DIARY
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN One of the arguments put forward for Margaret Beckett as Labour leader has been that at least with her there won't be any sex scandals of the type which bedevil male politicians, especially those of the Conservative persuasion. Lo and behold, out of the woodwork crawls Mrs Beryl Beckett, who accuses our would-be second woman prime minister of stealing her hus- band. I wondered when Beryl might rear her wronged head. As a young reporter with Raymond's News Agency in 1974, I covered Mrs Beckett's election to parlia- ment when she defeated the breakaway Independent Labour MP Dick Taveme. It was rumoured at the time — with nudges and winks — that Margaret Jackson, as she then was, had only got the seat because of her relationship with Leo Beckett, 17 years her senior and a leading light of the Amal- gamated Union of Engineering Workers and the local Labour Party. It now turns out that the couple were all the while dis- cussing Clause Four in a bedroom at Lin- coln's White Hart Hotel. We were all sur- prised on one count, however, when Mar- garet Jackson became the second Mrs Beckett five years later. I, for one, assumed that once she had secured a place at West- minster she would dump him.
The Queen Mother has written to Channel 4 protesting about a documentary rubbishing Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris. In her capacity as patron of the Bomber Com- mand Association, she describes Harris as 'an inspiring leader', and strongly criticises those who portray him as a bloodthirsty vil- lain. Sir Arthur was treated shamefully by the British Establishment and died without ever being awarded the peerage to which he was richly entitled. I've always been opposed to the honours system but, since one exists, it is an enduring disgrace that Sir Arthur was denied the ermine which adorns the shoulders of nonentities such as Lord Young, Lord Owen and Lord Stevens. Harris was punished by those who seek to rewrite history with the Germans portrayed as victims of Hitler as much as the peoples of the occupied countries and the residents of the East End and Coventry, who found themselves on the receiving end of the Luftwaffe's bombs. We all know that Ger- man pilots were forced into their planes at gunpoint, don't we? How many times dur- ing the recent D-Day commemorations were we told that Britain was actually at war with the Nazis, not the Germans? At least the Germans have had the decency to admit their guilt and atone for it, some- thing the Japanese never have. To this day the Japanese have not apologised for their war crimes and have convinced the younger generation that they were the victims of the second world war. The Hiroshima museum is dedicated to perpetuating that myth. One of the finest leaders ever published by the Sun — in the days before I started to write a column for it — was that which wished the late Emperor Hirohito would rot in hell. It almost caused an international diplomatic incident. Men like my wife's late grandfather, Harold Tuck, certainly didn't accept the view of Japan as victim. To the day he died he would never remove his shirt in public — not even on the beach because of the terrible scars inflicted in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. This week a British lawyer flew to Tokyo to demand compensation for the survivors of Japanese torture camps. I'd have thought Harold Tuck and men like him would have found that rather demeaning. Far better that we commemorate their ordeal by celebrating victory over Japan. The 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atom bomb falls on 6 August next year. The Government should declare it Hiroshima Day and hire Sir Tim Bell to organise an appropriate programme of events — perhaps a fly-past above the Nissan factory in Sunderland and a mushroom-growing contest in Hyde Park.
The Japanese are still extremely touchy about Hiroshima. My agent, Alex Armitage of the Noel Gay Organisation, accompa- nied one of his other clients to Japan a cou- ' Do I hear 40p . . 30p . . er, 20p? ple of years ago, and was invited to make a speech to an assembly of theatrical digni- taries. He introduced himself and rattled off the usual innocuous platitudes and grat- itudes. To his amazement his words were received with absolute silence, and he detected a sense of hostility towards him. Afterwards he asked one of his hosts if he had said something wrong. Diplomatically the man suggested that next time he was called upon to make a speech in Japan he might merely introduce himself as Alex Armitage, manager, and drop all reference to 'Enola Gay'.
Now that she is expected to pay for it, the Queen has declared the royal yacht Bri- tannia surplus to requirements. One sug- gestion for its future use is that it be turned into a floating hospital. This reminded me that some years ago the director Lindsay Anderson made a film called Britannia Hospital, starring Malcolm McDowell and the late Leonard Rossiter. It was an uneven, chaotic black farce, set — I seem to recall — in the old Colney Hatch lunatic asylum in Friern Barnet, north London, and was described on release as a metaphor for the National Health Service and the state of the nation. With the NHS shipping water and sinking under the weight of legions of newly recruited bureaucrats, accountants and management consultants, a floating Britannia Hospital — moored off Canary Wharf, perhaps — might be a fit- ting monument to Nanny Bottomley's brave reforms.
S, peaking of monuments, the hideous Broadwater Farm estate is visible from van- tage-points all over north London. This was where the 'community' policeman Keith Blakelock was hacked to death by a riotous mob in 1985, after which Bernie Grant, the Labour MP for Tottenham, remarked that the police had received a 'bloody good hid- ing'. PC Blakelock's killers have never been caught. Three men jailed for his murder were released on appeal. A number of police officers are now standing trial in connection with the original conviction. Last week it was announced that the case of PC Blakelock's murder was being closed, even though there must be many people on the estate who could identify the culprit, or culprits. I originally thought that Broadwa- ter Farm should be bulldozed after the riot, preferably with the insurgents still inside it. Now, perhaps, it is better to let it stand as testament to PC Blakelock's betrayal by the British justice system and the guilty silence of the local 'community'.
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