A Spectator's Notebook
I Should like to start my stint by agreeing with my distinguished predecessor, Angus Maude, at any rate as to his complaint: "If we are to have another general election within a Year, a long-suffering public should spend the next few months clamouring loudly that TV and radio belt up a bit during the next camPaign." Maude's remedy is that one TV channel should be left free of politics each evening so that maddened viewers can escape the incessant clatter. Also that cameras and irnicrophones should be banned from the party 'eaders morning press conferences. I would g.0 further, or rather, I would take a wide sidestep. Party political broadcasts should be abolished altogether. Cameras and microphones should range around the country at the whim of producers, shooting the good, the bad and the indifferent politicians. In the 1920s people were frightened. In spite 0.f the austere Lord Reith, broadcasting, when it began, was considered a wild animal that had to be chained by laws and formularies. II.ut never have the parties thought at any tin.* of requisitioning editorial mace in the 11.ewspapers. Journals have always been considered responsible, even the tabloids. Why Must those giants, BBC and IBA, still have to 8.10g about in ball and ankle irons while it is rightly claimed that we have the best televiewing in the world? There is also a subsidiary point, but one of immense imporIr.ce. It is likely that in the next five years ritain will move finally from parties based on Llass towards parties based on ideological ue.hef. No one should be allowed to interfere !kith this holy process, programmers and ,,IMage-makers in Central Office and Transport 'Louse least of all.
Not `catharticated' The Catharsis Theory, which is the only 'eaPon I have available to floor Mrs Whitere'llse and Lord Longford, does not seem at tli.rst glance to work for football. The theory is at if you experience violence in the morning i'h°14 won't go out on a deadly prowl later in ,"e day. "Deal harshly with your little boy l'ad beat him when he sneezes; he only does it h° annoy because he knows it teases." One e„eavY clout on the back and the sneezing is 64,red. So is the teasing. Those who go to see thoickwork Orange find the imagery so awful t;:at they spend the rest of the week nursing t"oeir nerves. 'X' films are good psychiatric tUC s — so the argument runs — and taken in rhe,ht doses will stop you and your mates from .c;ulging in rough stuff on Clapham Common r,.t the Bank of England. eerhaps football is too much like ballet and 3, riot sufficiently representative of Roman ,!adiators and net throwers. Which may be wne reason why hordes of youths tumble out h hen the game is over, and have a go. They vave not been catharticated (if I can invent a tielrb). Had they been to a bullfight and seen h;,eir favourite matador maimed for life, the c`ch might have been left completely clear. 001Ing Spaniards are extremely well behaved, Ile notices.
nainence bleue Michael Fraser entered the Conservative ,inearch Department in 1946, became Head of 'e'e Home Affairs Section in 1950, directed the 2itire department from 1951 to 1964, and then °ved on to be deputy chairman of the " Conpative Party Organisation and secretary to e Shadow Cabinet until 1970. When Mr
Heath became Prime Minister Sir Michael returned to the Research Department as chairman, but naturally continued as a vicechairman at Central Office, where he still is.
Sir Michael has had, and is still having, a fantastic career. He is the eminence bleue of the Tory Party. For nearly thirty years he has sat beside Churchill, Woolton, Eden, Butler, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Heath. He must be wondering who he will be sitting beside next. He must be thinking that he has outshone all these great names in one regard, continuity. But I beg leave to doubt whether he is thinking also that his own stout personality, together with the political policies he has generated since the war, has gained anything at all for party or country, as things stand today.
Royal progress Queen Elizabeth the Second interrupted her royal progress through the Antipodes and flew home to receive seals of office from all her former ministers, to kiss hands, to present seals of office to all her new ministers, and to kiss hands again. Without pageantry, but with her usual grace, she proceeded to the House of Lords to read out Mr Wilson's speech. Almost immediately a royal jet took her back to the Antipodes. The Duke of Edinburgh smiled broadly as the Bali warriors held daggers to their breasts, and as apocryphal lions and — was it? — unicorns clashed in a whirl of tinsel and to the tune of flutes and cymbals. But Her Majesty's face was clouded and set. I am sure we all know why. Our loyalty and sense of duty are more deeply rooted than ever before.
Insubstantial fairness When England founders it will be on the adjective 'fair.' It is Mr Heath's favourite current °word.
Like beauty, fairness lies in the eye of the beholder, and if the beholder is a prime minister invested with all the powers of modern government and backed by the persuasive force of the media, you can be quite sure that a single idea of fairness will soon become the established national norm. Any departure from this norm will invoke public obloquy and ultimately the sanction of the law. In that sense this upright and splendid word could soon become menacingly totalitarian. Fairness is too precious a word to be put into the strait-jacket of public policy; indeed it is almost certain to defy any such attempt. The very substance of life demands it.
All nature is designed to be unfair and this very fact is what calls forth man's appeal to God for strength to withstand its unfairness, or for absolution should this strength not be forthcoming. Fairness cannot be conjured with. It is insubstantial — less constant, even, than love. Fairness comes down on the wind, creates a moment of friendship and is gone again.
How can an ancient democracy like England begin to treat with fairness in political terms? How can a son of Kent become so hubristic that he searches for it in his sentences as for some talisman of righteous political action?
Decline in chivalry I am reading Mrs Cecil Woodham-Smith's first volume on the life of Queen Victoria. Critical appraisal of this great writer is, alas, not part of the duty of a Spectator diarist. A somewhat lowly thought-train, however, may get by.
The first chapter is a matter of Gallants and Ladies, Trappings and Debts. The notorious Royal Dukes, accepting or rejecting their wives or courtesans, and travelling in magnificent equipages to meet, avoid or accompany them over hideous continental roads, in hideous weather, often in accident, inevitably end up on a pilgrimage to the office of the Old King's Privy Purse, as supplicants for parliamentary grants and for loans from bankers with offices not too far from St James's Park. There were great schemes and great expectations. But hardship, even ruin, stared everyone in the face. There was the prize but there was also the pain. "It was all for the love of a la-dy!"
What has happened to that old song now? 1 tap the maximum and minimum thermometer in my greenhouse and wonder what it is that is rising on one scale as man's gallant questing spirit falls on the other. For there has been a decline in chivalry. There has been a decline in man's dedication to the opposite sex of his whole life-style, I mean manners, creative arts, sheer adventurous action. Who would write an ode to a lady's eyebrow now? Who would play his own composition in a concert hall with his mistress in the gallery, the cynosure of all eyes? Who would lift a finger for Marie Antoinette, let alone ten thousand swords from their scabbards? For that matter, where is Marie Antoinette, or any modern version? If she appeared would she be scowled at by Women's Lib? I should like to think that that organisation is forming a vast reception committee for her return. But I fear the worst, that it is in fact the rising mercury in my greenhouse thermometer, a collection of sophistical, economic and calculating spinsters conducting obsequies on the age of chivalry. Victor Montagu Victor Montagu, formerly Conservative MP for South Dorset, disclaimed his family title as 10th Earl of Sandwich in 1964. He is chairman of the Trident Group and will be contributing to the Notebook for the next few weeks.
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