Notebook
The latest events in Fleet Street may yet be seen as historic. There have been two Changes of the highest significance. One is the new attitude of managements. Once, the printing unions had this moral advantage: they knew that at the crunch sentiment, or if you prefer, egomania, meant that proprietors would pay any price to keep their papers going. No more. Economically, most of the newspaper groups have diversified into other more lucrative (and how) fields such as television and oil. Psychologically, which is not wholly different, the new bosses are also changed. Beaver. brook was, in his way, a journalist, and a great one. Mr Victor Matthews is a property dealer, He can, in effect, look the unions in the eye and say, Press me any further and I Shall cheerfully shut down the whole operation, and no doubt sell the freeholds at a tidy profit. And you try finding your keyboard operators work in the jobbing trade at £11,000 a year.
The other change is also, in its way, psychological. Journalists have long and bitterly resented the fact that they, so many of them, are worse paid than Fleet Street printers. This resentment is now out in the open at the Mirror. Whatever may happen there, there will be henceforth less and less symPanty for the sentimental line evinced — at any rate in my own branch of the NUJ — by the Trot left. (The line goes, let all journalists unite with their comrades in the print teem against the capitalist bosses' ramp of the new technology.) Mr W.H. Keys of SOGAT may claim in his letter to Mr Matthews that 'the interests of the nation and of the Labour movement are indivisible'. More to the point, old chap, it becomes ever clearer that the interests of Journalists and printers are not merely divisible. They are almost diametrically opposed. Until now two classes of person have been !ssential to the production of newspapers: Journalists and printers. With the invention Of new machinery (as I prefer to call it), on Which any two-finger-typing journalist can tYPeset his own copy, the latter class become otiose and, yes, redundant. We Shall see.
The Packer Circus court case produced an acute conflict between my two instincts of Sentimental conservatism and philosophical liberalism. In the end I am sure that Mr JUstice Slade's decision was right. But was it really necessary for the case to be conducted at such adagio pace? Most of the essential points were made — as is often the case — by one or two witnesses. Their endless reiteration, which it was within the judge's power to control, made it certain that whoever lost the action was going to have a colossal bill to pick up. Litigation becomes ever more a rich man's sport.
This has been a good week for connoisseurs of Euroboredom. Did you know that energy ministers will shortly discuss the energy ' situation in the Community, with special regard to demonstration projects [sic ] and directives on heat generators? You would have learnt this if you had been in the House of Commons, and awakes on Monday. Euromania is a related but more entertaining field. My prize for this year goes to Sir Nicholas Henderson, our Ambassador in Paris. According to Mr Charles Hargrove, writing in The Times on Armistice Day, Sir Nicholas has in his study a map of northern France 'literally peppered with red dots'. 'They are British war cemeteries. I show my map to French visitors to convince them that Britain's commitment to Europe does not date from 1973.' Yes, I thought, pondering this superbly fatuous remark; but how does he put it to German visitors? On the other hand there are reports of Eurodissession. M Hubert Beuve-Mery, the first editor of Le Monde, was in London a few days ago. Although he would not he drawn — he no longer has any connection with the paper — he did imply that the future of Europa the monthly supplement published by The Times, Le Monde and others, was in grave doubt after The Times's recent attack on Le Monde. And another story comes in of a vigorous exchange at a dinner party. M Jean Sauvagnargues, the new French Ambassador, was sitting beside a member of the 'Think Tank' who had helped compose the report on the Foreign Service. Diplomatists stick together: he lammed into the Tanker about the iniquitous document. The conversation, in French, grew more heated and ended: Tanker: 'Je regrette mais je ne suis pas d'accord.'
M l'ambassadeur: `Alors, je mien fous,' Newbury on Saturday provided the first excellent afternoon's racing of the winter.
Of course, that means excellent by the base standard of contemporary National Hunt racing. Three steeplechases attracted a total of twenty-three runners, and fourteen of them were in the Hennessy, competing for nine thousand smackers, which used to be thought a handsome prize. Even with a good card racegoing remains something of an ordeal, apart from Saturday's crowds and bitter cold. A wise man takes his own provisions: sandwiches and flask. As Mr Roger Mortimer once, characteristically, put it, a picnic does not have to be of Fortnum standards to exceed anything obtainable on a racecourse. And a drink — whether a large whisky and soda or a bottle of champagne — costs half the price again that it would in a London pub or club. Is it really impossible to improve racecourse catering? As it is, it provides an extreme example of the vice anglais in standards of service that Mr Bernard Levin complained about so eloquently last week.
At the races I placed my bets (unsuccessfully, as it proved) with the excellent Pat Densham of Messrs Sunderland, one of the last small, independent bookmakers. I did so perforce. since Messrs Ladbroke last week closed my account. Their uncivil letter said that they find it is not economical to operate accounts that are not settled promptly. It is certainly true that 1 have never acquired the gift of paying bills by return, But I suspect that what Ladbroke's meant was that they do not find it 'economical' — weasel word for profitable .— to operate accounts with people who bet infrequently and in small sums. I don't grumble; and I shall not miss Ladbroke's, whose parsimonious incompetence is a by-word among punters. To take an example: not king before the Arc de Triomphe, Halmerino won a race in handsome style at Goodwood. The next day the Sporting Lip pointed out that Ladbroke's were offering 25-1 about him, rather than 12-1 or 14-1 with other layers. 1 telephoned their office. What price was Balrnerino for the Arc? Twenty-fives. Good. I should like to have £10 each way (the last of the big punters). Could I wait a moment. Long pause. No, sorry, sir, that should be 151. Now, bookmakers are entitled to refuse bets, as they are entitled to close accounts. But dodging a bet which might have lost £300, by the ante-post office of an organisation whose current capitalisation is over £90 million, seemed to me singularly pusillanimous — as I said to the man, in a less literary fashion, The truth is that the big bookmakers, whatever they and their tame hacks may say, are themselves the best argument for a Tote monopoly.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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