A Spectator's. Notebook
GENUINE SCOOPS in the newspaper world are a rarity these days; so I was delighted to see last week that the Manchester Guardian beat everyone to the news of Serov's arrival. I can just imagine how the alarm bells started clanging when Thurs- day's Guardian turned up in the offices of its rivals, who reacted in fact with an old-fashioned vigour. This pleased me also. Until last week General Serov was virtually unknown here (except to readers of the Spectator, who were given a full account of his unpleasant record in March last year). But it is also true that the British press and public must in their turn present a new and astonishing phenomenon to General Serov. He had already shown in Burma that he was not entirely au fait with civilised democratic customs, when he observed that journalists ought to be 'beaten up' for taking 'incorrect' photo- graphs. I find it hard to imagine what he must think when he reads that two of the issues most hotly debated in this country at present are whether one man should be deported from a dependent territory, and whether a dozen or so murderers a year should be executed. Serov, who has been personally responsible for, quite literally, scores of thousands of killings and millions of deportations, will need a strong effort of the imagination to understand our very different society. It is equally true that the British public cannot understand his mores, which are also those of Khrushchev (as whose lieutenant he wrought havoc in the Ukraine) and Bulganin (under whose orders he terrorised Poland), by applying its ordinary terms of reference. And it is to be hoped that this truth will be borne in mind by everyone during the visit of Serov's superiors. I SEE that some of the Commercial TV contractors have turned down Free Speech, which has been one of the very few commercial programmes which have tried to deal with con- temporary issues. No doubt in a few weeks it will be removed from London schedules on the grounds that it cannot be `networked' elsewhere. Still, its producer, Mr. John Irwin,, has one consolation. He is to produce a new programme called `The 64,000 Question.' It had to happen sooner or later : the only difficulty, apparently, was that £64,000 was thought excessive. So it is to be 64,000 sixpences. Why not 128,000 threepenny bits?
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