SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

J. W. M. THOMPSON

I have a suggestion for the Tory shadow cabinet's pre-election council of war to be held this weekend. It arises from the recent discussion at Westminster of a possible law to protect the citizen's privacy. The upshot of that debate, it will be remembered, was the announcement of a committee under Mr Kenneth Younger to study the law on privacy and the possible need for fresh legislation.

Now nothing is likely to be done about all this in Parliament until after the general election. The composition of Mr Younger's committee, with its assortment of trade unionists, lawyers, businessmen, journalists, and so on, hardly suggests that it will in- terpret very strictly its instructions to 'act with speed'. Such a mixed company is likely to take some time to reach firm ground after wading into the constitutional quagmires which this subject leads to. In any case Parliament could not digest this sort of legislation on the eve of an election.

What Mr Heath and his merry men might well direct their attention to, therefore, is the manner in which this inquiry opens up the far wider question of the protection of all the citizen's rights across the whole socio- political spectrum. It is now widely agreed that our lack of a written constitution has permitted a steady erosion of the citizen's liberties over the years. This journal has made a point of saying it; voices have been raised in both parties urging that the situa- tion should be remedied. Concern about in- creasing invasions of privacy, in fact, represents only one aspect of a much bigger and more important question.

A former Attorney-General, Sir Lionel Heald, said in Friday's privacy debate that the attempt to put one particular right into statute form was without historical prece- dent. In other words, if we are in effect to make a start on a written constitution to pro- tect the individual, then it is foolish to go about the job piecemeal. 'What we ought to do,' Sir Lionel said, 'is to consider whether we should not have a Bill of Rights.'

I present the thought to the Tory leaders' pre-election conclave. The promise of a new Bill of Rights, to guarantee the minimal freedoms of every man and woman against encroachments by state, big business, or anyone else, would be a resounding and alluring addition to any party's election manifesto.

Help yourself Copyright law is notoriously complicated but most countries take the view that, broadly speaking, a writer is entitled to be paid something if a publisher makes use of his work. It seems an elementary principle. A letter from a German publisher came into this office this week and revealed a strange departure from the principle which is em- bodied in the German Copyright Law of 9 September 1965. In peremptory language, the writer of this letter intimated that .his company, the Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, intended to reprint several articles from the SPECTATOR in a forthcoming book for use in schools; he added that under the 'special pro- visions' of the German law the owners of the copyright were not entitled to refuse permission or to receive any payment in such

cases. hold the opinion,' the writer con- cluded sternly, 'that this serves the interests of all sides.'

Well, one can see that the interests of some sides are well served by such an ar- rangement, of course. German publishers save themselves money and trouble and German schools get their books on the cheap. But how the interests of writers or publishers whose property is legally pirated in this fashion are served is not quite clear to me, I fear. We had not previously realised that one of the functions of this journal and its contributors was to subsidise the reading matter of German schoolchildren—espec- ially as the production of school books is a booming and prosperous section of the publishing industry.

The communicators

`International Publishing Corporation . . . a massive communications group, by far the largest in Britain, and rivalling any publishing empire in the world . . . Com- munications between the different divisions were virtually non-existent . . 2 (From the Observer's piece on the mc-Reed take- over.)

The moral is that communications, like charity, must begin at home? I suppose.

Incidentally, I imagine that no journalist can feel altogether comfortable about this proposed is'c takeover by a paper-making company. Many years ago G. K. Chesterton defined a newspaperman as someone who wrote on the backs of advertisements. Not an ideal role, perhaps—but preferable to that of someone who wrote simply to consume paper.

A plague of jynges

One headline read, 'Jinx Jumbo Grounded Again'. Another, simply, 'Jumbo Jinx'. Then there was a third : 'London Motorways Jinx'. Fleet Street may or may not be in- terested to know that according to the Ox- ford Dictionary there is no such word as 'jinx'. 'lynx', yes. How did the spelling come to change, so that the new version supplants the old? I suspect this is another small ex- ample of American usage taking over. The word is a curious one in any event. Its first meaning is the small bird generally known as the wryneck, jynx torquilla; this poor creature, so the dictionary says, was 'made use of in witchcraft'. Hence the word's transferred meaning of 'a charm or spell'. So, when seeking a term to describe the mishaps that befall the Jumbo jet, we draw upon the ancient Greeks' custom of using a small brown bird for purposes of witchcraft. I offer the point as a possible addition to any word- fancier's stock of useless information.

A further point: how many people who think they know a jynx (or jinx) when they come across one know the plural form? It is (so I discover) 'jynges'. There's a nice quota- tion from Urquhart's Rabelais: 'These are the Philtres, Allurements, Jynges, In- veiglements, Baits and Enticements of Love.' Perhaps this would help Pan-American to give a little more tone to their glum an- nouncements: 'We regret that, owing to the presence of jynges, the Boeing 747's departure has been delayed yet again