A Spectator's Notebook

Mr Enoch Powell's attack on the Constitutional Convention in Ulster, and the quest for devolution that The Spectator particularly has supported, will inevitably lead his critics to wonder if he has not picked up that traditional Irish habit of coat-trailing, with the intention of precipitating a breach with his supporters. His critics may go on to suggest that he wants this break well before a general election, so that he is in a position to seek an English constituency with the special extra credential of having taken a firm stand on the constitution, and against devolution.

The snag Mr Powell may encounter is, of course, that the maverick sort of constituency association that would be willing to adopt him would favour devolution for Ulster as much as a native-born Unionist.

Diarists

Am I alone in wishing that the Sunday Times wouldbring Alan Brien back as resident diarist?

The weekly change of contributors is becoming irritating, especially when they display so much either real or feigned ignorance of the social world and its ways.

Two weeks ago Ludovic Kennedy rambled through his less than stimulating week. He paused for a sentence to tell us that a charming woman he had sat next to at the Austrian Embassy had told him that her name, Vogelpoel meant 'birdbath'. Very plainly, Miss Pauline Vogelpoel of the Contemporary Arts Society, who has been quite as well known in her way as Kennedy in his (he surely must have met her many times) since the early 'fifties.

In the same column this week Quentin Crewe (so mercilessly called 'Meals on Wheels' by Tony Palmer, his ex-wife's ex-husband) gave us a diary that leaves the impression that he has written a good deal more than he has read. In any event he generously sings for one of his suppers by praising someone by the name of Miss Patricia Rawlings, who asked him to dinner last week. If I'm not mistaken, this is the daughter of the late 'Big Lou' Rawlings who owned the Great Tichfield Street frock busi ness, California Cottons. She caused something of a stir in the Sunday papers when she was sued by her American husband over some jewels he claimed to have lent her. Miss Rawlings is a cheerful, monkey-faced little woman of rather less than forty, who gives the utterly false impression or being slightly interessee. She has worked hard at the social whirl of charity promotion and, if the photographs in the gossip columns some years ago are to be believed, once even wore the uniform of the Red Cross. Mischievous rumours abound that she intends to set up a literary salon and is gradually working her way through the writers whose names appear most regularly in the press.

All good luck to her. She'll probably produce a better column than either Kennedy or Crewe,' who would be better back on, respectively, the Craig and Bentley case and gastronomic inquiry.

Bail refused

Though I have never met Mr John Stonehouse, I'm left incensed that Sir Frank Milton, the Bow Street magistrate, sitting for the last time, turned down his application for bail. Stonehouse's trial will be long and drawn-out, and it is disquieting to know that he may be in a cell for many months.

Sir Frank Milton, now retiring as Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, is a man for whom I have great respect. He was born Frank Lowenstein, the son of a partner in S. Japhet and Company, the merchant bankers. His family came from somewhere in Middle Europe and Sir Frank, having somewhat boldly adopted the name Milton, never ceased to be troubled by some of his more snobbish colleagues who, from time to time, could not resist the hoary old tease: "Tell me, Frank, are you decended from the poet?"

Primitive life

Last Saturday saw the Grande Internationale Flounder Tramping Competition on the Solway mudbanks near the Kirkcudbrightshire village of Palnackie. Sporting my Palnackie Trampers T-shirt, and what looked to me like a miniature hayfork, I squelched my way kneedeep in clay mud to the favoured spot some half .a mile off the coast, and there, trident ready for the kill, shuffled around waiting for the tell-tale wriggle of a flounder (I should advise readers that the flounder is a member of the sole family) under my feet. The winner of the competition tramped seven flounders weighing some eight pounds. All I had on my return were a cut foot, insect bites and an all-over mudpack, but I loved it.

Spacemen

I saw Star Trek on television last Monday one of the finest episodes in that remarkable series. This one had Captain Kirk in conflict

No noses

They haven't got no nose, MPs WPM protest!

Just how can they suppose That if their wages rose, They could still then impose, Restraint on all the rest?

They haven't got no nose, Ministers who rule!

Just how can they suppose That if they won't disclose The powers that they propose, MPs will keep their cool?

They haven't got no nose, Union militants!

Just why do they suppose If they dig in their toes.

And still inflation grows, They'll gain through all their rants?

They haven't got no nose, Business tycoons!

Just why do they suppose, If firm production slows, It's not their high-class pose, Supping with silver spoons?

So few have got a nose To smell the rocks in front! Just why do you suppose So few have got a nose? Just you, and me; not those, Who bear the daily brunt. Basil Charles with the fearful Klingons. Usually, when the gallant captain meets the Klingons, the intermediary humanoids are pacifist in character. On this occasion, however, they were, until the end, even more militant — though technologically under-equipped — than the Klingons. There is an encouragingly cynical note in Star Trek that I like. Although Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise invariably arrive on strange planets preaching the humanistic nonsense of brotherhood, the captain's victories are gained only by the most energetic use of the skills of war.

I may perhaps mention here that my other favourite futuristic series, BBC's The Survivors, has just ended. What worries me is the news I hear that the BBC have not yet decided whether to screen a further twelve episodes. If they do not do so, I shall turn my Phaser on them.

Public lending right

Once again the Writers' Action Group are in the 'Letters' columns of the Times, as previously they have been in such inner citadels of responsible comment as The Spectator, with the begging-bowl outstretched for poor, undernourished authors.

It will be said that most of the tired old list of signatories at the foot of their latest appeal comprise the flower of English letters. The outstretched palm may suit those with the political leanings of Lord Snow, the Longfords and Lord Goodman (though what, by the way, is he, doing in this company?), but sturdy individualists like John Braine and Lord Carrington should know better. Authors may be poverty-stricken, though there is always before them the chance of comfort, however compromising, through journalism. A child I know, Selina Hastings of the Daily Telegraph magazine, is the Hanoverian-princess-like daughter of the last of the Plantagenets, the Earl of Huntingdon. Selina tells me that she pulls down no less than £65 a week for her fresh, girlish, 250-word short book reviews that appear in the colour magazine every week. The literati are kept guessing whether she is pulling their legs with her easy mixture of onomatopoeia, alliteration, reviewspeak and general cliché. The Telegraph pay well, but there's plenty of that sort of money in the coffers of Fleet Street.

The answer for authors, who complain that they are forced into an abject supplementarybenefit-drawing existence is surely to write for the press, or perhaps to insist that the laws of copyright are changed to protect them from the tendency of libraries to lend out the books that they buy, or even to insist that libraries pay a special price, though this is obviously likely to be self-defeating. If, however, the number of books being published is thought to be too low (an unlikely event, you may think), the argument should not rest on the poverty of authors, which is a matter of utter unconcern to the ordinary taxpayer (who feels that their work is a good deal less arduous if less well-paid than his own), but on the public interest if it is thought that we should be made to read somewhat more than we do. This objective might be achieved by stopping television transmission after the six o'clock news, or forcing a free book token on each one of us— along the lines of the educational voucher system put forward in a recent Black Paper.

It goes without saying that unless we are irrevocably set on the downward path to authoritarian socialism the letters of the Writers' Action Group and others well-intentioned towards public lending right will be benignly ignored by the Government. Instead, they will and probably should insist on ruthless attention by local and library authorities to the one-third rule: that is; that one third and no more of the appropriation should be spent on buildings, one third on the establishment and one third on what it's all about, publications and books.