SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
The controversy over the Tate Gallery's plans for rebuilding has its ironies. As everyone now knows, it is proposed that the front of the Tate, with its grandiose portico, should be demolished to make way for a new block; and one useful point in favour of the change has been the contemptuous description of this bit of Victoriana in Professor Pevsner's encyclo- paedic work on London's buildings. His words are quoted in large letters at the Tate's own exhibition of the plans and models of the proposed extension. Yet Professor Pevsner is also a member of the Royal Fine Art Com- mission, and unless I am misled by rumour (I don't believe I am), when that body considered the Tate proposal he was one of the tiny minority to vote against doing away with the portico. (This fact is not featured in the Tate exhibition.) It is expressive of the difficulty of these decisions that such an attitude, appar- ently contradictory, is perfectly understandable. It struck me, while looking afresh at the Tate's familiar and possibly doomed facade this week, that in spite of its inelegance and its faintly comic pomposity, it has about it something endearing—which is what one could never say about the glass towers and lifeless boxes which have been plonked down near to it in recent years. Third-rate it no doubt is, but it has the look of humanity (all too fallible humanity, indeed) in its composition. This is something which has gone out of architecture. 'Earth has not anything to show more square.' as Wordsworth might well have observed of the massed office blocks beside the Thames today. So an indifferent building, which not long ago would rightly have been recog- nised as expendable, acquires an adventitious value through the dreariness of its neigh- bours.
Sitting comfortably?
No one has yet pointed out one obvious value which the (so far, at least) largely unloved Open University might acquire. It is, apparently. impossible or undesirable at present to expel from more traditional universities those students whose main purpose is to destroy these institutions; but it might at least be thought possible to second them, as it •were, to the 'university of the air.' This would remove a tedious source of trouble and at the same time permit the trouble-makers to continue their education. And there would be a pleasant appropriateness in requiring these people, who have profited conspicuously from their appear- ances on television in the past, to spend a few terms sitting studiously (and solitarily) in front of a television set. What is more, such an activity would positively help them to identify more and more closely with what they call the 'oppressed masses.'
Enoch is enough
All political leaders tend to worry about pos- sible threats to their position, and I suppose that sitting at the apex of the shifting coalition called the Conservative party during a long spell of opposition would produce twinges of insecurity in anyone. No doubt it was this which led Mr Heath to make his uninspired immigration speech last weekend. He said people had no confidence that the Government had a grip on the situation; he also plainly wished to show that he at any rate had a grip on his party, in spite of Mr Powell. Well, it would be humbug to blame a party leader
for exerting himself to remain leader, but one may hope Mr Heath will now stop fretting about Enoch and not feel it necessary to utter frequent dismal speeches about immigrants. Even allowing for 'the phenomenon known as Enoch Powell' it is scarcely thinkable that the Tories would ditch Heath before the next election (if they lose that election, of course, it's scarcely thinkable that they won't ditch him). And there isn't much genuine argument on principles concerning immigration between the parties any more. They are united on wish- ing to keep new arrivals down to a trickle, and Mr Heath didn't even claim that his plan to treat them as aliens would, in fact, reduce num- bers dramatically. So, since the parties have agreed that the door ought to be all but closed, there is really no need for politicians to go on and on about the subject in a way that simply stirs up emotion. Having (more or less) closed the door, the decent thing is to close the mouth too.
Second thoughts
One problem all through the odd affair ot ae Scientologists has been the difficulty of obtain- ing any clear idea of what these people were doing, or were supposed to be doing. Their own publications, which seem to rely heavily upon the literary skills of their founder, Lafayette Ron Hubbard, are startlingly difficult to make head or tail of. After spending ten minutes reading them one develops the sensa- tion of sinking slowly into cold porridge. Sir John Foster, who will conduct the inquiry which Mr Crossman announced this week, will thus have a singularly difficult task, but a useful one. It would be redundant if the Scientolo- gists would simply go away under the shadow of governmental disapproval, but they do nothing of the sort. The Foster report will at last provide an authoritative account, with the advantage of legal privilege, of the whole extraordinary business. It was, in fact, a mis- take not to set up an inquiry last summer when the Government decided to take 'harrying' action in the hope of inducing the members of the sect (church? cult?) to pack' up and leave the country. We said so at the time in this journal : there is, clearly, something wrong in the spectacle of any body, whether claiming religious status or not, suffering discriminatory restrictions without such an inquiry first. This argument from principle is now reinforced by the practical one that the restrictions have failed to eliminate the problem. Mr Crossman ex- plains the voile-face by saying that after six months 'some remarkable changes' have taken place. Whether he meant in the Scientologists' doctrines or practices, or elsewhere, he didn't say. Could he just have meant that he was now in charge of the matter?
Apotheosis
Last word on that dreadful Forsyte family, as scrawled on a poster in Hampstead : `Soaznes for Prime Minister.'
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