DIARY
Ken Livingstone has his critics and deserves them when he makes the sort of speech he did in Amsterdam about the IRA. Idiosyncratically, however, I rate his long-term chances in the Labour Party very high. He will join the House of Commons at the next election with something in common with Herbert Morrison. Morri- son, however controversially, made the old London County Council something to talk about. Livingstone did the same with the GLC. He is still only 40. Eric Heffer is 64 and Tony Benn, though coy about his age, must be getting on a bit. Neither will be a strong force in the next Parliament. With a Labour Party returning more MPs from the Left, there will be a job opportunity for someone of Livingstone's talents. He is not an especially good administrator. Were Labour to win, and Mr Kinnock shrewdly gave him a ministerial post, he might not shine. If Labour loses, he's my horse.
There was once a convention that when ministers accepted office they had in cer- tain circumstances to fight a by-election. The custom was abolished by the Re- election of Ministers Acts of 1919 and 19.26. I think there is now a case for a different convention, namely that when ministers announce their intention to va- cate their seats at the next election, they also leave their government posts. Sir Keith Joseph has endured unhappy months between giving notice of his retirement from the Commons and Mr Kenneth Bak- er's appointment. It has not done the Government much good either. Sir John Nott did the same thing a year or two back, and was left looking an unconvincing Secretary of State for Defence. Tennyson got it right: 'Authority forgets a dying king.'
Ihave been following with a small personal interest the controversy which Christopher Booker wrote about arising from Nikolai Tolstoy's book about our alleged betrayal of the Cossacks in 1945 (`Macmillan and the massacres', 17 May). In the early summer of 1945 I got leave to travel in a light armoured car from Hanov- er, where we were quartered,to Klagenfurt in Austria, where our sister battalion, 1st King's Royal Rifle Corps, were dealing with such consequences of the war. One of the last things I had done before leaving Hanover, incidentally, had been (as a mere company commander) to assist in an operation which in effect returned thousands of Germans to Russian hands: this in conformity with some line agreed at Potsdam. It is difficult now, indeed impossible, to convey the confusion WILLIAM DEEDES which reigned that summer either side of the battleline. The upheaval caused by millions of displaced persons outstrips im- agination. In Klagenfurt, where they were roving the hills and shooting, it was even more so. No, this is not intended to invalidate anything Tolstoy or Booker has said. But one horror of total war and its aftermath is that the norms we would now rightly apply to everyday conduct are swept away in a torrent — beyond human control. The same thing happened, with different results, at Versailles after the first war. Men who breast the tape after a marathon are not for a time wholly accountable. But of course it looks much simpler now.
Like Rupert Murdoch, Mr Robert Holmes a Court has changed his national- ity to secure a broadcasting licence. Mr Murdoch, born in Australia, became an American citizen last year in order to get his fourth network deal. Mr Holmes a Court, a South African, got himself natur- alised on 12 May in Australia in order to keep his radio and television licences. So in terms of tycoons Australia breaks even. But if it can be done as simply as this in America and Australia, what is the point of insisting on the nationality condition? Holmes a Court, incidentally, has been battling for months to take over Australia's largest company, Broken Hill Proprietary. No objection was raised presumably to this going to a South African citizen.
Isympathise with the desire to get American tourists back here, but some of the attitudes which enter this little local difficulty are insufferable. There is an underlying assumption that Americans find us by comparison with themselves an attractive people. That is presumptuous. We still look down our noses at them. President Reagan is presented here as a geriatric coming off his trolley and by the Left as downright dangerous. Again, we seem not to have grasped how very grubby our manners have become in this country, and visitors notice this. And for good measure, too many hotels, shops and restaurants (in fairness, not all) treat Americans as fair game, which, on the present ratio of the pound and the dollar, they are not. This is not because they are dishonest but because they are greedy. Now we are shouting 'chicken' at them. We behave towards Americans like 'liber- ated' ladies who scorn allure. I shall be told by the tourist people that all this is most unhelpful. Alas, Americans already know it.
Michael Howard, QC, Tory MP for Hythe and Folkestone since 1983 and minister for consumer affairs, has a classic constituency problem. Some, though by no means all, of his electors loathe the idea of a Channel Tunnel. They want to hear his voice raised. As a minister, he cannot oblige. So he should resign, they say. It is odd how many people believe that an MP is useless unless he talks like Dennis Skinner. The national press abets this- attitude because it regards unseen influ- ence as tantamount to conspiracy. In real- ity Whitehall is more obstructive to loud public protests than to pressure behind the scenes. Yielding to the first is loss of face; yielding to the second is not. In any case it looks as if the Chunnel is not going to be stopped now by urging Mr Howard to jump under a bus. What is called for is relentless pressure on the Government and the entrepreneurs involved to design the project in such a way as to avoid turning that corner of the Garden of England into a concrete jungle. Who better to apply such pressure than the minister for con- sumer affairs?
Ilooked twice at an invitation from the University of Kent's students' union to propose a motion last week that it is better to be uninformed than misinformed. It crossed my mind that the debate might dwell on certain of Fleet Street's frailties. But I am glad I accepted. Two barristers from the Inner Temple opposed the mo- tion. The floor chipped in with some pertinent observations. Throughout the debate I was fortified by a dazzling portrait of the University's Chancellor, Lord Gri- mond , which stared at me from the wall of the Senate House. It seemed not to inspire anyone else. Most of the sentiments ex- pressed about our press were depressingly illiberal. They enhanced a doubt which nags my mind like a sore tooth. Supposing a government of the day decided to clip the wings of the national press. How many would march on the next Sunday to Trafal- gar Square in protest? Well, not many from the University of Kent.
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