Another Spectator's Notebook
There are a number of reasons for being depressed about the turn events have taken with regard to free broadcasting in the Republic of Ireland in the last few days. The most obvious are the dismissal by a minister of the governors of a television station who had chosen to stand by the right of their journalists to broadcast fair and critical accounts of a major national crisis; and the jailing of a journalist who had — in accordance with the kind of practice and code of ethics we accept in London as common — refused to compromise his sources. I have, myself, another reason which, small in comparison to the event, is nonetheless important to me because personal. Kevin O'Kelly, the tailed journalist, victim of circumstances beyond, his influence, is a former colleague, and a friend. Besides being a superb radio broadcaster — a man of immensely relaxed, yet tremendously disciplined manner — he is also an accomplished film maker. For his achievements in this field, he has, unfortunately, never received the recognition he deserves. He is a very gentle man, totally unsparing in what he gives of himself to others. When I — a very junior broadcaster in the RTE set-up — was given the opportunity of making a film about the Northern Ireland general election of 1969, an opportunity which, as I later realised, should have gone to Kevin, he spent hours advising me on how to make the best of my chance. I remember, when the last foot of film was in the can, sending him a triumphant Telex saying that I was finished, and receiving a typically warm reply, making a typically jocose play on the word "finished." The special gifts of openness and humanity Kevin has will ensure that he suffers a great deal from this event, and from his imprisonment. I pray only that he, and his wife, Ann, and family, will survive without too many scars; that the courage of his colleagues who have supported him by strike action will not dissipate; and that he will not lose too much, in spirit or preferment, because he was caught trying to do his job.
Marten in Norway
As an enjoyable footnote to re cent political history, I was amused to hear the other day of the activities of four British politicians who spent some time in Scandinavia during the recent Danish and Norwegian referenda campaigns on the EEC. They were Lord Brown and Mr George Thomson, and Mr Neil Marten and Mr Alf Morris — the first two for, and the latter pair against, British entry into the EEC. Lord Brown and Mr Thomson, who so ardently opposed a referendum in this country, nonetheless threw themselves into the Northern campaigns, seeking to persuade the Danes and the Norwegians to see the light of the star of Brussels. Messrs Marten and Morris, on the other hand, held it to be improper on their part to interfere so actively in the internal politics of other countries, and stayed aloof from the actual campaigns. This reticence on their part, I am told, won them much more real and serious attention. This was particularly true of Neil Marten who had, probably unknown to the pro-Marketeers, a particular weapon up his sleeve: besides holding Norwegian military decorations, he was the officer who received a German surrender in Norway at the end of the last war, and has been highly regarded in that country ever since.
Labour democracy
Chatting to a Labour front bencher the other day I found myself musing about the strange way the party goes about forming its front bench. Twelve members are elected, and others are invited by the Leader to take up extra briefs, to make up the numbers between the elected twelve and the Cabinet of the day — with junibr appointments as well. Of course, the Leader may designate particular briefs for particular elected and other members; and he is in no wise obliged to fill his government with shadow Cabinet members when he wins a general election. The democratic principle behind the choice of twelve is quite clear and, obviously, antithetical to the Tory principle by which their Leader has an absolute choice of Conservative spokesmen. But, as it stands, Labour have an uneasy mixture of the two systems, since the Cabinet of the day always numbers more than twelve. Further, elected members of the Shadow Cabinet always have more obvious political muscle than those not elected, yet the actual spread of votes between somebody who gets in and somebody who does not is relatively small. Why in heaven's name, then, don't Labour carry out their democratic principle, sich as it is, to the full, and elect year year as many members of the Shadow Cabinet as there are of the Cabinet?
Hanging Middle week
I find myself extremely puzzled by the intellectual and political development that has taken place since her undergraduate days in Miss Helene Middleweek, twenty-three year old ex-first female President of the Cambridge Union, who has been adopted as the Labour opponent to Enoch Powell in Wolverhampton South-West. Hitherto, I had always thought of la Middleweek as one of those tiresome, mindless, boring, unthinking, slogan-shouting little trendy lefties. Now I find I must revise my view for, in the statement which she made after her adoption, she announces herself as being for capital punishment, for the torturing of Mau Mau prisoners in Hola Camp during the Kenya emergency, agaiist the National Health Service Hospital Plan, and for the Lagos government in the civil war against Biafra. She didn't, I must adrlit, say precisely that in her statement, but she did say: "I've always hated Enoch Powell and everything he stands for." Powell, of course, is against capital punishment, made the speech of a lifetime against the administration of Hola Camp, founded the Hospital Plan ... need I go on?
Peace in Palestine? .
I hear further details of the proposed EEC plan for the Middle East, as discussed bY
Ian Meadows (the Middle East correspondent of a major American radio network) in
our issue last week. Everything is verY much in the air and pretty hush-hush, but the United States is anxious to reopen the Suez Canal and envisages a United Nations
force on the canal's east bank, the Israelis pulling back out of range. Middle East sources (not, I hasten to add, invariablY sound; but as often as not getting it right) suggest that the United States, possibly with the EEC countries, will pay a subsidY of US $300 million annually to Egypt and Jordan in lieu of the subsidies they are at present getting from Libya, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, while these three oil-rich Arab states would divert their present subsidies from Egypt and Jordan t° a provisional Arab Palestinian state. The EEC plan, reported in some Middle East newspapers, envisages a mini-Palestine made up of the Gaza strip, the West Bani‘ and a linking corridor, which might aPP„IY within five years or so for membership. Such a scheme would fit 1,11 well enough with Jordan's King Hussein s plan for an autonomous Palestinian province on the west bank of the Jordan set up in arrangement with both Israel and Jordan.
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