anyone except me as odd that although the average wage in Scotland is £137 approximately (higher than in England) the average rent of a council house is £9 per week? A married man with two children earning less than £85 per week pays no rent. He would indeed only pay £4.50 if he earned £105 per week. 1 need hardly say that there was a row in the House of Commons when the Secretary of State proposed that the average rent might be raised to about £10.50 per week.
What has happened to the United Nations? It may be that its huge staffs are hard at work doing good deeds. But if so we do not hear much about them. The General Assembly floated past like a ghost on the battlements during the Falk- lands war. But over a war which has been waged now for more than two years it ap- pears to be inert. It has certainly not stop- ped the war between Iran and Iraq. I am not even certain that it is trying to do so. Yet 30 years ago this would have been thought to be the kind of war that it could have stopped. The proponents of the League and the United Nations admitted that they could hardly restrain the great powers if determined to attack each other. But it was believed that great powers could act in unison and would maintain peace among all petty wranglers. Surely if the great powers acting on behalf of `world opi- nion' can take any dogs by the collars and pull them apart, those dogs should be Iraq and Iran. Some of the demonstrators, clerics and politicians tearing their hair over possible nuclear war might cast a glance at actual war today. Two matters seem to me to need attention. First, the collapse of the
whole belief in collective peace-keeping. Secondly, the important point made by Professor Michael Howard in his David Davies lecture: it is 'bellicosity', he told us, which makes war. A reduction in nuclear weapons may be economically highly desirable but by itself it will neither increase nor decrease the likelihood of conflict.
Mr Tebbit, when he has finished with the trade unions, might turn his atten- tion to other aspects of our life. I cannot believe that it is a God-given rule of the universe that the British and their industry must be clobbered whenever 'hot' money leaves London. It is surely not beyond the wit of man to devise a system which looks to the realities of productive investment rather than to financial manipulation. The City has not lately proved so astute and honest that what is good for it is necessarily good for Britain. Nor does it seem in accord with the law of God, much less the law of Adam Smith, that when oil prices go up the price of petrol goes up and when oil prices go down the price of petrol goes up. Along with diamonds, oil is in the hands of the sort of monstrous international cartel against which all free economists should rebel. As for the variations in the price of petrol, it is 30p a gallon higher in my consti- tuency than in London but the Office of Fair Trading will not help us; it has perhaps been too preoccupied by that major element in the budget of the poor — the buyers' premium at Sotheby's and Christie's.
'There ought to be some readership par- " ticipation in this column. In accordance with Spectator custom, I am authorised to offer a bottle of English Sherry to each of the first three letters opened at 56 Doughty Street from organisations dependent largely upon the taxpayer, declaring that they are getting enough money from public funds. Two bottles will be given to the first organisation which says it is getting too much. I am forced to restrict the offer. In a Christian country like this, steeped in self- denial with many leaders still brought up in the Greek tradition of restraint, there must be hundreds of organisations which con- sider they get enough. Indeed there must be hundreds whose work should be declining. The Government have shovelled out money like a croupier. Some organisations must be sending some back. By persuading them to come forward I hope that not only will their example be followed — but their chairmen might appear in the Birthday Honours.
T find that my paragraph last week about I Amsterdam prostitutes may have been misleading. You can view girls, I am told, if not in George Street, Edinburgh, at least in the West End of London. Women's Lib, I am also told, could hardly be expected to protest as they are on the side of the pro- stitutes.
Jo Grimond
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