SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Lord Snow's decision to attend the Soviet Writers' Congress, almost alone among literary men of any reputation outside the Soviet Union, was a strange one. With all due respect to his lordship, the really interesting thing about this gathering was the absence of so many who might have attended but who, in view of the Sinyaysky-Daniel affair, decided to stay away. Even Louis Aragon, who is a member of the central committee of the French Communist party, pointedly withheld his support, as did a crowd of other European Communists. More remarkably, the absentees also included an im- pressive number from inside the Soviet Union. I see that fifty-two of the 525 elected delegates somehow found ways of staying at home, out of sympathy with the persecuted writers Sinyaysky and Daniel.
Since it may be taken for granted that Lord Snow does not support the imprisonment of Russian writers, his appearance at this gather- ing was no doubt simply an act of insensitivity. All the same, I doubt if he can have felt very comfortable when Mikhail Sholokhov, in the course of some sour remarks about the absentees, singled him out for words of flat- tering welcome.
Unheroic
As a general rule the value of a letter to the press is in inverse ratio to the number of signa- tures it bears. This certainly applied to that graceless letter to The Times in which forty-one young or youngish artists 'viewed with con- cern' the Tate Gallery's acceptance of Henry Moore's gift (without strings) of a collection of his works. I'm not surprised to hear that some of the signatories have already sought out Mr Moore to express their regrets. There is something unpleasantly petty in the spectacle of a group of artists of more modest attain- ments carping at the recognition of a great man—especially when, as in this case, an act of rare generosity is involved.
Furthermore, the doctrine embedded in their letter—The radical nature of art in the twen- tieth century is inconsistent with the notion of an heroic and monumental role for the artist'—is nonsensical; and even if one group of artists is willing to belittle their oppor- tunities that does not empower them to do so-for all. It's odd that this group, which would no doubt consider itself anti-establishment, almost seemed to echo the views already ex- pressed by Sir Charles Wheeler, the voice of the Royal Academy. In art as in politics, the difference between extremes can be more apparent than real.
Protest
Over the weekend I attended one of the public protest meetings which the people of north- west Essex are holding in the hope of stopping the misbegotten Stansted airport scheme. Be- tween 3,000 and 4,000 were crowded into a school hall or standing around in the cool evening air listening to the speeches over loud- speakers. The trouble is,' one of them said as the gathering broke up into a monumental rural traffic jam, 'that with so many alarming things happening internationally, a domestic blunder like this is likely to slip through un- checked.' The main impression was of a mood of bitterness. People feel they have been cheated (the word was used again and again) because they won their case at the public inquiry only to have the verdict reversed by pressure from bureaucrats. No doubt the Government whips will be able to force the scheme through the House of Commons eventually if they really make up their minds to do so. But if that happens, an ugly legacy will be left behind —of contempt for the governmental processes which produced it, and for the Parliament which acquiesced.
Festive
The very name 'Spring Bank Holiday' is rather bizarre, hinting as it does at an outburst of vernal merrymaking behind the stern exteriors of the great financial institutions. This year's experience of the new secular festivity seemed to demonstrate clearly, I felt, that the idea of these mass holidays is now anachronistic. For most of the official holiday period the weather was bad, so that people chafed at a missed opportunity. Then the weather improved, and everyone crowded on to the roads to produce general discomfort and frustration. Either way the arrangement is unsatisfactory. The idea of people having a holiday weekend in spring is fine, but why do we all have to have it at the same time? The good Sir John Lubbock, who got the Bank Holidays Act passed in 1871, was seeking to benefit an entirely different working population. Nowadays the worker chiefly needs a chance to use over- burdened holiday facilities at a time when they're not under maximum strain. It would be far more pleasant if the 'Spring Holiday' were spread over, say, four weekends, with people able to make their own choice, and the banks left to organise their own fertility rites to suit their own convenience.
Square bashing
Anyone who has ever lived in a London square knows what a singularly successful example of town planning such a neighbourhood is. I think my favourite is the unpretentious but delightful Paultons Square in Chelsea, where I once lived. The early nineteenth century houses there are now properly all subject to preservation orders, and people had supposed that its future as a quiet enclave off the King's Road was reasonably secure. I was sorry to hear this week that a proposed one-way traffic system, which would transform one side of the square into a through route loaded with fast and heavy traffic, threatens the whole set-up. Naturally a heartfelt protest is being made to the OLC, and it may yet be that reason will prevail.
However, the affair highlights once again that most intractable of present-day planning prob- lems: how to satisfy the incompatible demands of traffic and those of the people who happen to get in its way. When the ideals of the Buchanan report are out of reach the tendency is always to regard the claims of the motorist as paramount. But it can't make sense to ruin pleasant residential places so as to speed up the journeys of commuters bound for other residential places—which in turn, no doubt, will have to be ruined in the interests of other motorists; and so on ad infinitum.
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